ng to show that
Chillingworth was a Socinian who aimed at perverting not only
Catholicism but Christianity.

Laud, now archbishop of Canterbury, was not a little solicitous about
Chillingworth's reply to Knott, and at his request, as "the young man
had given cause why a more watchful eye should be held over him and his
writings," 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 main argument is a vindication of the sole authority of the Bible in
spiritual matters, and of the free right of the individual conscience to
interpret it. In the preface Chillingworth expresses his new view about
subscription to the articles. "For the Church of England," he there
says, "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."
His scruples having thus been overcome, he was, in the following year
(1638), promoted to the chancellorship of the church of Sarum, with the
prebend of Brixworth in Northamptonshire annexed to it. In the great
civil struggle he used his pen against the Scots, and was in the king's
army at the siege of Gloucester, inventing 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 harassed by the diatribes of the
Puritan preacher, Francis Cheynell.

Besides his principal work, Chillingworth wrote a number of smaller
anti-Jesuit papers published in the posthumous _Additional Discourses_
(1687), and nine 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 the instruction, "when they persecute you in one city,
flee into another." His writings long enjoyed a high popularity.