Parson Adams said that he thought _The Conscious Lovers_ the only play fit for a Christian to see; "indeed," he added, "it contains some things almost solemn enough for a sermon." In this kindly satire Fielding indicated the weakness of the play. The chief interest of the piece is sentimental, and the hero is not always free from priggishness. Yet the duelling scene, for which, as Steele says, the whole was written, has much dramatic interest, and the protest against false ideas of honour--"decisions a tyrant custom has introduced, to the breach of all laws both divine and human"--was at that time courageous, and much needed. If some of the things expressed in this play are more suited for a paper in the _Spectator_, there is nothing in true comedy which makes it incongruous to convey, in a manner suited to that form of art, a serious lesson of life. If, again, as some say, there is more pathos than is allowable in the scene in which Sealand recovers his long-lost daughter and sister, the end is that of true comedy; the "pedantic coxcomb" Cimberton no longer wants Sealand's daughter when he finds that, by the discovery of Indiana, Lucinda's fortune will be halved; Bevil is able, in marrying Indiana, the lady he loves, to comply with his father's wish that he should be united to Sealand's daughter; and Bevil's friend, Myrtle, the true lover whose affection is not lessened by change in the lady's dowry, is rewarded with the hand of Lucinda. The friends, formerly supposed by one of them to be rivals, thus become brothers. Steele alluded to current criticism when he said, in his Preface, that the incident of the threatened duel and the case of the father and daughter were thought by some to be no subjects of comedy; "but I cannot," he continued, "be of their mind, for anything that has its foundation in happiness and success must be allowed to be the object of comedy." His object, as Welsted said in the Prologue, was to "please by wit that scorns the aid of vice; The praise he seeks, from worthier motives springs, Such praise, as praise to those that give, it brings." It was for the audience "To chasten wit, and moralise the stage."