The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 17Dryden, John
General
The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 17
Dryden, John
English literature
I think I have amplified nothing in relation either to this pious lady,
or her discourse: I am sure I need not. And now let any unbiassed and
indifferent reader compare the spirit of the answerer with hers. Does
there not manifestly appear in him a quite different character? Need the
reader be informed, that he is disingenuous, foul-mouthed, and shuffling;
and that, not being able to answer plain matter of fact, he endeavours to
evade it by suppositions, circumstances, and conjectures; like a cunning
barreter of law, who is to manage a single cause, the dishonesty of which
he cannot otherwise support than by defaming his adversary? Her only
business is, to satisfy her friends of the inward workings of her soul,
in order to her conversion, and by what methods she quitted the religion
in which she was educated. He, on the contrary, is not satisfied, unless
he question the integrity of her proceedings, and the truth of her
plain relations, even so far as to blast, what in him lies, her blessed
memory, with the imputation of forgery and deceit; as if she had given
a false account, not only of the passages in her soul, and the agonies
of a troubled conscience, only known to God and to herself, but also of
the discourses which she had with others concerning those disquiets.
Everywhere the lie is to be cast upon her, either directly, in the words
of the bishop of Winchester, which he quotes; or indirectly, in his own,
in which his spiteful diligence is most remarkable.
In his answer to the two former papers, there seems to have been some
restraint upon the virulence of his genius, though even there he has
manifestly past the bounds of decency and respect; but so soon as he
had got loose from disputing with crowned heads, he shews himself in
his pure naturals, and is as busy in raking up the ashes of their next
relations, as if they were no more of kin to the crown than the new
church of England is to the old reformation of their great-grandfathers.
But God forbid that I should think the whole episcopal clergy of this
nation to be of his latitudinarian stamp; many of them, as learned as
himself, are much more moderate; and such, I am confident, will be as far
from abetting his irreverence to the royal family, as they are from the
juggling designs of his faction to draw in the nonconformists to their
party, by assuring them they shall not be prosecuted (as indeed, upon
their principles, they cannot be by them); but, in the mean time, this
is to wrest the favour out of the king’s hands, and take the bestowing
it into their own, and to re-assume to themselves that headship of the
English church which their ancestors gave away to king Henry VIII. And
now let any loyal subject but consider, whether this new way of their
proceeding does not rather tend to bring the church of England into the
fanatics, than the fanatics into the church of England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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