charity would become our author better than his boasts for this imaginary victory, or his reflection upon God's anointed; but it is the less to be admired that he is such a stranger to that spirit, because, among all the volumes of divinity written by the Protestants, there is not one original treatise, at least that I have seen or heard of, which has handled distinctly, and by itself, that Christian virtue of humility.

*

hold's psalms, which begins with the passage referred to in the

text:

Preserve us, Lord, by thy dear word;
From Turk and Pope defend us, Lord.

The witty Bishop Corbet thus addresses the ghost of Robert Wisdom:

Thou, once a body, now but aire,
Arch-botcher of a psalme or prayer,
From Carfax come;

And patch me up a zealous lay,
With an old ever and for aye,
Or all and some.

Or such a spirit lend mee,

As may a hymne down send mee,
To purge my braine.

So, Robert, look behind thee,

Least Turk or Pope do find thee,

And goe to bed againe.

* This assertion Stillingfleet denied. See the conclusion of his Answer to the Defence, where he affirms "such a book had been lately published in London." To this Dryden replied, that “the magnified piece of Duncombe on this subject, which his opponent must have meant, was stolen, or translated, without acknowledgment, from the Spanish of Rodriguez;" meaning, probably, the Jesuit Alonso Rodriguez, who wrote "Exercio de perfecion y Virtudes Christianas, Sevilla, 1609." But while Dryden claimed for the Catholic church the merit of this work, he seems to have mistaken the name of the translator; for in the preface to the "Town and Country Mouse," Prior, or Montague, upbraid him with having confounded Allen with Duncombe; names which did not so much as rhyme. In a list of books subjoined to "The Practice of a Holy Life, by Thomas Allen, rector of Kettering, in Northamptonshire," I find ❝ The Virtue of Humility, recommended to be printed by the late Reverend and Learned Dr Henry Hammond," which may be the book alluded to by Stillingfleet. See Vol. X. pages 114. 249.

AN

ANSWER

TO THE

DEFENCE OF THE THIRD PAPER.

I HAVE now done as to matter of reason and argument: the third paper chiefly relates to matter of fact; which, if I were mistaken in, even the brisk defender of it doth me that right to say, the bishop of Winchester did mislead me: For "the whole body of my answer," he saith, "is in effect a transcript from the bishop's preface; that I purloin his arguments without altering sometime so much as the property of his words; that I have quoted him five times only in the margin, and ought to have quoted him in almost every leaf of my pamphlet; in short, if the master had not eaten, the man (saving reverence) could not have vomited." This is a taste of

+ Hitherto Stillingfleet had been encountering the person who defended the two papers which were found in the king's strong box, with which part of the controversy Dryden had nothing to do.

the decency and cleanliness of his style, especially in writing for princes and great ladies, who are not accustomed to such a sort of courtship to others, in their presence; but, as coarse as the compliment is, it clears me from being the author of any mistakes, and lays the blame on the bishop, who is not able to answer for himself: yet, as if I had been the sole contriver and inventor of all, he bestows those civil and obliging epithets upon me, of " disingenuous, foul-mouthed, and shuffling;" one of "a virulent genius, of spiteful diligence, and irreverence to the royal family, of subtle calumny and sly aspersion ;" and he adds to these ornaments of speech, "that I have a cloven foot, and my name is Legion;" and that my answer is an "infamous libel, a scurrilous saucy pamphlet." Is this, indeed, the spirit of a new convert? Is this the meekness and temper you intend to gain proselytes by, and to convert the nation? He tells us in the beginning, that "truth has a language peculiar to itself:" I desire to be informed, whether these be any of the characters of it, and how the language of reproach and evil speaking may be distinguished from it? But zeal in a new convert is a terrible thing; for it not only burns, but rages like the eruptions of Mount Ætna: it fills the air with noise and smoke, and throws out such a torrent of liquid fire, that there is no standing before it. The answerer alone was too mean a sacrifice for such a Hector in controversy all that standeth in his way must fall at his feet. He calls me Legion, that he may be sure to have number enough to overcome. But he is a great proficient indeed, if he be such an exorcist

Defence, p. 250.

to cast out a whole legion already. But he hopes it may be done "without fasting and prayer."

If the people continue stedfast to their religion, they are the rabble, and the only friends I can perceive he allows us. "My good friends the rabble," in one place, and in another, "our author knows he has all the common people of his side." What! nothing of honour, or dignity, or wit, or sense, or learning, left of our side? Not so much as a poet, unless it be Robin Wisdom. I pray, sir, when was it that all our friends degenerated into the rabble? Do you think that heresy, as you call it, doth ipse facto degrade all mankind, and turn all orders of men, even the House of Lords itself, to a mere rabble? If all the common people be of our side, we have no reason to be troubled at it. But there is another thing of our side which you like worse, and that is common sense, which is more useful to the world than school divinity. But methinks he should not be angry with the common people, when he takes such pains to prove, "that the kingdom of heaven is not only for the wise and learned,"* and that "our Saviour's disciples were but poor fishermen; and we read but of one of his apostles who was bred up at the feet of Gamaliel, and that poor people have souls to save, as precious in the sight of God as the grim logicians." Would not any one take this for an apology for the common people, rather than for the Duchess of York, whose wit and understanding put her far beyond the need of such a mean defence? Could she be vindicated in no other manner than by putting her into the rank of the persons of the meanest capacities? But this is another part of the decency of this defence.

*Defence, p. 219.

He had several pretty sayings, as he thought, upon this subject; and therefore out they come, without regarding the reflection implied in them on a person of her capacity, as well as dignity. And so he goes on, in his plea for the ignorant, i. e. for the common people, as I am resolved to understand it. "Must they be damned unless they can make a regular approach to heaven in mood and figure? Is there no entering there without a syllogism? or ergoteering it with a nego, concedo, et distinguo?” * This may pass for wit and eloquence among those I think he pleads for; and so I am content to let it go, for the sake of my friends, the common people. But this is somewhat an unusual way of defending, to plead for those he professes to despise, and in such a manner as to reproach the person he undertakes to defend.

From the common people we come to churchmen, to see how he uses them. And he hath soon found out a faction among them, whom he charges with "juggling designs;" + but romantic heroes must be allowed to make armies of a field of thistles, and to encounter wind-mills for giants. He would fain be the instrument to divide our clergy, and to fill them with suspicions of one another; and to this end he talks of men of a latitudinarian stamp For it goes a great way towards the making divisions, to be able to fasten a name of distinction among brethren,-this being to create jealousies of each other. But there is nothing should make them more careful to avoid such names of distinction, than to observe how ready their common enemies are to make use of them, to create animosities by them; which hath made this worthy gentle

*Defence, p. 217.

↑ Ibid. p. 210.