He stammered some unintelligible answer, excused himself for not being able to remain any longer, on account of some pressing business; and extending his hand to me before leaving he said: “You will find an answer to your questions and difficulties in the Holy Fathers.”
“Can you lend me the Holy Fathers, my lord?”
He replied: “No sir, I have them not.”
This last answer from my bishop, shook my faith to its foundation, and left my mind in a state of great distress. With the sincere hope of finding in the Holy Fathers, some explanations which would dispel my painful doubts, I immediately went to Mr. Fabre, the great bookseller of Montreal, who got me, from France, the splendid edition of the Holy Fathers, by Migne. I studied with the utmost attention, every page where I might find what they taught of the worship of Mary, and the doctrines that Jesus had never refused any of her prayers.
What was my desolation, my shame and my surprise, to find that the Holy Fathers of the first six centuries had never advocated the worship of Mary, and that the many eloquent pages on the power of Mary in heaven, and her love for sinners, found in every page of my theologians; and other ascetic books I had read till then, were but impudent lies; additions interpolated in their works a hundred years after their death.
When discovering these forgeries, under the name of the Holy Fathers, of which my church was guilty, how many times, in the silence of my long nights of study and prayerful meditations, did I hear a voice telling me: “Come out of Babylon.”
But where could I go? Out of the Church of Rome, where could I find that salvation which was to be found only within her walls? I said to myself, “Surely there are some errors in my dear church.”
“The dust of ages may have fallen on the precious gold of her treasures, but will I not find still more damnable errors among those hundreds of Protestant churches, which, under the name of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, &c., &c., are divided and sub-divided into scores of contemptible sects anathematizing and denouncing each other before the world?”
My ideas of the great family of evangelical churches, comprised under the broad name of Protestantism, were so exaggerated then, that it was absolutely impossible for me to find in them that unity which I considered the essentials of the church of Christ.
The hour was not yet come, but it was coming fast, when my dear Saviour would make me understand his sublime words: “I am the vine and ye are the branches.”