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Article CHARACTERS OF CHILLINGWORTH AND BAYLE. Page 1 of 3 →
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Characters Of Chillingworth And Bayle.
CHARACTERS OF CHILLINGWORTH AND BAYLE .
nPO contemplate the characters of great men , is , perhaps , one of - -. the most important amusements we can be engaged in : since it is . only by forming a proper estimate of the conduct of others , that we can learn to regulate our own . But the picture becomes doubl y interesting , when it is drawn by the pencil of a great master . Mr . Gibbon has given the following sketches of the characters of two of the greatest men of their times .
CHILLINGWORTH . While Charles the Fiist governed England , and was himself governed by a catholic queen , it cannot be denied that the missionaries of Rome laboured with impunity and success in the court , the country and even the universities . One of the sheep , ' ——Whom the grim wolf with privy
paw Daily devours apace , and nothing said , is Mr . William Chillingworth , Master of Arts , and Fellow of Trinit y College , Oxford ; who , at the ripe age of twenty-ei ght years , was persuaded to elope from Oxford to the English seminary at Douay in Flanders . Some disputes with Fisher , a subtle Jesuit , might first awaken him from the prejudices of educationbut he
; yielded to his own victorious argument , " that there must be some-^ where 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 , resumedhis studies , unravelled his mistakes , and delivered his mind from the of
yoke 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 letters ; and the more he wei ghed , 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 ab-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Characters Of Chillingworth And Bayle.
CHARACTERS OF CHILLINGWORTH AND BAYLE .
nPO contemplate the characters of great men , is , perhaps , one of - -. the most important amusements we can be engaged in : since it is . only by forming a proper estimate of the conduct of others , that we can learn to regulate our own . But the picture becomes doubl y interesting , when it is drawn by the pencil of a great master . Mr . Gibbon has given the following sketches of the characters of two of the greatest men of their times .
CHILLINGWORTH . While Charles the Fiist governed England , and was himself governed by a catholic queen , it cannot be denied that the missionaries of Rome laboured with impunity and success in the court , the country and even the universities . One of the sheep , ' ——Whom the grim wolf with privy
paw Daily devours apace , and nothing said , is Mr . William Chillingworth , Master of Arts , and Fellow of Trinit y College , Oxford ; who , at the ripe age of twenty-ei ght years , was persuaded to elope from Oxford to the English seminary at Douay in Flanders . Some disputes with Fisher , a subtle Jesuit , might first awaken him from the prejudices of educationbut he
; yielded to his own victorious argument , " that there must be some-^ where 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 , resumedhis studies , unravelled his mistakes , and delivered his mind from the of
yoke 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 letters ; and the more he wei ghed , 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 ab-