His famous dictum, “The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants”--the lever with which he sought to upheave and overthrow the tenets of Popery--placed him in a theological position distinct from that which was occupied by Anglicans; for, though they were ready enough to appeal to Scripture against Rome, they also appealed to Christian antiquity against Puritanism. Chillingworth’s method of reasoning betrayed an absence of sympathy with High Church Divines in their reverence for the early Fathers, and showed how he fixed his religious opinions solely upon the basis of the written revelation, as interpreted by reason. And at the same time, by largely insisting upon the principle that the Apostles’ Creed contains all necessary points of mere belief,[457] and by the disposition which he manifested to recognize as little doctrinal meaning upon disputed points as possible in the articles of that early Christian confession, he not only separated himself from Anglicans, but he separated himself from Puritans. He was reticent upon evangelical subjects, respecting which the latter delighted to speak; and from his desire to comprehend people of considerable dogmatic divergency within the pale of the Church, he incurred reproaches from those last named, and was stigmatized by them, not only as an Arminian, but as a Socinian. No definite idea of his opinions upon some important parts of Divine truth can be gathered from his writings. It is plain that he loved a large liberty in all kinds of thinking, and set a higher value upon a religious temper, a devout spirit, a Catholic disposition, and a moral life, than upon orthodoxy of sentiment, or forms of worship, or methods of ecclesiastical government and discipline. Chillingworth, a native of the City, and an ornament of the University of Oxford, died in 1644. Eight years afterwards, the English Church lost another Divine, an ornament of the University of Cambridge, who, though very different in many respects from Chillingworth, may be classed with him in the same division of liberal Divines. [Sidenote: LIBERAL ORTHODOX.--SMITH.]