Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

For more than one hour, I cried to God in vain; no answer came. In vain, I cried for a ray of light to guide me. The more I prayed and wept, the greater was the darkness which surrounded me! I then felt as if God had forsaken me, and an unspeakable distress was the result of that horrible thought. To add to my distress, the thought flashed across my mind that by giving up the Church of Rome, I had given up the church of my dear father and mother, of my brothers, my friends and my country. In fact all that was near and dear to me!

I hope that none of my readers will ever experience what it is to give up friends, relatives, parents, honor, country—everything! I did not regret the sacrifice, but I felt as if I could not survive it. With tears, I cried to God for more strength and faith to bear the cross which was laid on my too weak shoulders but all in vain.

Then I felt that an implacable war was to be declared against me, which would end only with my life. The Pope, the bishops and priests, all over the world, would denounce and curse me. They would attack and destroy my character, my name and my honor, in their press, from their pulpit and in their confessionals, where the man they strike can never know whence the blow is coming! Almost in despair, I tried to think of some one who would come to my help in that formidable conflict, but could find none. Every one of the millions of Roman Catholics were bound to curse me. My best friends—my own people—even my own brothers, were bound to look upon me with horror as an apostate, a vile outcast! Could I hope for help or protection from Protestants? No! for my priestly life had been spent in writing and preaching against them. In vain would I try to give an idea of the desolation I felt, when that thought struck my mind.

Forsaken by God and man, what would become of me? Where would I go when out of that room?

Expelled with contempt by my former Roman Catholic friends; repulsed with still more contempt by Protestants; where could I go to hide my shame and drag my miserable existence? How could I go again into that world where there was no more room for me; where there was no hand to press mine; none to smile upon me! Life suddenly became to me an unbearable burden. My brain seemed to be filled with burning coals. I was losing my mind. Yea, death, an instant death seemed to me the greatest blessing in that awful hour! and, will I say it? Yes! I took my knife to cut my throat and put an end to my miserable existence! But my merciful God, who wanted only to humble me, by showing me my own helplessness, stopped my hand, and the knife fell on the floor.

Though I felt the pangs of that desolation for more than two hours, I constantly cried to God for a ray of his saving light, for a word telling me what to do, where to go to be saved. At last, drops of cold sweat began to cover again my face and my whole body. The pulsations of my heart began to be very slow and weak: I felt so feeble that I expected to faint at any moment, or fall dead! At first I thought that death would be a great relief, but then, I said to myself: “If I die, where will I go, when there is no faith, nor a ray of light to illumine my poor perishing soul! Oh, my dear Saviour,” I cried, “come to my help! Lift up the light of thy reconciled countenance upon me.”

In that very instant, I remembered that I had my dear New Testament with me, which I used then, as now, to carry everywhere. The thought flashed across my mind that I would find in that divine book the answer to my prayer, and light to guide me through that dark night to that house of refuge and salvation, after which my soul was ardently longing. With a trembling hand and a praying heart, I opened the book at random; but, no! not I, my God himself opened it for me. My eyes fell on these words: “YE ARE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE. BE NOT YE THE SERVANTS OF MEN.” (1 Cor., 7:23.)

Strange to say! Those words came to my mind, more as a light than an articulated sound. They, suddenly, but most beautifully and powerfully, gave me, as much as a man can know it, the knowledge of the great mystery of a perfect salvation through Christ alone. They, at once, brought a great and delightful calm to my soul. I said to myself: “Jesus has bought me, then I am His; for when I have bought a thing, it is mine, absolutely mine! Jesus has bought me! I, then, belong to him! He alone has a right over me. I do not belong to the bishops, to the Popes; not even to the church, as I have been told till now. I belong to Jesus, and to him alone! His Word must be my guide, and my light by day and by night. Jesus has bought me, I said again to myself; then He has saved me! and if so, I am saved, perfectly saved, for ever saved! for Jesus cannot save me by half. Jesus is my God; the works of God are perfect. My salvation must, then, be a perfect salvation! But how has he saved me? What price has he paid for my poor guilty soul? The answer came as quickly as lightning: “He bought you with his blood shed on the cross! He saved you by dying on Calvary!”

I, then, said to myself again: “If Jesus has perfectly saved me by shedding his blood on the cross, I am not saved as I have thought and preached till now, by my penances, my prayers to Mary and the saints, my confessions and indulgences, not even by the flames or purgatory.

In that instant, all things which, as a Roman Catholic, I had to believe to be saved—all the mummeries by which the poor Roman Catholics are so cruelly deceived, the chaplets, indulgences, scapularies, auricular confession, invocation of the virgin, holy water, masses, purgatory, etc., given as means of salvation, vanished from my mind as a huge tower, when struck at the foundation, crumbles to the ground. Jesus alone remained in my mind as the Saviour of my soul!