"After much reflection I must confess to you their system appears reasonable, natural, and convincing. With us, they consider the Holy Scriptures as the most respectable testimony of our faith, and they profess a strict adherence to them; they have for them the greatest respect; and the Catholic priests support from the Bible what they {178} teach the people, and I am certain that they study and understand the Scriptures as much as our ministers. The principal difference I remark is, that they do not undertake to interpret them according to their own opinions: they say that the inspired writings are replete with mysteries, which the eye of man cannot penetrate; and that He alone who gave them is able to comprehend their sublimity; consequently, to follow the impulse of reason in explaining them, would be incurring the danger of falling into error, and leading others into the same path. For this cause the Catholic minister will not suffer the Holy Scriptures to be separated from the instruction of their predecessors up to the Apostles; not that they by any means give the word of man precedence to the Word of God, since they believe that man alone cannot explain it, for 'who,' they ask, 'assisted at the council of the Almighty?' But they believe that those who heard the Apostles preach, understood the true meaning of their words; and that their immediate successors, _especially_, educated by them, and who taught the Gospel during the life of their instructors, necessarily understood the meaning of their writings, the doctrine of which was undoubtedly conformable to what they taught verbally. ...." "St. Paul, in his Epistles to the Colossians, informs us that the Gospel was preached to all the world. This being the case, I see no possibility of introducing any new doctrine. The Apostles threatened with eternal punishment those who did not believe what they taught in the name of Jesus Christ. And whoever would have the temerity to add to the primitive doctrine they visited with a like anathema. Tell me, now, how could the Church have introduced such a doctrine as that of the Real Presence, after a priest has pronounced the words, "This is my body"? How is it possible that the faithful could reconcile themselves to the idea of acknowledging and adoring Jesus Christ present on the altar, as He was in the manger at Bethlehem, and as He is in Heaven at the right hand of His Father, if this doctrine had not always been received and believed as it is at present by the Roman Catholic Church? {179} Christians who knew the value of salvation could not so easily be deceived; several among them would have remonstrated against this superstition and idolatry. Do we find that they have done so?"