This was no other than the Reverent Mr. Bide-the-Bent, a
presbyterian clergyman, formerly mentioned, of the very strictest
order and the most rigid orthodoxy, whose aid she called in, upon the
principle of the tyrant in the in the tragedy:
I'll have a priest shall preach her from her faith,
And make it sin not to renounce that vow
Which I'd have broken.
But Lady Ashton was mistaken in the agent she had selected. His
prejudices, indeed, were easily enlisted on her side, and it was no
difficult matter to make him regard with horror the prospect of a union
betwixt the daughter of a God-fearing, professing, and Presbyterian
family of distinction and the heir of a bloodthirsty prelatist and
persecutor, the hands of whose fathers had been dyed to the wrists in
the blood of God's saints. This resembled, in the divine's opinion, the
union of a Moabitish stranger with a daughter of Zion. But with all
the more severe prejudices and principles of his sect, Bide-the-Bent
possessed a sound judgment, and had learnt sympathy even in that very
school of persecution where the heart is so frequently hardened.
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