The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 10Dryden, John
Religion
The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 10
Dryden, John
English literature
were delivered to the saints without mixtures of error, which destroy
sanctity; I say, either shew me, from plain texts of scripture, that
Christ's church was not to be my infallible guide; or shew me such a
church of Christ as these promises require, distinct from that of the
Roman, and from which she has either separated, or been cut off."
Note X.
_Industrious of the needle and the chart,
They run full sail to their Japonian mart;
Preventing fear, and prodigal of fame,
Sell all of Christian to the very name._--P. 179.
The author has, a little above, used an argument, much to the honour
of the Catholic church--her unceasing diligence in labouring for the
conversion of the heathen; a task, in which her missionaries have
laboured with unwearied assiduity, encountering fatigue, danger, and
martyrdom itself, in winning souls to the faith. It has been justly
objected, that the spiritual instruction of their converts is but
slight and superficial; yet still their missionary zeal forms a strong
contrast to the indifference of the reformed churches in this duty.
Nothing of the kind has ever been attempted on a great or national
scale by the church of England, which gives Catholics room to upbraid
her clergy with their unambitious sloth in declining the dignity of
becoming bishops _in partibus infidelium_. The poet goes on to state
the scandalous materials with which it has been the universal custom
of Britain to supply the population of her colonies; the very dregs
and outcasts of humanity being the only recruits whom she destines to
establish the future marts for her commodities. The success of such
missionaries among the savage tribes, who have the misfortune to be
placed in their vicinity, may be easily guessed:
Deliberate and undeceived,
The wild men's vices they received,
And gave them back their own. _Wordsworth._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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