I have imbibed her doctrine with my mother's milk. I have made her history and theology the study of my life. What motive can I have in misleading you? Not temporal reward, since I seek [pg xv] not your money, but your soul, for which Jesus Christ died. I could not hope for an eternal reward by deceiving you, for I would thereby purchase for myself eternal condemnation by gaining proselytes at the expense of truth.
This, friendly reader, is my only motive. I feel in the depth of my heart that, in possessing Catholic faith, I hold a treasure compared with which all things earthly are but dross. Instead of wishing to bury this treasure in my breast, I long to share it with you, especially as I lose no part of my spiritual riches by communicating them to others.
It is to me a duty and a labor of love to speak the truth concerning my venerable Mother, so much maligned in our days. Were a tithe of the accusations which are brought against her true, I would not be attached to her ministry, nor even to her communion, for a single day. I know these charges to be false. The longer I know her, the more I admire and venerate her. Every day she develops before me new spiritual charms.
Ah! my dear friend, if you saw her as her children see her, she would no longer appear to you as typified by the woman of Babylon. She would be revealed to you, “Bright as the sun, fair as the moon;” with the beauty of Heaven stamped upon her brow, glorious “as an army in battle array.” You would love her, you would cling to her and embrace her. With her children, you would rise up in reverence “and call her blessed.”
Consider what you lose and what you gain in embracing the Catholic religion.
Your loss is nothing in comparison with your gain. You do not surrender your manhood or your dignity or independence or reasoning powers. You give up none of those revealed truths which you may possess already. The only restraint imposed [pg xvi] upon you is the restraint of the Gospel, and to this you will not reasonably object.
You gain everything that is worth having. You acquire a full and connected knowledge of God's revelation. You get possession of the whole truth as it is in Jesus. You no longer see it in fragments, but reflected before you in all its beauty, as in a polished mirror. While others are outside criticising the architecture of the temple, you are inside worshiping the divine Architect and saying devoutly with the Psalmist: “I have loved O Lord, the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thy glory dwelleth.” While others from without find in the stained-glass windows only blurred and confused figures without symmetry or attraction or meaning, you from within, are gazing with silent rapture on God's glorified saints, with their outlines clearly defined on the windows, and all illuminated with the sunlight of heaven. Your knowledge of the truth is not only complete and harmonious, but it becomes fixed and steady. You exchange opinion for certainty. You are no longer “tossed about by every wind of doctrine,” but you are firmly grounded on the rock of truth. Then you enjoy that profound peace which springs from the conscious possession of the truth.
In coming to the Church, you are not entering a strange place, but you are returning to your Father's home. The house and furniture may look odd to you, but it is just the same as your forefathers left it three hundred years ago. In coming back to the Church, you worship where your fathers worshiped before you, you kneel before the altar at which they knelt, you receive the Sacraments which they received, and respect the authority of the clergy whom they venerated. You come back like the Prodigal Son to the home of [pg xvii] your father and mother. The garment of joy is placed upon you, the banquet of love is set before you, and you receive the kiss of peace as a pledge of your filiation and adoption. One hearty embrace of your tender Mother will compensate you for all the sacrifices you may have made, and you will exclaim with the penitent Augustine: “Too late have I known thee, O Beauty, ever ancient and ever new, too late have I loved thee.” Should the perusal of this book bring one soul to the knowledge of the Church, my labor will be amply rewarded.
Remember that nothing is so essential as the salvation of your immortal soul, “for what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”[2] Let not, therefore, the fear of offending friends and relatives, the persecution of men, the loss of earthly possessions, nor any other temporal calamity, deter you from investigating and embracing the true religion. “For our present tribulation, which is momentary and light, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.”[3]
May God give you light to see the truth, and, having seen it, may He give you courage and strength to follow it!