"RELIGIO LAIC."

SCOTT said of Dryden's " Religio Laid" that it was "one of the most admirable poems in the language," and Professor Saintsbury calls it "our best English didactic poem." Dryden himself spoke of it as a "treatise," and such indeed it is,—a treatise in verse, but in such verse as only a great poet could have written. The poem is an apology for that reasonable and comprehensive form of the Christian faith at which the English people had lately arrived by means of conipromise. The fact that Dryden was not a man of devout life, and that he finally became a member of the Roman Com- munion, does not, we think, detract from the apologetic value —as, of course, it has no bearing upon the literary value—of the poem. Whether it was a true expression of the intel- lectual position of the author when he wrote it, as Professor Saintsbury ably maintains, or whether, as some of the evidence would seem to prove, it was no more than a sympathetic statement, drawn up from the outside, of the intellectual position of many of the poet's most thoughtful contemporaries, it remains a splendid tribute to the doctrinal elasticity of the Reformed Church of England.

Dryden---or the layman in whose position the poet Chooses to imagine himself—cannot content himself with the cold Deism- which prevailed in his day among 'literary men. A religion based entirely upon reason repels him. - "'Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars

To lonely, weary, 'wandering travellers, - • Is Reason to the -soul,"

he Complains. The religious speculations of ancient philoso- phers bring him no peace. Their— "Anxious thoughts in endless circles roll, Without a centre where to fix the soul."

Neither Stoic nor Epicurean gives him any satisfaction :—

" The wiser madmen did for Virtue toil,

A thorny, or at best a barren soil : In Pleasure some their glutton souls would steep. But found their line too short, the well too deep."

Certain modern rationalists hold, Ile admits, a more service- able creed, believing in God and in a future state,—" The last appeal from fortune and from fate." Dryden doubts, how- ever, whether, for all their boasting, they do really base their hopes upon reason. They have borrowed their convictions, he is inclined to think, from the Christianity they despise. "'Tis .revelation what thou think'st discourse," he argues :—

. "Cal* thou by reason more of Godhead know

Than Plutarch, Seneca, or Cicero?" •

It is pride, be believes, which prevents their acknowledging that the true source of their religion lies outside the province of reason :— " Thus man by his own strength to heaven would soar : And would not be obliged to God for more?'

But there is a craving in the human heart which can never be appeased until it be constrained to confess itself "obliged to God." In this mood—and it is the mood of every man some- times—Dryden turns to the Christian Scriptures, wherein he

finds this desire expressed and satisfied. "Christian faith and virtues" alone answer to "the great ends of human kind." The New Testament record he is able to accept "in gross." What motive had the sacred Writers in Misleading their readers? Certainly no worldly advantage accrued to them :— " Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice, Starving their gain, and martyrdom their price."

On their records the Church of England takes her stand and the poet takes his within her walls. She makes no exact definition of Scriptural inspiration; nor does he. The attraction of a aurch which claims to prove and to expound every syllable of the Bible Dryden admits; but at this period of his life his judgment had not yet been seduced by Rome, though already we hear a rueful note in his declaration of independence :—

"Such an omniscient Church we wish indeed ;

'Twere worth both Testaments, and cast in the Creed." But after this momentary hesitation he turns again to his defence of the English Church :— "More safe, and much more modest 'tis, to say God would not leave mankind without a way : And that the Scriptures, though not everywhere Free from corruption, or entire, or clear, Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, entire, In all things which our needful faith require."

The Church of God be still believes is "the body of all faith. ful people," though the Romans- " Would assume, with woncrrous art,

Themselves to be the whole, who are but part."

Even admitting the claim of the older Church to be the custodian of the Scriptures, Dryden cannot see that that gives her an exclusive right to interpret them. "Would they alone," he asks, "Who brought the present, claim it for their

own?" The Bible, he declares, is for every man, "a common largess" offered to all :— "The welcome news is in the letter found; The carrier's not commissioned to expound."

To the man who pins his faith to the New Testament, and luta the sanction of his Church for so doing, many terrible difficulties which beset the Romanist fade away. As to the

fate of the heathen, Dryden's Anglican layman is content to agree with St. Paul. The belief of the great Apostle, the father of Protestantism, was

" That if the Gentiles, whom no law inspired, By nature did what was by law required ; They, who the written rule had never known, Were to themselves both rule and law alone : ' To nature's plain indictment they shall plead ; And by their conscience be condemned or freed."

If this be true, then surely- " Those who followed Reason's dictates right, Lived up, and lifted high their natural light, With Socrates may see their Maker's face, While thousand rubric-martyrs want a place."

With St. Paul to defend him, the Athanasian Creed has no terrors for our author :— " Nor does it balk my charity, to find The Egyptian Bishop of another mind."

No doubt the exercise of private judgment has its dangers. Dryden is too able a disputant not to allow his opponent to hit hard :—

" We hold, and say we prove from Scripture plain, That Christ is Gon ; the bold Soeinian

From the same Scripture urges he's but man."

How is such an "important suit" to be settled P- . "Both parts talk loudly, but the rule is mute."

The common-sense English Churchman waives the theological point. Theology is for theologians. The religion of Christ is for the common people, and for them the discussions of the Council of Nicaea are incomprehensible. "Shall I speak

plain," he says, "and in a nation free Assume an honest

layman's liberty ?"— " I think, (according to my little skill, To my own mother-church submitting still) That many have been saved, and many may, Who never heard this question brought in play. The unlettered Christian, who believes in gross, Plods on to Heaven, and ne'er is at a loss."

The poem ends with an exhortation to charity, charity

not on the part of the dogmatist but of the latitudinarian.

He says :—

" After hearing what our Church can say,

If still our reason runs another way, That private reason 'tie more just to curb, Than by disputes the public peace disturb. For points obscure are of small use to learn :

But common quiet is mankind's concern."

No one can deny that all this is excellent common-sense,

an admirable defence of a working compromise, a vivid picture of the religious attitude of the ordinary English Churchman as it was in Dry den's time, and as it still is. By the laity the original conception of the Reformed Church of England has never been forgotten. Cliques among the clergy surge about between Rome and Geneva, defying one another with quotations and counter-quotations from Articles and rubrics in defence of their opposite positions. For them the compromise must inevitably become from time to time a cause of contention ; but for the laity—never vitally interested in ecclesiastical disputes—it is still a source of charity. Comprehension is only possible by means of compromise, and it is by virtue of her original compromise alone that our Church still remains, not a group of Ritualistic zealots, nor of evangelical dogmatists, nor of Christian philosophers, but the Church of England. Sit 'ut est ant non sit.