On the tenth of February last, two pamphlets fell into my hands; one 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 told me, I clearly saw that the Protestants were unjustly accused and misrepresented by the wicked or the ignorant, and that they were in truth those christians, according to the word of God, to whom the promises of the Gospel are made. From that time I acknowledged them as my true brethren in Christ Jesus, and my chief desire was to be admitted into their communion.