Unitarianism in America | Page 6

wished to make the Bible the source of
inward spiritual illumination,--not a standard and a test, but an
awakener of the divine life in the soul. They sought for what is really
essential in religious truth, limited the number of dogmas that may be
regarded as requisite to the Christian life, and took the position that
only what is of prime importance is to be required of the believer. The
result was that Arminianism became a positive aid to the growth of
toleration in England; for it became what was called
latitudinarian,--that is, broad in temper, inclusive in spirit, and desirous
of bringing all the nation within the limits of one harmonizing and
noble-minded church.
[Sidenote: English Rationalists.]
It was in such tendencies as these, as they were developed in Holland
and England, that American Unitarianism had its origin. To show how
true this is, it may be desirable to speak of a few of the men whose
books were most frequently read in New England during the eighteenth
century. The prose writings of Milton exerted great influence in favor

of toleration and in vindication of reason. Without doubt he became in
his later years a believer in free will and the subordinate nature of
Christ, and he was true to the Protestant ideal of an open Bible and a
free spirit in man. Known as a Puritan, his pleas for toleration must
have been read with confidence by his coreligionists of New England;
while his rational temper could not have failed to have its effect.
His vindication of the Bible as the religion of Protestants must have
commended Chillingworth to the liberal minds in New England; and
there is evidence that he was read with acceptance, although he was of
the established church. Chillingworth was of the noblest type of the
latitudinarians in the Church of England during the first half of the
seventeenth century; for he was generously tolerant, his mind was
broad and liberal, and he knew the true value of a really comprehensive
and inclusive church, which he earnestly desired should be established
in England. He wished to have the creed reduced to the most limited
proportions by giving emphasis to what is fundamental, and by the
extrusion of all else. It was his desire to maintain what is essential that
caused him to say: "I am fully assured that God does not, and therefore
that man ought not, to require any more of any man than this--to
believe the Scripture to be God's word, to endeavor to find the true
sense of it, and to live according to it."[7]
He would therefore leave every man free to interpret the Bible for
himself, and he would make no dogmatic test to deprive any man of
this right. The chief fact in the Bible being Christ, he insisted that
Christianity is loyalty to his spirit. "To believe only in Christ" is his
definition of Christianity, and he would add nothing to this standard.
He would put no church or creed or council between the individual soul
and God; and he would direct every believer to the Bible as the free and
open way of the soul's access to divine truth. He found that the religion
of Protestants consisted in the rational use of that book, and not in the
teachings of the Reformers or in the confessions they devised. It is the
great merit of Chillingworth that he vindicated the spirit of toleration in
a broad and noble manner, that he was without sectarian prejudice or
narrowness in his desire for an inclusive church, and that he spoke and
wrote in a truly rational temper. He applied reason to all religious
problems, and he regarded it as the final judge and arbiter. Religious
freedom received from him the fullest recognition, and no one has more

clearly indicated the scope and purpose of toleration.
Another English religious leader, much read in New England, was
Archbishop Tillotson. It has been said of him that "for the first time
since the Reformation the voice of reason was now clearly heard in the
high places of the church."[8] He was an Arminian in his sympathies,
and held that the way of salvation is open to all who choose to accept
its opportunities. He expressed himself as being as certain that the
doctrine of eternal decrees is not of God as he was sure that God is
good and just. His ground for this opinion was that it is repugnant to
the convictions of justice and goodness natural to men. He maintained
that we shall be justified before God by means of the reformation that
is wrought in our own lives. We have an intuition of what is right, and
a natural capacity for living justly and righteously. Experience and
reason he made concomitant