Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/156

Rh that His creatures should learn His will by reading His Word, and taking upon them the free exercise of their reason, and acting under responsibility to Him.

It is difficult for one who has never given way to such arguments and influences as those to which I had been exposed, to realize how hard it is to think aright, after thinking wrong. The Scriptures always affect me powerfully when I read them; but I feel that I have but just begun to learn the great truths, in which I ought to have been early and thoroughly instructed. I realize, in some degree, how it is, that the Scriptures render the people of the United States so strongly opposed to such doctrines as are taught in the Black and Congregational Nunneries of Montreal. The priests and nuns used often to declare that of all heretics the children from the United States were the most difficult to be converted; and it was thought a great triumph when one of them was brought over to "the true faith." The first passage of Scripture that made any serious impression upon upon my mind, was the text on which the chaplain preached on the Sabbath after my introduction to the house—"Search the Scriptures."

E, the Subscribers, have an acquaintance with Miss Maria Monk, and having considered the evidence of different kinds which has been collected in