which Satan had made use of to write upon, as the moderns do on a
card, and had sent his compliments to the priests for the number of
souls which the wicked examples of their lives daily sent to hell.
This story is the more remarkable as it was written by a priest, and a
great favourer of his order."

"Excellent!" cried the old gentleman; "what a memory you have."

"But, sir," cries the young one, "a clergyman is a man as well as
another; and, if such perfect purity be expected--"

"I do not expect it," cries the doctor; "and I hope it will not be
expected of us. The Scripture itself gives us this hope, where the
best of us are said to fall twenty times a-day. But sure we may not
allow the practice of any of those grosser crimes which contaminate
the whole mind. We may expect an obedience to the ten commandments,
and an abstinence from such notorious vices as, in the first place,
Avarice, which, indeed, can hardly subsist without the breach of more
commandments than one. Indeed, it would be excessive candour to
imagine that a man who so visibly sets his whole heart, not only on
this world, but on one of the most worthless things in it (for so is
money, without regard to its uses), should be, at the same time,
laying up his treasure in heaven. Ambition is a second vice of this
sort: we are told we cannot serve God and Mammon. I might have applied
this to avarice; but I chose rather to mention it here. When we see a
man sneaking about in courts and levees, and doing the dirty work of
great men, from the hopes of preferment, can we believe that a fellow
whom we see to have so many hard task-masters upon earth ever thinks
of his Master which is in heaven? Must he not himself think, if ever
he reflects at all, that so glorious a Master will disdain and disown