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fence upon a proteftant as upon a popifi bigot. For example, in the article of truth, it is just as credible, that Sir Chriftopher Milton adhered to the party of Charles I. in obedience to the laws of his country, as that his brother John revolted from the piety and faith of his father.

On another hand, that Dr. Johnfon was as much fcandalized at the impiety of Milton's political fentiments, as Fa ther Anthony was at his heretical pravity, cannot be doubted. Perhaps too the Doctor had his fuperiors to please, as well as the prieft; and they ought to do him the justice to acknowledge, that he hath done his duty in characterizing Milton, with a petulance and malignity

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that would not have misbecome the fu

perftitious bigotry of a monk in a cloys

ter.

The Doctor, in fpeculating upon Dryden's perverfion to popery, and (as one of the Reviewers of his prefaces exprefles it)"attempting ingeniously to extenu"ate it," concludes that, Enquiries into the heart are not for man.

No truly, not when Dryden's apoftacy is to be extenuated; but when poor Milton's fins are to be ingeniously aggravated, no Spanish Inquifitor more fharp-fighted to difcern the devil playing his pranks in the heart of the poor culprit, or more ready to conduct him to an auto de fe.

In Dryden's cafe, the prefumption is, that "a comprehenfive is likewise an "elevated

"elevated foul, and that whoever is wife, " is likewife honeft." But if it is natu

ral to hope this, why not hope it of Milton as well as of Dryden? Where is the competent impartial judge who will admit, that Milton's foul was lefs comprehenfive or lefs elevated than the foul of Dryden ?

But what occafion for all this grimace in accounting for Dryden's tranfition from what he did or did not profefs to the church of Rome? Dr. Johnson ought to have been fatisfied with Dry-den's own account in his tale of the Hind and the Panther; the rather, as he there feems to have verified by experience Dr. Johnson's maxim, that " he that is of no "church can have no religion." He

frankly

frankly confeffes, that having no steady principle of religion in his youth, or even in his maturer years, he finally fet up his reft in the church of Rome: and indeed if the effentials of religion confift in the trappings of a church, he could not have made a better choice*.

Dryden was reprehenfible even to infamy for his own vices, and the licentious encouragement he gave in his writings to those of others. But he wrote an antirepublican poem called Abfalom and Achitophel; and Dr. Johnfon, a man of high pretenfions to moral character, calls

* Bp. Burnet, fpeaking of Dryden's converfon, fays, If his grace and his wit improve "both proportionably, we fhall hardly find that "he hath gained much by the change he has "made, from having no religion to chufe one of "the worst." Refly to Mr. Varillas, p. 139.

him a wife and an honeft man.

Milton was a man of the chastest manners, both in his converfation and his writings. But he wrote Iconoclaftes, and in the fame Dr. Johnson's esteem was both a knave and a fool.

The church of Rome fubftitutes orthodoxy for every virtue under heaven. And loyalty among the high Royalists canonizes every rafcal and profligate with a full and plenary abfolution. These are, it is true, among the vileft and meanest partialities of the defpotic faction; and Dr. Johnfon, confcious of his merit in other departments, should blush, and be humbled, to be found in the lift of fuch miferables.

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