1

When Brandon announces to the Duke of Buckingham that he is arrested for high treason, and must go as a prisoner to the Tower, his reply is:

The will of Heaven

Be done in this, and all things! I obey.

King Henry VIII. Act i. Sc. 1.

To his mother, the widowed Queen Elizabeth, in her affliction for the death of her husband, King Edward IV., the Marquess of Dorset thus administers consolation, founded upon the well-known passage in the Book of Job, i. 21:—

Comfort, dear mother; God is much displeased
That you take with unthankfulness his doing;
In common worldly things 'tis called-ungrateful,
With dull unwillingness to repay a debt,
Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent;
Much more to be thus opposite with Heaven,
For* it requires the royal debt it lent you.
King Richard III. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Nor does the Christian philosophy of our poet stop here. As the Bible teaches that it is '

-or

may and ought to be- good to be afflicted,'
be-'good
Ps. cxix. 71, and that troubles are mercifully † sent
to try us for our greater benefit, or to wean us
from evil, see Job v. 17, Ps. xciv. 12, Heb. xii.
5-11; so we learn, upon the testimony of the
banished Duke, in As you like it, Act ii. Sc. 1 :

i. e. Because.

† See above, p. 116, note.

3

F

Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

And Leontes confesses, in Winter's Tale :

Affliction has a taste as sweet

As any cordial comfort.

And the wise Nestor is made to say,

Act v. Sc. 3.

In the reproof of chance

Lies the true proof of men.

Troilus and Cressida, Act i. Sc. 3.

And Antony would give us this advice:

Bid that welcome

Which comes to punish us; and we punish it,
Seeming to bear it lightly.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. Sc. 12.

Finally, it is left also to a heathen to teach the elementary lesson* that no distresses or afflictions, however many or great, should be allowed to provoke us into destruction of the life, of which, as no one (except by just authority) can lawfully deprive us, so neither can we lawfully deprive ourselves :

Gloster. You ever gentle gods, take my breath from me;
Let not my worser† spirit tempt me again
To die before you please.

King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 6.

Even in the mouth of Brutus (who eventually is represented as putting an end to his own life,‡ much as King Saul had done, and as Antony

* See above, p. 149. † See above, p. 19. See above, p. 150.

S

afterwards did), our poet has ventured to place substantially the same sentiment :

Cassius. If we do lose this battle, then is this
The very last time we shall be together;
What are you then determined to do?

Brutus. Even by the rule of that philosophy
By which I did blame Cato for the death
Which he did give himself :-I know not how,
But I do find it cowardly and vile,

For fear of what might fall, so to prevent*
The time of life :-arming myself with patience,
To stay† the providence of some high powers,
That govern us below.

Julius Cæsar, Act v. Sc. 1. ‡

In looking back upon the subjects of this and the four preceding sections, in which an outline has been sketched of the main departments of the duty of a Christian towards his neighbours, I am tempted to add, as a summary illustration of the whole, two short passages in which our poet has drawn to perfection the characters of virtue both in low and in high life-that is, of a good peasant and a good prince; of the peasant in Corin the shepherd in As you like it; of the prince in Malcolm (afterwards Malcolm III. or Canmore) the successor of Duncan, in Macbeth :

Corin. Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other

* i. e. to anticipate the full, appointed time. See above, p. 40. † i.e. stay for, wait upon. ‡ See below, Add Illustr. p. 368,

1

men's good, content with my harm: and the greatest of my pride is, to see my ewes graze, and my lambs suck.

Malcolm.

Act iii. Sc. 2.

I never was forsworn ;

Scarcely have coveted what was mine own;

At no time broke my faith; would not betray
The devil to his fellow, and delight

NO LESS IN TRUTH THAN life.

Act iv. Sc. 3.

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.' In King Henry VI. 2nd Part, Act ii. Sc. 5 (where reference is made to Exod. xxii. 18), he speaks of it as 'God's Book ;'* and 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

* See also below, p. 262, 'The books of God.'

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. Compare the speech of the wicked Gloster, quoted above, p. 66.

Moreover, our poet's 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 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 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.

* Justify it.

+ See Matt. xi. 28.

See Matt. xix. 24.