this series, that the description of the tortures of the Inquisition,
which so deeply moved Corporal Trim in the famous Sermon on
Conscience, was really the work of Bentley; but Sterne has pilfered
more freely from a divine more famous as a preacher than the great
scholar whose words he appropriated on that occasion. "Then shame and
grief go with her," he exclaims in his singular sermon on "The Levite
and his Concubine;" "and wherever she seeks a shelter may the hand of
Justice shut the door against her!" an exclamation which is taken,
as, no doubt, indeed, was the whole suggestion of the somewhat strange
subject, from the _Contemplations_ of Bishop Hall. And so, again, we
find in Sterne's sermon the following:

"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: