The author has
read that Roman augurs rarely met to do the professional without
laughing at each other, and he is bothered to understand how Christian
priests 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.
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