The confusion of identities in Mrs. Slipslop’s bed is finally sorted out, and Adams goes to his own bed for well-deserved rest.  The witchcraft of distorted reality is finally put to sleep—but not, however, until Parson Adams gets to have another identity crisis of sorts.  This, too, is humorous in the quixotic vein: he, the naked, virtuous, and simple parson ends up lying in bed with the lovely Fanny Andrews, which just about every man in Joseph Andrews has been ridiculously trying to do.
Fielding implies in the first chapter of book three that ridiculing affectation is good, but that praising virtue is even better.  There is and has been no ridiculous affectation of virtue in either’s identity.  Fanny and Parson Adams are simply ignorant of each other’s presence in bed, she unable to smell his strong tobacco-ey breath, and he unable to smell her sweetly-scented body.  As they lie together in oblivious virtue, Fielding’s sensual detail associates strong, manliness of the pipe with Adams, and associates the perfume of feminine beauty with Fanny.  The peculiar comedy of this passage is from the discrepancy between the characters’ actual moral identity and their apparent compromising circumstances.  In this narrative, Fielding humorously paints Fanny’s and Adams’s naked morality with pen-strokes of praise.
When Joseph, who has always been amiable to both Fanny and Adams, discovers these characters in bed with each other, he can only comically resolve the situation by acknowledging the morality of them both.  Fanny cannot judge Adams’s intentions; she only admits that while empirically speaking he didn’t do anything wrong to her (and is virtuous), he empirically speaking did climb into bed with her (which is not).  The Parson is in too compromising a situation for his (unnatural) explanation of ‘witchcraft’ to hold water.  It is Joseph’s amiable recognition of Fanny’s and Adams’s naked morality that allows him to arrive at a natural conclusion for the supposed scandal.  He recognizes that the Parson has simply mistaken a right turn for a left, and yields to the virtuous moral character of both Fanny and Adams.  Fielding quotes Plato to the effect that he wished Virtue could be seen naked, because then all men would love its beauty.  Fielding has stripped down the quixotic Adams, leaving only naked virtue with which his main character Joseph Andrews cannot help but sympathize.
Stepping back a moment, let’s examine the context with which Fielding has prepared the final discovery of identity.  Fielding has illustrated various types of comedy by dealing with various identity crises.  He has originated melodramatic tension, and established Joseph as an unnaturally celibate Priapus, by discovering Fanny’s true identity.  He has revealed slapstick, burlesque humor by satirizing the affectations of Slipslop and Beau Didapper and the melodrama of previous chapters.  This variety of comedy corresponds with the “ridiculous.”  He has then discovered a character with quixotic, sympathetic humor by uncovering the virtuous Parson Adams’s body.  This variety of humor corresponds with the “amiable.”  The only identity that remains clothed on the stage is the hero himself, Joseph Andrews, who has yet to become an ‘original.’  This variety of humor corresponds with the “natural.”
