party of the seventeenth age, on the one hand, and the Broad and Evangelical parties of the nineteenth, on the other, as existing within the Established Church, may be said to be cross divisions. The distinctive principles of the two latter parties were not clearly established in the age of the Stuarts; while the Evangelical class of the present day represent not only a considerable section of the old Low Church, but also the Presbyterian clergy in a greater degree than the vigorous interpretation of the Act of Uniformity in the seventeenth century permitted. The Low party of the earlier period, who styled themselves Moderate Divines,' were called by their successors Latitudinarians;' and this term now applies only to a section, though no doubt a large section, of their representatives. The leaders of the High Church party, during the reign of James the Second, were Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Compton, Bishop of London; the leaders of the Low party were then Tillotson, Stillingfleet, and Burnet.

Stillingfleet, Dean of St. Pauls, had already distinguished himself by his Irenicum,' written against the doctrine of Apostolical Succession, and the theory of the divine institution of the hierarchical order. He now assailed the two papers on the conversion of Anne Hyde, first Duchess of York, which James had discovered in the strong-box of Charles the Second, and had foolishly given to the world. Dryden replied to him, and Stillingfleet rejoined. Burnet prudently intrenched himself in Holland before he threw down the gauntlet to the Court. James proceeded against him on a charge of high treason, and demanded his extradition of the government of the States. The Dutch Government refused compliance with the demand, on the ostensible ground of his naturalisation which had taken place in anticipation of his marriage with a subject of the Republic. Burnet now carried on with impunity his controversy with James. There is no doubt that the English Government formed a scheme for his seizure, and it was even said that they had offered a reward of three thousand pounds for his assassination. The services which he frendered to William were afterwards rewarded by the See of Salisbury. The ridicule which Pope throws on his assumption of political importance in his capacity, both as bishop and pamphleteer, is probably unfounded; and Dryden would scarcely have concentrated his vituperative powers on a controversialist of secondary influence. He is described in the Hind and Panther,' in the character of the Buzzard, whom the Doves, or Anglican clergy, had elected for their king.

The divisions of the nation then recognised every conceivable shade of religious opinion, from the scarlet of Babylon to the

drab of the Quaker. Many of these differences undoubtedly presented a fair theme of sarcasm and invective to a party writer. The Independents, who were portrayed by Dryden under the personification of the Bear, were then fast rising into power. They lived in the Utopia of universal government, much as Neander lived in the Utopia of an universal priesthood. They rejected a centralising polity, and denied the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate in all spiritual questions. They asserted the ecclesiastical supremacy of single congregations; and, as they based this supremacy on a principle of voluntary union, they acknowledged in effect the original supremacy of each member of their community. The Presbyterians, again, atoned, in the eyes of the satirist, for their political coherence, by the absurdity of their personal costume. Their Geneva cloak, their close-cropped hair, and black skull-cap, merited Dryden's description of them under the character of the Wolf, that

'Never was so deformed a beast of grace.
But his rough crest he rears,

And pricks up his predestinating ears.'

The Anabaptists, who had sprung from the dregs of the people, were meanwhile urging the principle of a community of goods, which, if generally recognised, would certainly have afforded a most felicitous method, to a poor class of religionists, for the exercise of the virtues of a Christian self-denial! They had arisen in Germany and the Low Countries early in the sixteenth century, and are introduced by Dryden in the character of the Boar. The Free-thinkers continued to preserve the political influence they had possessed under the Long Parliament, while Martin and Harvey had been among their leaders; and there is reason to acquiesce in the opinion of Scott, that the character of the Ape was specially designed for a portrait of Sunderland, who, it can scarcely be doubted, was one of their members before his courtier-like conversion in Dryden's day.

The Quaker, meanwhile, whose religion was kindled by scintillations from the maniacal intellect of an ignorant and bewildered shoemaker, endured a suffering existence dictated by the caprice of conscience. He was thrown into pillories and prisons, alternately with madhouses, as more appropriate asylums. The later disciples of 'yearly meeting feasts' have forgotten, it is to be feared, the original orthodoxy of their sect. For the Quaker of the age of the Stuarts was known occasionally to enjoin the duty of a forty-days' consecutive fast; and Hume assures us that one of their number expired under this process of self-denial. Under a belief in their common

inspiration, it was the custom of many of their number to address the congregation simultaneously; and their ambition of Pentecost terminated in a catastrophe of Babel.

We need not recount the classes of the Sullen Enthusiasts, such as the Brownists and the Families of Love, who held their assemblies in solitary regions beneath the open sky :—

A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed

Of the true old enthusiastic breed.'

They have their representatives, in great degree, in the present generation.

The argumentative part of this great poem betrays an inconsistency of reasoning in the establishment of its fundamental positions, not justly chargeable, perhaps, on the logical perception of the author, inasmuch as it is the inevitable result of a defence of the preconceived theories of the Romish Church. The principle of infallibility, which is the bond of the political cohesion of that community, rests, according to these theories, on two distinct and antagonistic bases. The special infallibility of councils is essentially opposed to the general infallibility of tradition. But independently of this objection, which we shall presently notice, there is an anterior objection as to the elements or conditions of infallibility, wherever existing, within the Christian Church. This is the groundwork of the whole Romish doctrine, and it is a groundwork which its advocates invariably assume. The doctrine of infallibility rests, then, on the alleged assent of the Catholic or Universal Church: and the test of orthodoxy is generally held by the Romish theorists to rest in a fulfilment of the conditions, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus. But since it is notorious that neither the doctrine of infallibility, nor any other distinctive doctrine of the Romish Church, has realised these conditions of certain orthodoxy, the application of the term Catholic' or Universal,' is restricted to that which is acknowledged by this party to be the true church; and the true church, again, is as arbitrarily defined to be coextensive with that church which holds the doctrine of ecclesiastical or Romish infallibility. Now the right of excluding individual communities from a voice upon questions of doctrine, and the consequent right of their exclusion from membership in the true Church, can only satisfactorily rest upon the ground of a censure already passed, after fair and patient inquiry, by the great body of the Christian Church, in consideration of opinions on fundamental questions of the faith, held to be heretical, not only by the existing body, but by the unequivocal testimony of preceding ages of the Church. But when we inquire whether

the doctrine of infallibility, and other distinctive doctrines of the Romish Church, were recognised by all who were not fairly excluded, in this manner, at an antecedent period, from the true Church, we find the asserted exclusion of the opponents of the doctrines in question to be invariably the result of their opposition. These opponents were convened under an equal right of deliberation with the advocates of the doctrines in controversy; nor could it be shown that any one of the distinctive tenets of the Romish Communion, denied by the opponents, had possessed, at any one period, the sanction of the Universal Church. The Romanists, therefore, asserted the infallibility of their church on the authority of universal consent; and when it was shown that consent was never universal, they excluded from a right of opinion all those who might have disputed their position. But having once asserted the necessary consent of the true or Universal Church to the adjudication of doctrinal controversy, and having already acknowledged the right of their opponents to membership in the true or Universal Church, by uniting in deliberation with them in a council which they asserted to be infallible, they barred, ipso facto, their own judgment against their opponents within the council. The Romish theory, therefore, by endeavouring to prove too much, destroyed its own basis, and itself exclusively denied the authoritative decision of numerical majorities in a general council, on which it has, in practice, been the policy of the Church of Rome to rest its ascendancy.

But even granting the baseless hypothesis of an Universal Church, in the exclusive sense in which it is understood by the Roman Faith-and assuming the existence of a principle of infallibility in the Church-it is not agreed wherein that principle, as the first attribute of supremacy, resides. It has been referred to the Popes, to the Councils, and to the Popes and Councils collectively. And the settlement of this question is essential to the progress of the Romish doctrine of Church authority for it is otherwise impossible, wherever the Pope and the Council may be at issue upon matters of faith, to distinguish the infallible from the fallible judgment. The analogy drawn by Dryden between the government of the Church and that of the State, is a very fair one, if viewed as a theoretical condition of human polity. In respect of the Pope and his Council, as in respect of a Constitutional Sovereign and his Senate, he says, 'what one decrees, the other ratifies.' But if it can be shown that the Pope and the Council have been at issue on matters of faith, they can lay no claim to a common infallibility in doctrine; and the argument of Dryden, which

implies that they have not been so at issue, disregards unquestionable facts. No approximation, therefore, to the practical recognition of an infallible authority in the Church can be realised until it can be conclusively shown wherein that authority subsists.

The basis, therefore, of Dryden's argumentative structure consists of three successive and untenable assumptions. The author first assumes the right of imposing arbitrary limits on the true or Universal Church; he secondly assumes the existence of an infallible authority in the Church: and he thirdly assumes the solution of an unsolved difficulty, in reference to the quarter in which the property of infallibility may reside. On this ideal and intangible groundwork Dryden proceeds to argue the double infallibility of councils and tradition.

But these theories-respectively of synodical and traditional infallibility. - can neither coexist nor exist alone. The canons of the Church are frequently at issue, on questions of unchanging truth, with the acknowledged traditions both of past and succeeding ages. There can, therefore, be no common infallibility in law and tradition. In virtue of the same reasoning, the successive assertion and negation of identical doctrines by different councils, each exercising infallibility in the theory of the Romish Church, destroy the pretensions of the Council. And so also in respect of inconsistencies exhibited in general traditions at different periods. And such inconsistencies are notorious matters of history. It is to be observed, that Dryden here speaks of the general tradition of individuals, and not the tradition of collective assemblies:

The good old bishops took a simpler way,

Each asked but what he heard his father say,
Or how he was instructed in his youth,

And by tradition's force upheld the truth.'

Dryden was here clearly placed in an inextricable dilemma. If he had asserted simply the infallibility of Councils, the force of history would have instantly assailed and overthrown his position. If he had based his conviction of the true teaching of the Church upon oral tradition alone, his whole scheme of Christianity would have been as legendary as the Faith of Zoroaster.

On the latter theory, we should be compelled to judge of Christianity as we judge of Zoroastrianism-that is to say, in exclusion of history. The force of unassisted tradition would then reduce fact to legend; and the acknowledgment of infallibility in oral tradition would demolish the certainty of the Christian Faith, the foundation of the whole argument.