Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

John Dryden (1631–1700)

Extracts from The Hind and the Panther: The Unity of the Catholic Church

[From Part II.]

‘ONE in herself, not rent by schism, but sound,

Entire, one solid shining diamond,

Not sparkles shattered into sects like you:

One is the Church, and must be to be true,

One central principle of unity;

As undivided, so from errors free;

As one in faith, so one in sanctity.

Thus she, and none but she, the insulting rage

Of heretics opposed from age to age;

Still when the giant-brood invades her throne,

She stoops from heaven and meets them half way down,

And with paternal thunder vindicates her crown.

But like Egyptian sorcerers you stand,

And vainly lift aloft your magic wand

To sweep away the swarms of vermin from the land.

You could like them, with like infernal force,

Produce the plague, but not arrest the course.

But when the boils and botches with disgrace

And public scandal sat upon the face,

Themselves attacked, the Magi strove no more,

They saw God’s finger, and their fate deplore;

Themselves they could not cure of the dishonest sore.

‘Thus one, thus pure, behold her largely spread,

Like the fair ocean from her mother-bed;

From east to west triumphantly she rides,

All shores are watered by her wealthy tides.

The gospel-sound, diffused from pole to pole,

Where winds can carry and where waves can roll,

The self-same doctrine of the sacred page

Conveyed to every clime, in every age.