after that trust my imperfect sense,
Which calls in question his omnipotence?"

From these lines it may be safely inferred, that Dryden's sincere
acquiescence in the more abstruse points of Christianity did not long
precede his adoption of the Roman faith. In some preceding verses it
appears, how eagerly he received the conviction of the Church's
infallibility as affording that guide, the want of whom he had in some
degree lamented in the "_Religio Laici_:"

"What weight of ancient witness can prevail,
If private reason hold the public scale?
But, gracious God, how well dost thou provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!
Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.
O teach me to believe thee, thus concealed,
And search no farther than thyself revealed;
But her alone for my director take,
Whom thou hast promised never to forsake!"

We find, therefore, that Dryden's conversion was not of that sordid kind
which is the consequence of a strong temporal interest; for he had
expressed intelligibly the imagined _desiderata_ which the Church of
Rome alone pretends to supply, long before that temporal interest had an
existence. Neither have we to reproach him, that, grounded and rooted in
a pure Protestant creed, he was foolish enough to abandon it for the
more corrupted doctrines of Rome. He did not unloose from the secure
haven to moor in the perilous road; but, being tossed on the billows of
uncertainty, he dropped his anchor in the first moorings to which the
winds, waves, and perhaps an artful pilot, chanced to convey his bark.
We may indeed regret, that, having to choose between two religions, he
should have adopted that which our education, reason, and even
prepossessions, combine to point out as foully corrupted from the
primitive simplicity of the Christian Church. But neither the Protestant
Christian, nor the sceptic philosopher, can claim a right to despise the
sophistry which bewildered the judgment of Chillingworth, or the toils
which enveloped the active and suspicious minds of Bayle and of Gibbon.
The latter, in his account of his own conversion to the Catholic faith,
fixes upon the very arguments pleaded by Dryden, as those which appeared
to him irresistible. The early traditions of the Church, the express
words of the text, are referred to by both as the grounds of their
conversion; and the works of Bossuet, so frequently referred to by th