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could refer to Jesus’ own bloody death on the cross, or to the bloody suppression ofthe Jewish rebellion against Roman occupation in 66-73 CE. Most significant in thispassage is the idea of God having further offspring, an idea which is blasphemous inChristianity. This is the context into which the rhetor is placing Wordsworth’srepresentation: orthodox Christianity is the frame within which Don Juan’s criticismof the other poet functions, whereas the critics evidently assumed that the poet’s intentwas heterodox. In fact, Don Juan is insistently orthodox in its thought in all of theseexamples.Religion is occasionally employed in figures for other purposes. For example, thedifficulty of completing a poem is expressed with reference to the devil, as a poetbecomesLike Lucifer when hurl’d from heaven for sinning;Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend,Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too farTill our own weakness shows us what we are. (4.1.5-8).Icarus could have served as well as Lucifer, although the inherent, and orthodox,humility of the poet’s acknowledgement of his own temptation towards pride reappropriatesthe discourse of enemies who so frequently associated him with Lucifer.References to religion as a human activity are also present, especially in regard to thehuman failings of believers. Thus, the poet comments that sailors threatened bystorms “vow to amend their lives, and yet they don’t; /Because if drown’d, they can’t– if spared, they won’t” (5.6.47-48). Much as with the rum and psalms, this is a verynaturalistic portrayal of human weakness, or fallenness, and it gestures towards thesame sort of ameliorative end by the same sort of satirical means.One of the most direct critical comments on religion refers to a harsh example ofChristian exclusivism, in the Quicunque Vult, the Athanasian Creed:one feels at ease,119