was published by a Roman Catholic priest, and contained an attack on
the protestant religion: the other was an answer, in defence of that
religion, written by a protestant minister: these were the first words
of religious controversy I had ever read, and eagerly did I devour
these two little works. That of the first (which had been written on
the occasion of a respectable family having recently embraced the
Protestant faith) contained nothing that was solid, or that I could
not have refuted in the very words of Christ and his Apostles;
therefore I did not dwell upon it. But the second, under the title
of _A Letter to Malanie_, was the very thing I wanted, and was so
anxiously desiring to find--an exposition of the protestant creed, or
at least of its most essential points. It taught me that the Gospel
was their only rule of faith, worship, and conduct: that they admitted
all that they found established by the Holy Scriptures, but rejected
every thing else, and especially prohibited the invocation of saints,
the worship of images, of relics, and of the holy Virgin. It taught
me that they worshipped God alone, through Jesus Christ his Son;
that their only hope of salvation was in his mercy, revealed in the
sacrifice of the cross of Christ; that they recognised no other
Mediator, no other Advocate, and no other Intercessor with God, than
him who gave himself as such, and who alone has the right of saying to
sinners, "Come unto me and I will give you rest." It taught me that
they believed no more than myself in purgatory, in the supremacy of
the pope, or in the real presence, &c. In short, it taught me that
the protestants received and professed no other than primitive
Christianity.

It would be impossible for me to tell you how rejoiced I was to find
my most intimate feelings expressed by a minister of a religion
founded on the Gospel. From this, and from all that your mother had