He Informed Me
That He Was A Foreigner, Who Had Resided A Considerable Time In
Seville, And He Believed A Greek.
Upon hearing this, I instantly
went up to the stranger, and accosted him in the Greek language, in
which,
Though I speak it very ill, I can make myself understood.
He replied in the same idiom, and, flattered by the interest which
I, a foreigner, expressed for his nation, was not slow in
communicating to me his history. He told me that his name was
Dionysius, that he was a native of Cephalonia, and had been
educated for the church, which, not suiting his temper, he had
abandoned, in order to follow the profession of the sea, for which
he had an early inclination. That after many adventures and
changes of fortune, he found himself one morning on the coast of
Spain, a shipwrecked mariner, and that, ashamed to return to his
own country in poverty and distress, he had remained in the
Peninsula, residing chiefly at Seville, where he now carried on a
small trade in books. He said that he was of the Greek religion,
to which he professed strong attachment, and soon discovering that
I was a Protestant, spoke with unbounded abhorrence of the papal
system; nay of its followers in general, whom he called Latins, and
whom he charged with the ruin of his own country, inasmuch as they
sold it to the Turk. It instantly struck me, that this individual
would be an excellent assistant in the work which had brought me to
Seville, namely, the propagation of the eternal Gospel, and
accordingly, after some more conversation, in which he exhibited
considerable learning, I explained myself to him.
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