SECT. 14. Of Holy Scripture, the Christian Ministry, and Church Membership.

For Shakspeare's own estimation of Holy Scripture, we have no occasion to look beyond the evidence contained in every page of the present volume. To him, I doubt not, it was what it is to every faithful reader- the Word of God unto Salvation.' His habitual regard for its authority may be traced in language such as that which he has put into the mouth of Iago:

Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of Holy Writ.

Othello, Act iii. Sc. 3.

At the same time, the age in which he lived would not suffer him to be ignorant how liable men are, from various causes, to pervert God's Word, and give to it a meaning which it was never meant to convey.

In religion,

What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve * it with a text
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament ?

Merchant of Venice, Act iii. Sc. 2.

And again, his own study of the Bible had discovered to him how much judgment and caution are required in reconciling and adjusting texts which, though susceptible of perfect harmony, to a hasty

* Justify it.

and superficial reader may appear discordant, or even contradictory. When King Richard II. is confined in the dungeon of Pomfret Castle, he amuses himself by comparing his prison to the world, and he imagines his own thoughts to form the population, which is necessary to give verisimilitude to the comparison :

And these same thoughts [are, he says,]

In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort-
As thoughts of things divine--are intermixed
With scruples, and do set the THE WORD itself
Against THE WORD.—

As thus-Come, little ones,* and then again—
It is as hard to come, as for a camel

To thread the postern of a needle's eye.†

K. Richard II. Act iv. Sc. 5.

The three last lines are omitted by Mr. Bowdler. Surely they savour of no irreverence; and, when taken with the context, they point not unprofitably to difficulties and dangers which every reader of the Scriptures must expect to encounter, and which every well-disposed and well-instructed reader will be enabled to overcome.

And as no intentional irreverence towards Holy Scripture, often as he quotes or refers to it, is to be found in our poet's works, so neither does he ever allow himself to speak of the ministers of religion, as other play-writers have done, with disrespect,

* See Matt. xi. 28.

+ See Matt. xix. 24.

still less with derision. That he entertained indeed a just sense of the dignity and responsibility of their sacred office, and of the mischiefs that must ensue whenever it is disgraced by insufficiency, or perverted by unfaithfulness; that he regarded them as ambassadors for Christ, and as intercessors, through Him, in behalf of man, we need no further proof than the speech of Prince John of Lancaster, in the Second Part of King Henry IV. He is addressing Scroop, Archbishop of York, who had joined the Earl of Northumberland's party. against King Henry, the Prince's father, in the Forest of Gualtree :

My Lord of York, it better showed with you,
When * that your flock, assembled by the bell,
Encircled you to hear with reverence
Your exposition on the holy text,

Than now to see you here an iron man,†
Cheering a rout of rebels with your drum,
Turning the word to sword, and life to death.
That man that sits within a monarch's heart,
And ripens in the sunshine of his favour,
Would he abuse the countenance of the king,
Alack, what mischiefs might he set abroach,
In shadow of such greatness! With you, lord bishop,
It is even so. Who hath not heard it spoken,
How deep you were within the BOOKS OF GOD?
To us, the speaker in His parliament;

To us, the imagined voice of GOD HIMSELF;
The very opener and intelligencer

Between the grace, the sanctities of Heaven,

*

See above, Pt. I. ch. i. p. 22.

† i. e. clad in armour.

And our dull workings.*

O! who shall believe,

But you misuse the reverence of your place;
Employ the countenance and grace of Heaven,
As a false favourite doth his prince's name,
In deeds dishonourable? You have taken up,t
Under the counterfeited zeal of God,

The subjects of His substitute, my father;

And both against the peace of Heaven and him,
Have here upswarmed them.

Act iv. Sc. 2.

After reading this speech, it is sad to think that the same Prince John, in the next scene, would seem to father upon God his own treachery towards the rebels, when he says:

Heaven, and not we, hath safely fought to-day.

So prone are we all to make religion the cloak, or even the minister of sin!

But our poet, however well disposed towards the clergy, does not fail to preach out of his own pulpit, that if they would retain the respect to which they are entitled by their office, they must themselves give good heed to the instruction which they deliver to others. Thus, King Henry VI. rebukes his great-uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester :

Fye, uncle Beaufort! I have heard you preach,
That malice was a great and grievous sin :
And will not you maintain the thing you teach,
But prove a chief offender in the same?

K. Henry VI. 1st Part, Act iii. Sc. 1.

Or, as S. Paul expresses it, Thou which teachest

i. e. Labours of thought.'-Steevens.

+ Levied.

another, teachest thou not thyself?' Rom. ii. 21. Thus too the amiable Ophelia, when she had listened to the good advice of her brother Laertes, assures him :

I shall the effect of this good lesson* keep,

As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own read.†

Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 3.

At the same time, our poet is not unreasonable. He knew that the duty of the clergy requires them to teach, and that charitable allowance is to be made for them, if, not in wilfulness or in hypocrisy, but from the imperfection incident to our common nature, they fall short, in practice, of their own lessons:

If to do were as easy as to know what to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 2. An observation which must find an echo in every clergyman's breast.

* It was a saying of the pious Bp. Wilson, that the only true proof of a good sermon is its making people better. Shakspeare has anticipated the remark, in substance, when he writes, in the Merchant of Venice:

'Portia. Good sentences, and well pronounced!
Nerissa. They would be better, if well followed.'

Act i. Sc. 2.

† 'Heeds not his own lessons.'-Pope. Read-counsel.