172 
HISTORY OF THE [book m, 
concerning the death and passion of Jesus Christ 
the Son of God, together with its cause and happy 
consequences, delivered by a missionary touched 
with an experimental sense of it, is the surest way 
of enlightening the benighted minds of the ne¬ 
groes, in order to lead them afterwards step by 
step into all truth: they therefore make it a rule, 
never to enter into an extensive discussion of the 
doctrines of God’s being an infinite spirit, of the 
Holy Trinity, &c. nor to seek to open their under¬ 
standings in those points, until they believe in Je¬ 
sus, and that the word of the Cross has proved it¬ 
self the power of God unto salvation, by the true 
conversion of their hearts. Both in the beginning 
and progress of their instructions, the missionaries 
endeavour to deliver themselves as plainly and in¬ 
telligibly to the faculties of their hearers as possi¬ 
ble; and the Lord has given his blessing even to 
the most unlearned that went forth in reliance up¬ 
on him, to learn the difficult languages of the ne¬ 
groes, so as to attain to great fluency in them : one 
great difficulty arises, indeed, from the new ideas 
and words necessary to express the divine truths to 
be introduced into them; but even this has been 
surmounted through God’s grace. 
As it is required of all believers, that they prove 
their faith by their works; the brethren teach, that 
no habit of sin, in any land or place, nor any pre¬ 
vailing custom whatever, can be admitted as a plea 
for a behaviour not conformable to the moral law of 
