Quotes from book
Religio Laici

Name: Religio Laici
Author: John Dryden

John Dryden

Religio Laici, Or A Layman's Faith is a poem by John Dryden, published as a premise to his subsequent The Hind and the Panther , a final outcome of his conversion to Roman Catholicism.The poet argues for the credibility of the Christian religion and against Deism, and for the Anglican Church against that of Rome.

“Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers
Is reason to the soul; and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky
Not light us here, so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day:
And as those nightly tapers disappear
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere,
So pale grows reason at religion's sight,
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.”

John Dryden book Religio Laici

Religio Laici (1682).

“A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.”

John Dryden book Religio Laici

Religio Laici (1682), Preface.

“If others in the same Glass better see
'Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me:
For my Salvation must its Doom receive
Not from what others, but what I believe.”

John Dryden book Religio Laici

Religio Laici (1682).
Context: More Safe, and much more modest 'tis, to say
God wou'd not leave Mankind without a way:
And that the Scriptures, though not every where
Free from Corruption, or intire, or clear,
Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, intire,
In all things which our needfull Faith require.
If others in the same Glass better see
'Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me:
For my Salvation must its Doom receive
Not from what others, but what I believe.