liberal and humane allowance for the frailties of poor human nature.
Those females who are really chaste, and who practice rather than
profess virtue, are always tender and sparing of their censure of
the misfortunes and errors of others of their own sex: so it is with
honourable and virtuous men; although they would by no means encourage
vice, yet they take a very different course to eradicate it, than that
of declaiming publicly against those who have not been so successful as
themselves in resisting temptation.

How many living instances could I point out, as illustrations of this
self-evident proposition. It was but yesterday I had before me a glaring
specimen of the sort of canting hypocrisy which is the object of my
censure. It was a reverend and dignified pillar of the church, as demure
as a saint, turning up his eyes, and professing and preaching morality,
which I had more than once or twice before heard him do, while, with
a sanctified leer, he expressed great horror at my breach of conjugal
chastity, or violation of the marriage vow. The reader will easily
imagine the manner in which I eyed him, while he was uttering these
truly religious and moral doctrines, when I inform him that, only a few
hours before, an old neighbouring farmer had been relating to me and
my friends, a little of the private history of this chaste and pious
parson. It seems, by this old gentleman's account, that this now worthy
and dignified clergyman of the Church of England, who was originally a
mere clerical adventurer, the better to enable himself to perform that
duty which he had recently sworn that he was called by the Holy Ghost to
execute, took to himself an antiquated damsel for a wife; but what she
was deficient in beauty and youth, she made up in the scale by the
weight of her purse; and my informant observed that, during the life
time of the "first madam," not a servant girl could live in his house,
without giving evident proofs that the rosy-gilled priest was not quite