respecting this
doctrine, and he assured me, that it was even so as I had read. I then
wished to go to some place, though it might be a distant country, that I
might find some man of the Roman Catholic church sufficiently learned to
prove the doctrine above alluded to.

After this, as I was at Beyroot teaching a few Greek youths the Arabic
grammar, I received a letter from his holiness the Maronite patriarch,
saying, that if I did not cease from all assistance whatever to the
English, and that if I did not leave them within one day, I should,
_ipso facto_, fall under the heaviest excommunication.

Thinking, as I did, that obeying my superiors, in all things not
sinful, was well and good, I did not delay to leave, and so went to my
friends at Hadet; but still thinking very much on the subject of
religion, so that some people thought me melancholy. I loved exceedingly
to converse on religious subjects, indeed I took no pleasure in any
worldly concerns, and found all worldly possessions vain. After this, I
received a second letter from his holiness the patriarch, in which he
said thus: "After we had written you the first letter, we wrote you a
second; see that you act according to it. And if you fulfil all that was
commanded in it, and come up to us when we come to Kesran, we will
provide you a situation." But I saw that nothing, in which I was
accustomed to take delight, pleased me any longer. I returned again,
after some time, to Beyroot; and after I had been there no long time,
Hoory Nicolas arrived, brother to his holiness the rev. patriarch, with
a request from the latter, to come and see him, which I hastened to do.
Hoory Nicolas then began to converse with me, in the way of reprimand,
for being in connexion with the English. I replied that, as we ought not
to deny the unity of God, because the Musselmans believe it, so we ought
not to hate the gospel because the English love it. He then began to
tell me of the wish of his holiness, the rev. patriarch, that I should
come out to him, and of his great love to me; and said that he (the
patriarch) had heard, that I had received thirty or forty purses of
money from the English; and he assured me of their readiness not to
suffer this to be any hindrance to my coming out from them.

Now if my object were money, as some seemed to think, I had then a fair
opportunity to tell him a falsehood, and say, "I indeed received from
the English that sum, but I have expended so and s