[17] It is certain that the religion of Brahma has not the least similarity to the true Christian religion; it is also of such antiquity that it could not have borrowed any thing from it. Both are essentially different from each other: the principal object of the Christian religion is the moral formation and improvement of man, and it is totally spiritual; the doctrine of Brahma renders the first ideas of religion familiar to the senses by images, and allows to its followers a number of things which Christianity forbids. It cannot, however, be denied, that many of the old doctrines and practices generally adopted, particularly in the East, were received into the Catholic religion; such, for example, as the worshipping of images, solemn processions, monachism, the pretended great sanctity and the different degrees of the clergy, external pomp and magnificence, &c. The idea of the Pagan Indians, therefore, mentioned in the text, is extremely natural. _F._ [18] It has been remarked by English travellers, who resided in India, that these falsehoods have been believed and taught by ignorant missionaries. But are there not people, even at Rome, who consider the Indians as Manicheans, and their religion as corrupted Christianity? It may, however, be readily comprehended, that such hypothesis-mongers never saw India, or studied the religion of the Indians. See, on this subject, the _Asiatic Researches_, printed at Calcutta in 1788, vol. I. p. 127, and _Herbelot_, _Bibl. Orient._, p. 203, where such ridiculous assertions are sufficiently refuted. _A._