The first creed which he
examines is that of Deism; which he rejects, because the worship of one
sole deity was not known to the philosophers of antiquity, and is
therefore obviously to be ascribed to revelation. Revelation thus
proved, the puzzling doubt occurs, whether the Scripture, as contended
by Calvinists, was to be the sole rule of faith, or whether the rules
and traditions of the Church are to be admitted in explanation of the
holy text. Here Dryden does not hesitate to point out the inconveniences
ensuing from making the sacred page the subject of the dubious and
contradictory commentary of the laity at large: when
"The common rule was made the common prey,
And at the mercy of the rabble lay;
The tender page with horny fists was galled,
And he was gifted most that loudest bawled;
The spirit gave the doctoral degree,
And every member of a company
Was of his trade and of the Bible free."
This was the rule of the sectaries,--of those whose innovations seemed,
in the eyes of the Tories, to be again bursting in upon monarchy and
episcopacy with the strength of a land-flood. Dryden, therefore, at
once, and heartily, reprobates it. But the opposite extreme of admitting
the authority of the Church as omnipotent in deciding all matters of
faith, he does not give up with the same readiness. The extreme
convenience, nay almost necessity, for such authority, is admitted in
these remarkable lines:
"Such an omniscient church we _wish_ indeed;
_'Twere worth both Testaments, cast in the Creed.
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