own victorious argument, "that there must be somewhere an infallible
judge; and that the church of Rome is the only Christian society
which either does or can pretend to that character." After a short
trial of a few months, Mr. Chillingworth was again tormented by
religious scruples: he returned home, resumed his studies,
unravelled his mistakes, and delivered his mind from the yoke of
authority and superstition. His new creed was built on the
principle, that the Bible is our sole judge, and private reason our
sole interpreter: and he ably maintains this principle in the
Religion of a Protestant, a book which, after startling the doctors
of Oxford, is still esteemed the most solid defence of the
Reformation. The learning, the virtue, the recent merits of the
author, entitled him to fair preferment: but the slave had now
broken his fetters; and the more he weighed, the less was he
disposed to subscribe to the thirty-nine articles of the church of
England. In a private letter he declares, with all the energy of
language, that he could not subscribe to them without subscribing to
his own damnation; and that if ever he should depart from this
immoveable resolution, he would allow his friends to think him a
madman, or an atheist. As the letter is without a date, we cannot
ascertain the number of weeks or months that elapsed between this
passionate abhorrence and the Salisbury Register, which is still
extant. "Ego Gulielmus Chillingworth, ...... omnibus hisce
articulis. ...... et singulis in iisdem contentis volens, et ex
animo subscribo, et consensum meum iisdem praebeo. 20 die Julii
1638." But, alas! the chancellor and prebendary of Sarum soon
deviated from his own subscription: as he more deeply scrutinized
the article of the Trinity, neither scripture nor the primitive
fathers could long uphold his orthodox belief; and he could not but
confess, "that the doctrine of Arius is either the truth, or at