"Mercy well becomes the heart of all Thy creatures! but most of
Thy servant, a Levite, who offers up so many daily sacrifices to Thee
for the transgressions of Thy people. But to little purpose, he would
add, have I served at Thy altar, where my business was to sue for
mercy, had I not learned to practise it."

And in Hall's _Contemplations_ the following:

"Mercy becomes well the heart of any man, but most of a Levite.
He that had helped to offer so many sacrifices to God for the multitude
of every Israelite's sins saw how proportionable it was that man
should not hold one sin unpardonable. He had served at the altar
to no purpose, if he (whose trade was to sue for mercy) had not at all
learned to practise it."

Sterne's twelfth sermon, on the Forgiveness of Injuries, is merely
a diluted commentary on the conclusion of Hall's "Contemplation of
Joseph." In the sixteenth sermon, the one on Shimei, we find:

"There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season
to give a mark of enmity and ill will: a word, a look, which at
one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the
heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which,
with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object
aimed at."

This, it is evident, is but slightly altered, and by no means for the
better, from the more terse and vigorous language of the Bishop:

"There is no small cruelty in the picking out of a time for mischief:
that word would scarce gall at one season which at another
killeth. The same shaft flying with the wind pierces deep, which
against it can hardly find strength to stick upright."

But enough of these _pieces de conviction_. Indictments for plagiarism
are often too hastily laid; but there can be no doubt, I should
imagine, in the mind of any reasonable being upon the evidence here
cited, that the offence in this case is clearly proved. Nor, I
think, can there be much question as to its moral complexion. For the
pilferings from Bishop Hall, at any rate, no shadow of excuse can,
so far as I can see, be alleged. Sterne could not possibly plead any
better justification for borrowing Hall's thoughts and phrases and
passing them off upon his hearers or readers as original, than
he could plead for claiming the authorship of one of the Bishop's
benevolent actions and representing himself to the world as the doer
of the good deed. In the actu