Mine is a priestly business.
FRIAR.
Yet the priests
Ask not the knights’ advice, be their affair
Ever so knightly.
TEMPLAR.
Therefore one allows them
To overshoot themselves, a privilege
Which such as I don’t vastly envy them.
Indeed if I were acting for myself,
Had not t’ account with others, I should care
But little for his counsel. But some things
I’d rather do amiss by others’ guidance
Than by my own aright. And then by this time
I see religion too is party, and
He, who believes himself the most impartial,
Does but uphold the standard of his own,
Howe’er unconsciously. And since ’tis so,
So must be well.
FRIAR.
I rather shall not answer,
For I don’t understand exactly.
TEMPLAR.
Yet
Let me consider what it is precisely
That I have need of, counsel or decision,
Simple or learned counsel.—Thank you, brother,
I thank you for your hint—A patriarch—why?
Be thou my patriarch; for ’tis the plain Christian,
Whom in the patriarch I have to consult,
And not the patriarch in the Christian.
FRIAR.