Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/637

Rh brated divine and controversialist of the Church of England, was born at Oxford in October 1602. In June 1618 he became a scholar of Trinity College, and after a course of logic and philosophy he was admitted to the degree of Master of Arts in 1623, and was made a fellow of Trinity College in June 1628. In those days he industriously cultivated the art of disputation, as was the fashion among the young theologians of the university. He also excelled in mathematics, and gained some credit as a writer of verses. The controversy between the Church of England and that of Rome was the absorbing topic of the time, which had gained a deeper interest in consequence of the marriage of Charles with Heuriette of France. Missionaries of the Church of Rome were busy throughout the country. The Jesuits made the universities their special point of attack; and one, named Fisher, who had his sphere at Oxford, succeeded in making a convert of young Chillingworth. To secure his conquest, Fisher prevailed upon Chillingworth to go to the Jesuit college at Douay. While he was there, Laud, who was his godfather, and who then was bishop of London, pressed him with arguments against the doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome, which had the effect of determining him to make an impartial inquiry into the claims of the two churches. For this purpose he quitted Douay in 1631 after a brief stay there, returned to England, and at Oxford, of which Laud was chancellor, he devoted his energies to a free inquiry into religion. On grounds of Scripture and reason he at length declared for Protestantism, and wrote in 1634, but did not publish, a confutation of the motives which had led him over to Rome. This paper was lost ; the other, on the same subject, was probably written on some other occasion at the request of his friends. His return to Protestantism was attended with same scruples, which he expressed in a letter to Dr Sheldon, and which probably gave rise to the report that he had turned papist a second time, and then Protestant again. The extreme sensitiveness of his theological conscience was evinced by the grounds on which he refused a preferment offered to him in 1635 by Sir Thomas Coventry, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. He was in difficulty about subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. As he informed Dr Sheldon in a letter, he was fully resolved on two points that to say the Fourth Commandment is a law of God appertaining to Christians is false and unlawful, and that the damning clauses in St Athanasius s Creed are most false, and in a high degree presumptuous and schismatical. To subscribe, therefore, he felt would be to &quot; subscribe his own damnation.&quot; At this time his principal work was far towards completion. It was undertaken in defence of Dr Christopher Potter, provost of Queen s College in Oxford, who had for some time been carrying on a controversy with a Jesuit known as Edward Knott, but whose real name was Matthias Wilson. Laud, now archbishop of Canterbury, was not a little solicitous about Chillingworth s reply to Knott, and at his request, as &quot; the young man had given cause why a more watchful eye should be held over him and his writings,&quot; it was examined by the vice-chancellor of Oxford, and two professors of divinity, and published with their approbation in 1637, with the title The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation. The work was well received, two editions being published within less than five months ; and it called forth a shower of pamphlets from the apposite eide. In the preface Chillingworth expresses a totally different view about subscription to the articles. &quot; For the Church of England,&quot; he there says, &quot; I am persuaded that the constant doctrine of it is so pure and orthodox, that whosoever believes it, and lives according to it, undoubtedly he shall be saved, and that there is no error in it which may necessitate or warrant any man to disturb the peace or renounce the communion of it. This, in my opinion, is all intended by subscription.&quot; His scruples having thus been happily overcome, he was, in the following year (1638), promoted to the chancellorship of the church of Sarum, with the prebend of Brixworth in Northampton shire annexed to it. He was in the king s army at the siege of Gloucester, and invented certain engines for assaulting the town. Shortly afterwards he accompanied Lord Hopton, general of the king s troops in the west, in his march ; and being laid up with illness at Arundel Castle, he was there taken prisoner by the Parliamentary forces under Sir William Waller. As he was unable to go to London with the garrison, he was conveyed to Chichester, and died there in January 1644. His last days were spent in controversy with a redoubtable preacher, Francis Cheynell, about the dispute between the king and the parliament. Besides his principal work, Chillingworth wrote a number of minor pieces of a controversial kind, and some of his sermons have been preserved. In politics he was a zealous Royalist, asserting that even the unjust and tyrannous violence of princes may not be resisted, although it might be avoided in terms of our Saviour s direction, &quot; when they persecute you in one city, flee into another.&quot; His writings long enjoyed a high popularity. The Religion of Protestants is characterized by much fairness and acuteness of argument, and was commended by Locke as a discipline of &quot; perspicuity and the way of right reasoning.&quot; The charge of Socinianism was frequently brought against him, but, as Tillotson thought, &quot; for no other cause but his worthy and successful attempts to make the Christian religion reasonable.&quot; His creed, and the whole gist of his argument, is expressed in a single sentence, which is not without significance even for the present time, &quot; I am fully assured that God does not, and therefore that men ought not to require any more of any man than this, to believe the Scripture to be God s word, to endeavour to find the true sense of it, and to live according to it.&quot;  CHILMAREE (in Hindustani, Chalamari), a town of British India, in the presidency of Bengal, about 35 miles south-east of Rungpur, on the right bank of the Brahmaputra. It is mainly remarkable as the seat of a great religious and commercial festival, which brings together no fewer that from 60,000 to 100,000 people.  CHILOE, an island off the coast of Chili, separated from the mainland on the X. by the narrow strait of Chacao, and on the E. by the archipelago of the Gulf of Ancud and Corcovado Bay. It is situated between 41 45 and 43 30 S. lat., and extends in length about 120 miles from N. to S. ; its greatest breadth is about 50 miles, and its total area is estimated at 5200 square miles. The western or seaward coast is for the most part steep, and in some places rises to a height of 3000 feet ; the eastern contrasts with it not only in its smaller elevation but also in the extreme irregularity of its outline. There are several lakes in the southern portion of the island, of which the most extensive bears the name of Lago de Cucao. The interior is moun tainous and but partially explored. The whole island is divided into the five departments of Ancud or San Carlos, Chacao, Dalcahue, Castro, and Chonchi. Ancud, the capital and the bishop s seat, is a regularly-built town, with a population of 7000. The total population of the province amounted in 1875 to 64,536. In 1558 the island and the neighbouring archipelago were discovered by Garcia de Mendoza, and not long afterwards were taken possession of by Spain. On the expulsion of the Spanish forces from the rest of Chili in 1818 they settled in Chiloe ; but in 1826 the island likewise was abandoned, and since that period it has formed one of the Chilian provinces. The most valuable article of commerce is the timber of tho 