Though in darkness on many points, and giving no satisfactory evidence of piety, he made himself useful as a teacher and interpreter, and in his intercourse with the people.
Several English missionaries were added to the Protestant force at that time, and the Papal Church became thoroughly alarmed.

Letters were addressed from Rome to the Patriarchal Vicar of Mount Lebanon, the Maronite Patriarch, and the Vicar of Syria and Palestine, urging them to render ineffectual, in every possible manner, the impious undertaking of those missionaries.

These letters were dated in the first month of 1824, and the firman against the circulation of the Scriptures was issued by the Grand Seignior very soon after.

Though feebly enforced by the Turkish authorities this gave weight and influence, for a time, to the "anathemas," of the Maronite and Syrian Patriarchs against the "Bible men." Peter Ignatius Giarve, the Syrian Patriarch, some years before, while Archbishop of Jerusalem, had visited England, and there obtained, under false pretenses, a considerable sum of money from Protestant Christians, to print the Holy Scriptures according to the text of his own Church.

He now issued a manifesto, first defending himself from the charge of deception, and then warning his flock "not to receive the Holy Scriptures, nor any other books printed and circulated by the Bible-men, even though given gratis, and according to the edition printed by the Propaganda under ecclesiastical authority." Notwithstanding all this, the brethren took a hopeful view of their prospects.