The tone of Dryden's apology
was, to say the least, highly injudicious, and adapted to irritate the
feelings of the clergy of the established church, already sufficiently
exasperated to see the sacrifices which they had made to the royal cause
utterly forgotten, the moment that they paused in the extremity of their
devotion towards the monarch. The name of "Legion," which the apologist
bestows on his adversaries, intimates the committee of the clergy by
whom the Protestant cause was then defended; and the tone of his
arguments is harsh, contemptuous, and insulting. A raker up of the ashes
of princes, an hypocrite, a juggler, a latitudinarian, are the best
terms which he affords the advocate of the Church of England, in defence
of which he had so lately been himself a distinguished champion.
Stillingfleet returned to the charge; and when he came to the part of
the Defence written by Dryden, he did not spare the personal invective,
to which the acrimonious style of the poet-laureate had indeed given an
opening, "Zeal," says Stillingfleet, "in a new convert, is a terrible
thing, for it not only burns, but rages like the eruptions of Mount
Etna; it fills the air with noise and smoke, and throws out such a
torrent of living fire, that there is no standing before it." In another
passage, Stillingfleet talks of the "temptation of changing religion for
bread;" in another, our author's words, that
"Priests of all religions are the same," [10]
are quoted to infer, that he who has no religion may declare for any.
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