tantia, who,
overcome with watching, had fallen asleep in the great wicker-chair.
"Look at that girl," said she; "consider her warm heart, and melting
sensibility, her unusual beauty, delicate frame and tender years.
Surely, brother, she wants a father, as much as the Church of England a
friend."

Dr. Beaumont turned his head, recollected his lost Alicia at that age,
and thanked Heaven that she had "safely passed the waves of this
troublesome world." "Had Rogers or Taylor, my dear sister," said he,
"been drawn to the earth by such a magnet, we should have lost those
shining examples of true fortitude, and should have gone on, still
stumbling in the darkness of papacy.--The torch of truth was kindled at
the penal fires which consumed the martyrs, and its light illuminated
distant ages and nations. He who bears the sacred character of
ambassador of God should constantly remember that all other titles yield
to its glorious superiority. It was the boast of the church of Rome,
that her clergy acted not as individuals aiming at their own benefit,
but as a compacted body actuated by one impulse and towards one object,
the advantage and supremacy of the church. For this end they fed the
poor at the convent-gates, the monastery was an asylum to the afflicted,
and the middle orders were conciliated by that lenient treatment which
procured them respect as mild masters and most indulgent landlords. At a
time when tyranny and rapacity reigned in the castle, the clergy were a
chain binding the great to their inferiors. We know by what unnatural
restraints the Romish clergy were made thus superior to private
interest, but let us not give them cause to say, that celibacy is
necessary to prevent the man of God from becoming a man of the world.
The ties of nature which he owns in common with others, must not
supersede those duties which bind him to his congregation. He does not
profess, like the priest at mass, to be a mediator between God and man,
but he pleads to the rich in behalf of poverty; to the powerful for
those who require protection. He instructs the indigent to be grateful;
he stops the arm of oppression; he curbs avarice, by reminding it of the
state where riches avail not; he comforts affliction, by proving that
temporal distress, however great, may be supported. Our calling requires
us thus to preach, and shall not our lives be a living comment on our
doctrines? Shall our conversation prove that our unsanctified hearts are