19th February 1902
MY LORD, — Twelve years ago a priest of my acquaintance, a man of piety and learning, left the Church of Rome. “Oh, how much have they not made me suffer!” cried the poor fugitive, as he left, who, like his Master, had not a stone whereon to lay his head, and that after a life of self-sacrifice.
A little while afterward began that exodus of distinguished priests. With all of them it has been the same cry of agony, in the midst of trials of a martyr character.
Can that, I asked myself, be the Church of Christ which I thought I was serving? What then has become of the Master’s commandment: “Love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:34, 3534A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 35By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. (John 13:34‑35)).
Is it possible that a Leader so gracious, with His infallible foreknowledge, should have condemned us to seek our salvation in a religious society where such tortures reign?
There was but a step from this first entrance of doubt to a new examination of the teaching. I have taken that step. Without partiality, and with the maturity of judgment which comes with age and experience, I have passed in review the dogmas of the Church of Rome.
This time I freed myself from the method imposed upon me in youth. I even consulted with the greatest care some most valuable books of those heretics to whom Rome refuses all hope of salvation.
These studies took me six years. In a somewhat voluminous manuscript, which I purpose publishing later on, I have traced the road that I took, noted down the results of each research, and underlined each conclusion.
I was obliged to come to the conviction that the whole Roman doctrine was of a purely human origin... In place of the true mark which, amongst others, always distinguishes the Church of Jesus Christ— “Love One another―” I could only find in Roman Catholicism (1) a unity of iron chains which took the place of living faith in the heart; (2) the fiery reflection from stakes lighted in the name of an absolute truth which no man can attain to with his limited intelligence; (3) a holiness which requires one to close one’s eyes rather than examine into it; and (4) an apostolic succession, which will not hold water, of Popes whose history, for the honor of their Church, it would be better to be able to obliterate.
Then, the contradiction between the Mass, and the one only and sufficient sacrifice of the cross whose efficacy abides forever (Heb. 7:27, 9:12, 10:10); and between auricular confession and the usage of earlier times; the infallibility of the Pope, and the very uncertain succession from Peter; indulgences, with their money payments, which militate against a free salvation (Rom. 3:2424Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: (Romans 3:24)) .... All this was examined patiently, and in its minutest details. O Rome! O error!
What was I to do in presence of such painful discoveries? Take to flight also? After serious reflections, I said to myself that I could begin by preaching the gospel, the whole gospel, and nothing but the gospel, from the pulpit that I occupied.
I thought for a time that that would allow me to counteract the teaching contained in the Romish system. I even flattered myself that I should be able to do a great deal of good in the future. But preaching is not everything in the work of a parish.
The more I preached a worship in spirit and in truth, the more the obligatory formalism rose up before me as an insurmountable obstacle. I had incessantly to close the Bible in order to open the ritual, which was its flat contradiction....
Since Roman Catholicism cannot exist without this heavy and cumbersome machinery, I endeavored, while retaining the outward form, to alter its meaning. But here I was vanquished too. I was like a man born in a flimsy house, of imposing outward appearance, but undermined from within. In it he has experienced the joys of infancy; nothing else is required to make him love it with all his heart. When he sees that it is about to crumble, he strives to the utmost to arrest its fall, and there to end his days.
But I can remain in it no longer. My conscience would be buried beneath its ruins. Every day my conscience reminds me that thirty years ago I vowed I would preach the doctrine of Christ. Why should I persist in ceaselessly sowing the good seed in a wilderness where it is impossible for the pure doctrine of the Master to germinate, when God had given me to behold a promised land?
How I bless God that after long praying to Him for guidance, He has given me to see that the soil most favorable for the seed of the gospel is that where there is neither Pope nor Bishops. These make themselves so important and great that they obscure the light and warmth that come from on high....
After lengthened reflection and prayer I go whither God calls me.
I have lived my fifty years. At my age one cannot form great projects, and yet I have one great ambition: it is, to put at the disposal of Jesus Christ the end of a life that might have been more useful.
A laborer of the eleventh hour, I shall endeavor to work with all my energy for the glory of Him who has already bestowed upon me that peace, and placed within me that certainty of salvation which your Church never gave me.
In conclusion, I cannot refrain from expressing my sincerest wish that many of the clergy may learn, sooner than I did, that Jesus only, as He has revealed Himself in the gospel, and not as the Church of Rome represents Him, that He alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
No doubt it will be said that I am become the enemy of my former colleagues: it is not so. On the contrary, I shall be happy to prove to them my affection in combating henceforth, with all the energy that I possess, a system that holds them far away from the truth, perhaps, even, from salvation.
B. TEULERE.
(Translated from the “Pre’tre Converti.”)