The differences between Barnabas and Adamas

All of Fielding's novels are crawling with clergyman characters, and Joseph Andrews presents several who serve as contrasts to the paragon Mr. Adams. In these chapters, Mr. Barnabas shows himself to be perfectly sociable and impeccably orthodox but not much interested in bettering the lot of his fellow-man: refreshing himself first with tea and then with punch before approaching the bedside of the injured Joseph, he is clearly one of those clergymen who looks on his vocation more as a platform for socializing than as a sacrificial commitment. Barnabas's moral inadequacy is further limned in the discussion of George Whitefield that emerges from Adams's fruitless negotiations with the Bookseller. Mr. Barnabas's objection to Methodism has to do with its emphasis on clerical poverty: Barnabas sees no reason why a clergyman in the Church of England should not be able to amass as much luxury as anyone else, whereas both Adams and Fielding consider poverty an ideal for the clergy.