[Mansfield Park by Jane Austen]@TWC D-Link bookMansfield Park CHAPTER XI 6/12
Nobody can wonder that men are soldiers and sailors." "But the motives of a man who takes orders with the certainty of preferment may be fairly suspected, you think ?" said Edmund.
"To be justified in your eyes, he must do it in the most complete uncertainty of any provision." "What! take orders without a living! No; that is madness indeed; absolute madness." "Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living nor without? No; for you certainly would not know what to say.
But I must beg some advantage to the clergyman from your own argument.
As he cannot be influenced by those feelings which you rank highly as temptation and reward to the soldier and sailor in their choice of a profession, as heroism, and noise, and fashion, are all against him, he ought to be less liable to the suspicion of wanting sincerity or good intentions in the choice of his." "Oh! no doubt he is very sincere in preferring an income ready made, to the trouble of working for one; and has the best intentions of doing nothing all the rest of his days but eat, drink, and grow fat.
It is indolence, Mr.Bertram, indeed.
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