‘9. The study of the Holy Scriptures cannot be too strongly recommended, for it is the quickest and safest mode of becoming acquainted with the New Testament by means of the Old Testament, and with the Old Testament by means of the New, which is the fulfilment of prophecy. I have spent a portion of my life in reading commentaries on the Bible, chiefly those on the New Testament, and have found that commentators express themselves a hundred times less lucidly and with less force, than does the text itself, of the evangelists and apostles. Of what use, therefore, can be the piles of commentaries in the libraries of the Vatican, at Paris, Vienna, Madrid, London, Oxford, Cambridge, &c., except for burning, if they only serve to guide us by their obscure light, and are pernicious to the text.’[390] About the year 1764 D’Eon wrote:— ‘Since the time when I discovered that Love, the comforter of the human race, the regulator of the universe ... Love, that ruler of hearts, that soul of our soul, to be worth no more than a kiss and twenty kicks ... I have never wished for wife or mistress.’ And later, in 1777, upon assuming the garb of a female:— ‘... I have never mixed myself up with those fond of dancing and similar amusements, and have never had anything to do with people of light character, who conduct themselves indiscreetly, and give way to their passions, following the maxims of the world.’[391]