o you a comical
story about a fellow, an English servant, I once met at Rome."

"It would be quite unnecessary," said I; "I would much sooner hear you
talk about Krishna, his words and image."

"Spoken like a true heretic," said the man in black; "one of the faithful
would have placed his image before his words; for what are all the words
in the world compared with a good bodily image!"

"I believe you occasionally quote his words?" said I.

"He! he!" said the man in black; "occasionally."

"For example," said I, "upon this rock I will found my church."

"He! he!" said the man in black; "you must really become one of us."

"Yet you must have had some difficulty in getting the rock to Rome?"

"None whatever," said the man in black; "faith can remove mountains, to
say nothing of rocks--ho! ho!"

"But I cannot imagine," said I, "what advantage you could derive from
perverting those words of Scripture in which the Saviour talks about
eating his body."

"I do not know, indeed, why we troubled our heads about the matter at
all," said the man in black; "but when you talk about perverting the
meaning of the text, you speak ignorantly, Mr. Tinker; when he whom you
call the Saviour gave his followers the sop, and bade them eat it,
telling them it was his body, he delicately alluded to what it was
incumbent upon them to do after his death, namely, to eat his body."

"You do not mean to say that he intended they should actually eat his
body?"

"Then you suppose ignorantly," said the man in black; "eating the bodies
of the dead was a heathenish custom, practised by the heirs and legatees
of people who left property; and this custom is alluded to in the text."

"But what has the New Testament to do with heathen customs," said I,
"except to destroy them?"

"More than you suppose," said the man in black. "We priests of Rome, who
have long lived at Rome, know much better what the New Testament is made
of than the heretics and their theologians, not forgetting their Tinkers;
though I confess some of the latter have occasionally surprised us--for
example, Bunyan. The New Testament is crowded with allusions to heathen
customs, and with words connected with pagan sorcery. Now, with respect
to words, I would fain have you, who pretend to be a philologist, tell me
the meaning of Amen."

I made no answer.

"We of Rome," said the man in black, "know two or three things of which
the heretics are quite ignorant; for example,