To this the divines of England answered, that they indeed asserted church authority, but without pretending to infallibility; and that while the church decided upon points of faith, she was to be directed and guided by the scriptures, just as the judges of a temporal tribunal are to frame their decisions, not from any innate or infallible authority of their own, but in conformity with the laws of the realm.
Behold, what heavenly rays adorn her brows,
What from his wardrobe her beloved allows,
To deck the wedding-day of his unspotted spouse!—P. [177].
In this and the following lines Dryden sets forth his adopted mother-church in all the glowing attributes of majesty and authority. The lines are extremely beautiful, and their policy is obvious, from the following passage in a pretended letter from Father Petre to Father La Chaise. The letter bears every mark indeed of forgery; but it is equally an illustration of Dryden, whether the policy contained in it was attributed by the Protestants to the Catholics as part of their scheme, or was really avowed as such by themselves. "Many English heretics resort often to our sermons; and I have often recommended to our fathers to preach now in the beginning as little as they can of the controversy, because that provokes; but to represent to them the beauty and antiquity of the Catholic religion, that they may be convinced that all that has been said and preached to them, and their own reflections concerning it, have been all scandal."—Somers' Tracts, p. 253. The unity of the Catholic church was also chiefly insisted on during the controversy:
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.