William Shakspeare.

“Gracious sir!  I do not urge it; and the time is now past by some minutes.”

Sir Thomas.

“Art thou popishly inclined, William?”

William Shakspeare.

“Sir, I am not popishly inclined; I am not inclined to pay tribute of coin or understanding to those who rush forward with a pistol at my breast, crying, ‘stand, or you are A dead man.’  I have but one guide in faith,—­a powerful, an almighty one.  He will not suffer to waste away and vanish the faith for which he died.  He hath chosen in all countries pure hearts for its depositaries; and I would rather take it from a friend and neighbour, intelligent and righteous, and rejecting lucre, than from some foreigner educated in the pride of cities or in the moroseness of monasteries, who sells me what Christ gave me,—­his own flesh and blood.

“I can repeat by heart what I read above a year agone, albeit I cannot bring to mind the title of the book in which I read it.  These are the words, —

“’The most venal and sordid of all the superstitions that have swept and darkened our globe may, indeed, like African locusts, have consumed the green corn in very extensive regions, and may return periodically to consume it; but the strong, unwearied labourer who sowed it hath alway sown it in other places less exposed to such devouring pestilences.  Those cunning men who formed to themselves the gorgeous plan of universal dominion were aware that they had a better chance of establishing it than brute ignorance or brute force could supply, and that soldiers and their paymasters were subject to other and powerfuller fears than the transitory ones of war and invasion.  What they found in heaven they seized; what they wanted they forged.

“’And so long as there is vice and ignorance in the world, so long as fear is a passion, their dominion will prevail; but their dominion is not, and never shall be, universal.  Can we wonder that it is so general?  Can we wonder that anything is wanting to give it authority and effect, when every learned, every prudent, every powerful, every ambitious man in Europe, for above a thousand years, united in the league to consolidate it?

“’The old dealers in the shambles, where Christ’s body is exposed for sale in convenient marketable slices, {111a} have not covered with blood and filth the whole pavement.  Beautiful usages are remaining still,—­kindly affections, radiant hopes, and ardent aspirations!

“’It is a comfortable thing to reflect, as they do, and as we may do unblamably, that we are uplifting to our Guide and Maker the same incense of the heart, and are uttering the very words, which our dearest friends in all quarters of the earth, nay in heaven itself, are offering to the throne of grace at the same moment.

“’Thus are we together through the immensity of space.  What are these bodies?  Do they unite us?  No; they keep us apart and asunder even while we touch.  Realms and oceans, worlds and ages, open before two spirits bent on heaven.  What a choir surrounds us when we resolve to live unitedly and harmoniously in Christian faith!’”