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own soul?” 103Far from being unorthodox, the poet is, at this point, following one ofthe most basic values of Christianity.In CHP, religious language is part of the language of opposition to warfare andtyranny. For example, the poet denounces “the blasphemy of laws /Making kings’rights divine, by some Draconic clause” (3.64.615-6), which uses the language ofreligion in part to represent the activity as wrong, but also to place it within a specifichierarchy: blasphemy is speech against a god, and, while the doctrine of the DivineRight of Kings places the monarchs above everyone else, it is specifically predicatedupon even the kings’ rights descending from God. The orthodoxy of this is consistentwith the appeal to God in 2.45.405. CHP repeatedly presents a monotheistic view.Pluralism and ToleranceCertain religious beliefs are validated. “I speak not of men’s creeds – they restbetween /Man and his Maker”, the poet declares (4.95.847), implicitly reaffirming theidea of a Maker while refusing to engage with the sectarian arguments betweencreeds. Still, the poet’s pluralism, and, in particular, his concern for a balancedrepresentation, extends to the faults of religions, as well as to their virtues. This isanother vital factor for consideration of his scepticism, because the desire for balanceof the good and the bad of both sides demonstrates an absence of hostility towardseither, as much as it demonstrates a lack of submission to either.In talking about Constantinople, the poem says, “The city won for Allah from theGiaour, /The Giaour from Othman’s race again may wrest” (2.77.729-30).Massimilano Demata suggests that this is almost an incitement to ‘Holy War’, 104 butthe poet’s note immediately connects it with a reference to the Fourth Crusade in1204: “When taken by the Latins, and retained for several years. – See Gibbon. [ch.60]” (McGann 2.290:732). The Venetian-led armies of Western Christianity took thecapital of Eastern Christianity, in what can aptly be described as a spectacular owngoal. This is then balanced by an account of an analogous action within Islam,103 Mark 8:36, also Matthew 16:26 and Luke 9:25.104 Demata, ‘Byron, Turkey and the Orient’, in The Reception of Byron in Europe, ed. by Richard ACardwell (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), pp.439-52: 442.58