did not expect to hear it confirmed by one of our own cloth."

"Be not too impatient, young gentleman," said the doctor." I do not
absolutely confirm the charge of the laity; it is much too general and
too severe; but even the laity themselves do not attack them in that
part to which you have applied your defence. They are not supposed
such fools as to attack that religion to which they owe their temporal
welfare. They are not taxed with giving any other support to
infidelity than what it draws from the ill examples of their lives; I
mean of the lives of some of them. Here too the laity carry their
censures too far; for there are very few or none of the clergy whose
lives, if compared with those of the laity, can be called profligate;
but such, indeed, is the perfect purity of our religion, such is the
innocence and virtue which it exacts to entitle us to its glorious
rewards and to screen us from its dreadful punishments, that he must
be a very good man indeed who lives up to it. Thus then these persons
argue. This man is educated in a perfect knowledge of religion, is
learned in its laws, and is by his profession obliged, in a manner, to
have them always before his eyes. The rewards which it promises to the
obedience of these laws are so great, and the punishments threatened
on disobedience so dreadful, that it is impossible but all men must
fearfully fly from the one, and as eagerly pursue the other. If,
therefore, such a person lives in direct opposition to, and in a
constant breach of, these laws, the inference is obvious. There is a
pleasant story in Matthew Paris, which I will tell you as well as I
can remember it. Two young gentlemen, I think they were priests,
agreed together that whosoever died first should return and acquaint
his friend with the secrets of the other world. One of them died soon
after, and fulfilled his promise. The whole relation he gave is not
very material; but, among other things, he produced one of his hands,