received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to
them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of
the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." John, 1:
12, 13.

Thus you see that we are neither Catholics nor Protestants by birth;
and it is a great error for any one to feel himself bound to either
church, because he has been born within its pale. Religion, like every
thing else, must be studied and examined; and no one is truly a member
of a church, further than as he understands and acknowledges its
doctrines. His adherence on any other ground only proves him
credulous, ignorant, and superstitious; the slave of prejudice and
habit.

As for me, my children, although born in the Romish church, I can
assure you that I never participated in its belief. It would be
foreign to the end I have in view, to relate here the various
circumstances of my childhood and youth, which preserved me from being
brought into the bosom of the Catholic church by the usual rites
and ceremonies. God so ordered it, that I made no vow by which _I
might_[5] have afterwards felt myself bound to the church of Rome.

[Footnote 5: "_I might have_," but I am far from supposing that I
_ought_ to have fell myself indissolubly tied to the Roman Catholic
church by any sacrament that I might have received, or by any
engagement that I might have entered into: on the contrary, I lay it
down as an incontestable principle, that every vow and every oath are
null, and neither can nor ought to bind any one to a church in which
he has discovered errors, or doctrines and habits opposed to the word
of God, and contrary to his own conscience. Truth alone, and the full