It was the controversial works of Bossuet which first induced Manon Phlipon to apply the test of reason to her faith. Soon after she began to study the Christian dogma rationally, she revolted against the doctrines of infallibility and of the universal damnation of all those who never knew or who had not accepted the faith. When she discovered that she could not accept these teachings, she resolved to find out if there was anything else which she must give up, and so attacked eagerly religious criticism, philosophy, metaphysics. She analyzed most thoroughly all she read and compared authorities with unusual intelligence. As her investigations went on, she found that her faith was going, and she told her confessor, who immediately furnished her with the apologists and defenders of the Church, Abbé Gauchat, Bergier, Abbadie, Holland, Clark, and others. She read them conscientiously and annotated them all; some of these notes she left in the books, not unwittingly we may suspect. The Abbé asked her in amazement if the comments were original with her. These annotations were, in fact, calculated to startle a curé interested in conserving the orthodoxy of a parishioner. Part of those she made on the works of the Abbé Gauchat fell into my hands with the extracts spoken of above. They are the bold, intelligent criticisms of a person who has resolved to subject every dogma to the test of reason. They are never contemptuous or scoffing, though there is frequently a tone of irritation at what she regards as the feebleness of the logic. They are free from prejudice and from sentiment, and show no deference to authority. Another result of the curé’s loan of controversial works was to intimate to Manon what books they refuted, and she hastened to procure them one after another. Thus the _Traité de la tolérance_, _Dictionnaire philosophique_, the _Questions encyclopédiques_, the _Bons sens_ and the _Lettres juives_, of the Marquis d’Argens, the works of Diderot, d’Alembert, Raynal, in fact all the literature of the encyclopedists passed through her hands.