ests contrive to keep their countenances, amid the many strong
temptations to mirth, by which, in their official capacity they are
surrounded. No doubt very many of them laugh immoderately in private, by
way of revenge for the gravity they are constrained to assume in public.
It is well known that hypocrites are most prone to an affectation of
sanctity; which marvellously steads them in this world, happen what may
in the world to come. Nine-tenths of those who make a parade of their
piety, are rotten at heart, as that Cardinal de Crema, Legate of Pope
Calixtus 2nd, in the reign of Henry 1st, who declared at a London Synod,
it was an intolerable enormity, that a priest should dare to consecrate,
and touch the body of Christ immediately after he had risen from the
side of a strumpet, (for that was the decent appellation he gave to the
wives of the clergy), but it happened, that the very next night, the
officers of justice, breaking into a disorderly house, found the
Cardinal in bed with a courtezan; an incident, says Hume, [72:1] "which
threw such ridicule upon him, that he immediately stole out of the
kingdom; the synod broke up, and the canons against the marriage of its
clergymen, were worse executed than ever."

Christian practice is after all, the best answer to Christian theory.
Men who think wisely, do not it is true, always act wisely; but
generally speaking, the moral, like the physical tree, is known by its
fruit, and bitter, most bitter, is the fruit of that moral tree, the
followers of Jesus planted. Notwithstanding their talk about the pure
and benign influence of their religion, an opinion is fast gaining
ground, that Bishop Kiddor was right, when he said, 'were a wise man to
judge of religion by the lives of its professors, perhaps, Christianity
is the last he would choose.'

No unprejudiced thinker who is familiar with the history of religion
will deny, that of all priests in this priest-ridden world Christian
priests are the worst. Though less potent they are not much less proud
or ambitious than when Pope Pascal II. told King Henry I. that all
ecclesiastics must enter into the church through Christ and Christ
alone, not through the civil magistrate or any profane laymen. Nor are
they less jealous of such as would fain reduce the dimensions of their
'spiritual jurisdiction,' than when that haughty Pope reminded his king
that 'priests are called God in Scripture as being the vicars of God;'
while in consi