er by without finishing the copy, and applied
myself to the reading of Isaiah.

"I had wished to find in the prophet some plain and incontrovertible
proofs of the Messiahship of Christ, to use against Moslems and
Jews. While thus searching, I found various passages that would
_bear_ an explanation according to my views, and read on till I came
to the fifty-second chapter, and fourteenth verse, and onward to the
end of the next chapter.

"On finding this testimony, my heart rejoiced and was exceeding
glad, for it removed many dark doubts from my own mind. From that
time, my desire to read the New Testament was greatly increased,
that I might discover the best means of acting according to the
doctrines of Jesus. I endeavored to divest myself of all selfish
bias, and loved more and more to inquire into religious subjects. I
saw, as I still see, many doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church,
that I could not believe, and which I found opposed to the truths of
the Gospel, and I wished much to find some of her best teachers to
explain them to me, that I might see how they proved them from the
Holy Scriptures. As I was reading an appendix to a Bible printed at
Rome by the Propaganda, and searching out the passages referred to
for proving the duty of worshipping saints, and the like, I found
that these proofs failed altogether of establishing these doctrines,
and that to infer them from such Scripture texts was even
ridiculous. Among other things, I found in this appendix the very
horrible Neronian doctrine, 'that it is our duty to destroy
heretics.' Now every one knows, that whoever does not believe that
the Pope is infallible, is, in the Pope's estimation, a heretic. And
this doctrine is not merely that it is allowable to kill heretics,
but that we are in duty bound to do it.

"From this I was the more established in my convictions against the
doctrines of the Papacy, and saw that they were the doctrines of the
ravenous beast, and not of the gentle lamb. After I had read this, I
asked one of the priests in Beirut about this doctrine, and he
assured me that it was even as I had read. I then wished to go even
to some distant country, that I might find a Roman Catholic
sufficiently learned to prove the doctrine above alluded to."

Receiving two letters from the Patriarch, requiring him to leave the
missionaries on pain of the greater excommunication, and promising
to provide him a situation, he went to his friends at Hadet. B