Early Life
He was born in Oxford, where his father served as mayor; William Laud was his godfather. In June 1618 he became a scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, of which he was made a fellow in June 1628. He gained a reputation as a skillful debater, excelled in mathematics, and also became known as a poet. He associated with Sir Lucius Cary, John Hales, and Gilbert Sheldon.
Interested in religious controversy and not yet in orders, Chillingworth took on the Jesuit John Percy (alias "John Fisher"). Percy succeeded in converting Chillingworth, and persuaded him to go to the Jesuit college at Douai, in 1630. There he wrote an account of his reasons for leaving Protestantism, but kept in touch with Laud. In 1631, however, he thought again, and left Douai. He did not immediately return to the orthodox positions of the Church of England, but was drawn into controversy with Catholics: with John Lewgar, John Floyd, and in a disputation with Thomas White before Lord Digby and Sir Kenelm Digby.
His theological sensitiveness appears in his refusal of a preferment offered to him in 1635 by Sir Thomas Coventry, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. He was in difficulty about subscribing the Thirty-Nine Articles. As he informed Gilbert Sheldon, then Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, in a letter, he was fully resolved on two points: that to say that the Fourth Commandment is a law of God appertaining to Christians is false and unlawful, and that the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed are false, presumptuous and schismatical. To subscribe, therefore, he felt would be to “subscribe his own damnation."
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