embarrassment would, on a less sacred subject, be amusing. His half reverential intellect was evidently puzzled by such dogmas on the nature of Christ as, 'One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by taking of the manhood into God, One altogether; not by confusion of substance but by unity of person."

And well it might be; for the whole farrago is the crude metaphysics of an age certainly as incapable as any that preceded or followed it of elucidating the unfathomable mysteries which loom around the distinct, intelligible basis of the Christian faith. In his perplexity he betakes himself to three refuges almost equally frail. First he says, 'To such as are grounded in the true belief, those explanatory creeds, the Nicene and this of Athanasius, might perhaps be spared, for what is supernatural will always be a mystery in spite of exposition; and for my own part, the plain Apostles' Creed is most suitable to my weak understanding, as the simplest diet is the most easy of digestion.' He might well find what is called the Apostles' Creed so light of digestion; for, as if by a predestined confusion of all written creeds, there is omitted from it the slightest reference to the grand cardinal point of the Christian faith-the doctrine of the atonement, which the Church that adopts the creed regards as the way of salvation. This was supplied in the Nicene Creed by the words, 'For us men and for our salvation.'

Dryden's second refuge has reference to the nonconformists, whom he thus contrasts with the papists of the latter he says, They have kept the Scripture from us what they could, and have reserved to themselves a right of interpreting what they have delivered, under a pretence of infallibility; while of the nonconformists he says, 'They have assumed what amounts to an infallibility in the private spirit, and have detorted those texts of Scripture which are not necessary for salvation to the damnable uses of sedition, disturbance, and destruction of the civil government." This latter shifting of the whole ground of the controversy will not escape the reader's observation. The politics of the nonconformists and the use they may have made of Scripture to consecrate them, is one thing, but the right of private judgment is another; and to this he has already given his deliberate assent. In the embarrassment of his position, occasioned alike by his ignorance, his interests, and the peculiarity both of his social and official position, he betakes himself to a third refuge, still more absurd. If,' he says, 'there be anything more required of me, I must believe it as well as I am able in spite of the witnesses, and out of a decent conformity to the votes of Parliament, for I suppose the fanatics will not allow the private spirit in this case. Here the infallibility is at least in one part of the government; and our understandings as well as our wills are represented.'

Dryden here unconsciously abandons the whole case. To intrust the decision of disputed theological points to the legislature, is obviously more absurd than to commit it to the arbitration of the priesthood, while both courses are equally subversive of that right of private judgment which Dryden had just been maintaining. It is difficult to say whether religion perishes more certainly when it is dependent on the dicta of a priesthood or the acts of a parliament. History leaves the dilemma unsolved; and reason can only decide the dispute by cutting the knot, and abjuring the authority of both. The declaration that the understandings of the people, especially on ecclesiastical subjects, were in the times of Charles the Second-to say nothing of our ownrepresented in the legislature, is ridiculous to the last degree, and of this absurdity Dryden himself must have been perfectly conscious. In spite of all his difficulties, in his 'Religio Laici' he ever and anon stumbles on the truth, and exhibits it with his characteristic boldness. Of this the following passage is a striking illustration

But if there be a power too just and strong

To wink at crimes, and bear unpunished wrong,
Look humbly upward; see his will disclose
The forfeit first, and then the fine impose,
A mulet thy poverty could never pay,

Had not eternal wisdom found the way,

And with celestial wealth supplied thy store;

His justice makes the fine, his mercy quits the score.

See God descending in thy human frame;

The offended suffering in the offender's name:

All thy misdeeds to him imputed see,

And all his righteousness devolved on thee.—Ib. p. 47.

And again, in speaking of the Bible, and the suppression of it by the Papal Church, he says

The Book's a common largess to mankind,

Not more for them than every man designed;
The welcome news is in the letter found;

The carrier's not commissioned to expound.

It speaks itself, and what it does contain,

In all things needful to be known, is plain.'-Ib. p. 54.

It is humiliating to find Dryden three years after the publication of the Religio Laici' composing a controversial poem entitled 'The Hind and the Panther,' in which he openly and avowedly commits himself as a member and an advocate of the Roman-catholic Church; and it is still more painful to reflect that this change of profession occurred immediately after the receipt of a pension from the Crown, sufficient of itself to place him in easy circumstances. It is unnecessary here to repeat the

numerous criticisms which have been written upon the structure of this poem. To make two wild beasts argue on points of controversy, and one of them to declare herself the infallible church; to make them argue on transubstantiation and infallibility, apostolical succession and the Thirty-nine Articles, would seem at first sight absurd to the last degree; and nothing but the extraordinary talents of Dryden could have saved his poem from universal ridicule, on account of its scheme, irrespectively of the manner in which it was carried out, to say nothing of the prima facie evidence of its dishonesty, owing to the coincidence of the religious tergiversation it displays, with the pecuniary interest of its author. Still the controversial poems of Dryden, and this more especially, vindicates a new claim to the otherwise equivocal honour of the laurels which he wore. He not only merits the fame of having inaugurated by his style a new epoch in British poetry, but he was also the first and the greatest of versifiers who adapted controversy to numbers. How far this can be considered a legitimate honour may fairly be questioned. Prose would seem the most natural vehicle of controversy. The province of poetry is to delight,

'Animis natum inventumque poëma juvandis,'

while the object of controversy is to instruct and convince. To combine the two is hard if not unnatural; the attempt even in the most skilful hands incessantly flattens poetry into prose, and if Horace's judgment may be taken,

'Si paulum a summo decessit, vergit ad imum.'

True poetry is far too ethereal a thing to bind the fierce forces of polemical strife, and while it retains its genuine nature and function, it is not the artillery of controversy but the 'voice of the turtle' heard in the piping times of peace.

As happens in all such cases, our poet takes care to have the advantages all on his own side; and if the object is to conquer the reader, he loses the battle by the use he makes of those very advantages. Thus in the matter of infallibility we find the following lines put into the mouth of the bestial representative of

popery

Now since you grant some necessary guide,
All who can err are justly laid aside,
Because a trust so sacred to confer
Shows want of such a sure interpreter ;
And how can he be needful who can err?

Then granting that unerring guide we want,
That such there is you stand obliged to grant;
Our Saviour else were wanting to supply
Our needs, and obviate that necessity.

It then remains, that Church can only be

The guide, which owns unfailing certainty.-Ib. 121.

Surely it is singular that it never occurred to the mind of Dryden that he only puts forth the claim to infallibility on the part of the Romish Church as the evidence of that infallibility which is to supersede the reason and the faith of mankind; but by what grounds is this claim supported which have not been participated by the great and the good of all ages who have stood aloof from the Romish Church as corrupt and anti-christian? Why may not the Mormons make the same claim, and between the proofs and sanctions adduced, Joe Smith's exhumed tablets on the one part, and on the other the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, the tweaking of the devil's nose with red hot tongs by St. Anthony, and the protest of the Blessed Virgin against the sacre Dieu of the French cab-drivers to the cow-boys at La Salette, who shall decide? Dryden assumes the decision after the fashion of Mr. Speaker on a private bill;-those who are for the cow-boys will say, Aye;-those who are for Joe Smith will say, No. The Ayes have it.

The overpowering force of tradition to interpret, if not to supersede the written word, is illustrated with great unction by the milk-white Hind; the transmission from Father to Son of apostolic doctrine, and the implicit reliance of after ages on the strength of that transmission, is made by Dryden the pillar and the ground of faith.

It would take us out of our way to appeal to Palæphatus, who seeks to resolve the magnified and monstrous myths of the Greeks into an historical base, and perhaps the innumerable deceptions of which the Cock-lane ghost is an example, would be more suited to our purpose. But even could we admit that the tradition of patent facts, such as the assassination of Julius Cæsar, or the existence of the pyramids, could survive the waste of time and be received with the rational credit due to historic facts, it may well be inquired how far this confidence is due to doctrines always debateable from their mysterious nature, and still further surrounded with an impenetrable mist by the interested motives of those through whom they were transmitted. If an historical fact must be received with caution, which is only traditional, and finds no place in authentic annals, what shall we say of a metaphysical dogma which has furnished the theme of the controversy of ages? And more especially what must we conclude when we find it fettered through the compulsory ignorance of generations, only relieved by the dry scholasticism of a priesthood always interested, and too frequently unprincipled and base? Is the authority of such a tradition on such subjects to be extolled above the rational and reverent examination of the Christian world?

We should not have thought it necessary to make these remarks upon poems which Dr. Johnson declared, that even in his day, and with all the merits he ascribed to them, were only perused as a task, had not the essential part of this controversy been revived in our own days; but the rational piety of the age has been again assailed by the follies of sacramental efficacy, and the doctrine of the real presence. Prelates and priests, and the sine nomine turba of curates are swelling the retrogressive crowd, who, in most instances, we fear, from the lust of spiritual despotism, are veering towards the faith and practice of the Church of Rome. Of this secession Dryden's sagacity was prophetic. He hits the blots in the constitution of the Anglican Church with an unerring lance. He perfectly understood the compromise between Romanism and Protestantism designed in the Prayer Book of the Church of England. Hence in such passages as the following, the Hind, as the Church of Rome, takes a fatal advantage of the Panther, which represents the Church of England.

The Panther smiled at this. And when,' said she,
'Were those first Councils disallowed by me?
Or where did I at sure Tradition strike,

Provided still it were Apostolic ?'

'Friend,' said the Hind, you quit your former ground,
Where all your faith you did on Scripture found;

Now, 'tis Tradition joined with Holy Writ;

But thus your memory betrays your wit.'

*

*

'But you, who Fathers and Traditions take,
And garble some, and some you quite forsake,
Pretending church authority to fix,
And yet some grains of private spirit mix,
Are like a mule made up of different seed,
And that's the reason why you never breed;
At least not propagate your kind abroad,
For home dissenters are by statutes awed,
And yet they grow upon you every day.'

And again,

'Why all these wars to win the Book, if we
Must not interpret for ourselves, but she?
Either be wholly slaves, or wholly free.'

Dryden could not have written more appositely on the anomalous condition of the Anglican Church if he had sat in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and heard, as we did, from the lips of the late Lord Langdale, the decision of that tribunal on the action between Mr. Gorham and the Bishop of Exeter. Despising that rock-founded right of private judgment to which the Saviour himself did homage, both churches rest on