Borgia and a Cataline" were as
much a part of the divine order as a plague or an earthquake, and that
self-love and lust were essential to social welfare.

Pope's own religious position is characteristic and easily definable. If
it is not quite defensible on the strictest principles of plain
speaking, it is also certain that we could not condemn him without
condemning many of the best and most catholic-spirited of men. The
dogmatic system in which he had presumably been educated had softened
under the influence of the cultivated thought of the day. Pope, as the
member of a persecuted sect, had learnt to share that righteous hatred
of bigotry which is the honourable characteristic of his best
contemporaries. He considered the persecuting spirit of his own church
to be its worst fault.[23] In the early Essay on Criticism he offended
some of his own sect by a vigorous denunciation of the doctrine which
promotes persecution by limiting salvation to a particular creed. His
charitable conviction that a divine element is to be found in all
creeds, from that of the "poor Indian" upwards, animates the highest
passages in his works. But though he sympathizes with a generous
toleration, and the specific dogmas of his creed sat very loosely on his
mind, he did not consider that an open secession was necessary or even
honourable. He called himself a true Catholic, though rather as
respectfully sympathizing with the spirit of Fenelon than as holding to
any dogmatic system. The most dignified letter that he ever wrote was in
answer to a suggestion from Atterbury (1717), that he might change his
religion upon the death of his father. Pope replies that his worldly
interests would be promoted by such a step; and, in fact, it cannot be
doubted that Pope might have had a share in the good things then
obtainable by successful writers, if he had qualified by taking the
oaths. But he adds, that such a change would hurt his mother's feelings,
and that he was more certain of his duty to promote her happiness than
of any speculative tenet whatever. He was sure that he could mean as
well in the religion he now professed as in any other; and that being
so, he thought that a change even to an equally good religion could not
be justified. A similar statement appears in a letter to Swift, in 1729.
"I am of the religion of Erasmus, a Catholic. So I live, so shall I die,
and hope one day to meet you, Bishop Atterbury, the younger Craggs, Dr.
Garth, De