The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.
§ 11. William Chillingworth
The association had been earlier, and in friendliness: for both Laud and Sheldon were concerned in the conversion from Roman Catholicism of the most conspicuous controversialist of the age of Charles I. This was William Chillingworth, who was an Oxford citizen, Laud’s godson, a scholar of Trinity, a logician and disputant, a friend of the brilliant company which gathered at Great Tew. In an immortal passage, Clarendon has described the wits and theologians who were intimate with the fascinating Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland. In his Oxfordshire house, he loved to consort with scholars of Oxford, he who had been the disciple of the last poets of the Elizabethan age, had himself written pretty verses and, perhaps, more than dabbled in acute theological difficulties. His mother Elizabeth (Tanfield) became a Roman Catholic, and it was in her house that Lucius met Chillingworth, when he, too, in search of an infallible guide, had abandoned his protestantism. Their talk, there is evidence to show, was often of Socinus and his rationalistic treatment of theology, and theological interests became more and more supreme in Falkland’s mind. “His whole conversation,” says Clarendon, “was one continued convivium philosophicum or convivium theologicum”; and the literary result was his Discourse of Infallibility, published after the restoration, in 1660. The literary coterie at Great Tew did not entirely abandon poetry: there was also, indeed, as of old in London, the “session of the Poets.” But the main interests were theological. Lettice, lord Falkland’s wife, was a typical product of the religious revival associated with Charles I’s days. Her Life by her chaplain Duncon, one of the most interesting biographies of the time, shows her exact and scrupulous in all the devotional rules of the church; yet, in her religious, almost ascetic, household, the widest speculation was allowed her thoughtful and impressionable husband. There were Morley and Hammond; the former afterwards a notable bishop, the latter a preacher and devotional writer of singular charm and sweetness; Earle, author of Microcosmographie, who said that he “got more useful learning by his conversation at Tew than he had at Oxford”; Sheldon, Hales and Chillingworth. It is not unnatural to suppose that the foundations of The Religion of Protestants were laid at Great Tew: Falkland’s book shows indebtedness to the same thoughts of rational disbelief in papal infallibility.
The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation; or an Answer to a book Entituled Mercy and Truth or Charity Maintained by Catholiques; which pretends to prove the contrary (1637) was the summing up of a long controversy which was begun as early as 1630 by a Jesuit named Edward Knott. It is hampered by a minute and complicated method, now of defence now of attack; but, out of pages of singularly complicated and involved discussion, there emerges a most clear and dogmatic assertion. Chillingworth’s religion is to be found only in the Bible, insomuch that he will have no anathemas that he cannot find there; and his