author had bestowed serious consideration upon the important subjects of which it treats: and I have postponed the analysis of it to this place, in order that the reader may be able to form his own conjecture from what faith Dryden changed when he became a Catholic. The "_Religio Laici_" has indeed a political tendency, being written to defend the Church of England against the sectaries: it is not therefore, so much from the conclusions of the piece, as from the mode of the author's deducing these conclusions, that Dryden's real opinions may he gathered;--as we learn nothing of the bowl's bias from its having reached its mark, though something may be conjectured by observing the course which it described in attaining it. From many minute particulars, I think it almost decisive, that Dryden, when he wrote the "_Religio Laici_," was sceptical concerning revealed religion. I do not mean, that his doubts were of that fixed and permanent nature, which have at different times induced men, of whom better might have been hoped, to pronounce themselves freethinkers on principle. On the contrary, Dryden seems to have doubted with such a strong wish to believe, as, accompanied with circumstances of extrinsic influence, led him finally into the opposite extreme of credulity. His view of the doctrines of Christianity, and of its evidence, were such as could not legitimately found him in the conclusions he draws in favour of the Church of England; and accordingly, in adopting them, he evidently stretches his complaisance towards the national religion, while perhaps in his heart he was even then disposed to think there was no middle course between natural religion and the Church of Rome. The first creed which he examines is that of Deism; which he rejects, because the worship of one sole deity was not known to the philosophers of antiquity, and is therefore obviously to be ascribed to revelation. Revelation thus proved, the puzzling doubt occurs, whether the Scripture, as contended by Calvinists, was to be the sole rule of faith, or whether the rules and traditions of the Church are to be admitted in explanation of the holy text. Here Dryden does not hesitate to point out the inconveniences ensuing from making the sacred page the subject of the dubious and contradictory commentary of the laity at large: when "The common rule was made the common prey, And at the mercy of the rabble lay; The tender page with horny fists was galled, And he was gifted most that loudest bawled; The spirit gave the doctoral degree, And every member of a company Was of his trade and of the Bible free."