My Conversion
THE aversion which from that time I conceived for every thing savoring of Romanism, pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, and friars, proceeded, no doubt, from the change which for several years had been working in my mind. I already was no longer a papist, because I had long ceased to believe in many doctrines which are matters of faith in the Romish Church.
I will now state how this was brought about. While holding the head professorship of theology in the college
of Santa Maria di Gradi at Viterbo, and with great zeal advocating and teaching the Romish doctrine, a very
flourishing school, not only of Dominican students, of which the college consisted, but likewise of other friars and priests, used daily to attend my lectures, and be present at our circalo, or "circle," as -we call our meeting for scholastic exercise, when a theological proposition is given, and defended by a professor and a student, while other professors and students raise objections. The exercise is in Latin, and in the logical form of reasoning as held by Aristotle. I had ordered that this exercise should take place three times a week, while the theological lectures were five in number during that period. At the " circle," it sometimes fell to my turn to defend, while the others objected. One day I was defending the doctrine of transubstantiation ; one of the best disciples in the school was with me, whose name I feel a pleasure in mentioning — Father Baldassare Conti, a Roman, who afterward filled the professor's chair of theology in the Minerva at Rome with so much honor. The question was, "
Whether the bread and wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist are, in virtue of the words of consecration, actually
and substantially changed into the body and blood of Christ, together with His soul and His divinity ?" We maintained the affirmative, and three or four others, with fictitious earnestness, denied the proposition, advancing arguments which they took care beforehand to assure us were all borrowed from the heretics.. The game went off as it invariably did ; we were, of course, right, and our opponents wrong. The reasoning of my good and clever Conti, and especially what I contributed myself, were the ne plus ultra for the school, and even elicited uproarious applause. The heretics were discomfited, the Roman Catholics triumphant. We were the two heroes who had gained the battle ; the laurel crown alone was wanting. Who, after our arguments, could possibly have doubted a doctrine so boldly asserted, so powerfully demonstrated ? Who would have dared to have sided with the heretics, viz., with those who denied transubstantiation ? I believe a shadow of doubt did not enter the mind of any one excepting myself. In the midst of this universal satisfaction, I alone remained unconvinced. To me, the answers to the objections appeared feeble and inadequate. I was disquieted within me. I asked the young Conti how he was pleased with the " circle ;" whether any answers seemed to him to want weight?
I am pleased with the arguments I brought forward," he replied, " and still more so with what you yourself advanced. Indeed, I am not aware that more could possibly have been said. But, after all, the matter is a mystery
which can not be explained by reasoning ; faith^must come to our aid. Henry Moore, a celebrated Englishman, has well observed, as Erasmus relates, Crede quod habes, et habes — ' Believe you receive, and you do receive.' " Of course, it was not proper for me to communicate my doubts to the young student ; he was better pleased in having discovered, as he 'fancied, the mystery of that religious impossibility than an alchemist would have been in finding the philosopher' s stone,
I had none in whom I could confide. My colleague and friend, Professor Borg, was a man who would rather have
renounced his reason, or doubted of his very existence, than have denied a dogma of faith ; besides which, he was of opinion that such points ought not to be too freely discussed. " What did you think of our controversy ?" said I. "All went off well," he replied; "he is an excellent young man, that Conti. What he said pleased me Very
much ; and very true is that famous verse of Dante with which he concluded : ' Vedi che in fronte ha scritto : adora e taci.' " - It would evidently have been useless to enter upon any discussion with such a man as my good friend Borg ; I therefore came to the conclusion that I had better study the thing by myself, and endeavor to ascertain the real truth. It is this important question which so many have racked their brains to understand in the Romish sense. The matter resolves itself simply into this : Are the words, " This is my body," " This is my blood," to be understood in a literal sense ? Every one must see the absurdity of it. The least consideration will show that Christ said these words in the same sense as he said on another occasion, " I am the bread that came down from heaven," and no one ever supposed that He was actually bread, and subsequently changed, or transubstantiated. A little examination was sufficient to shake my belief in that doctrine which I had hitherto professed.,
Would Jesus Christ have told us things that were impossible to be ? Now it is impossible, absolutely impossible,
that what is bread should at one and the same time be His body, and that what is wine should be contemporaneously His blood. This can not be, either simultaneously or successively. The Church of Rome saw the first to be an absurdity, and therefore held to the second. But how can the body of Christ become bread, and His blbod wine, if such change be not in accordance with the laws of nature ? Could Christ deceive us ? Now it is not true that bread and wine,"uccording to nature, have ceased to exist in the sacrament, for we see they do exist ; that which we see, touch, and taste, are natural bread and wine. Can there be faith against nature ? And yet that is against nature which neither is nor can be : whatever is, must be according to nature's laws. There may be substances of a higher nature, and subject to superior laws than those with which we are acquainted, but they can never exist in contradiction to them, since nature herself, in that case, would be destroyed. Therefore what is bread and wine can not not 'be bread and wine ; God, omnipotent as he" is, can not order it otherwise. But the sacrament, after consecration, is always natural bread and wine ; therefore it is not the substance of the body and blood of Christ. And what, I should like to know, would be the use of this pretended transubstantiation ? Would it merely be, that the faithful might materially eat the body and drink the blood of Christ ? Now who does not see that this so-called eating and drinking of Christ is entirely metaphorical ? " The kingdom of God is not meal; and drink,"* said St. -Paul. "It is the Spirit that quickeneth — the flesh profiteth nothing : the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life,"t said Christ. The expressions to eat and drink signify to believe, to identify one's self with, as also to accept any thing with pleasure. " Kill and eat,"J said the Spirit to Peter in the vision at Joppa, figuring under the unclean animals the Gentiles. Now all this Peter well understood, and never imagined he was to eat those animals, much less the Gentiles that he might fall in with, but to convert and receive them into the communion of the Christian faith.
Why, then, should we eat Christ ? „ To believe in Him— to unite ourselves to Him ? But this is entirely the work
of the Spirit, and has nothing whatever to do with matter ; on the contrary, every thing material is repugnant to this
union of faith. Corporeal substance may be a type, a. figure of the spiritual, but nothing more. Baptismal water is the outward and visible sign of the spiritual and purifying grace, because, as the former cleanses the body from impurity, so does the latter wash away the stain of sin from the soul. In the same manner as bread and wine are the common daily food of the body, and as through them we receive nourishment and strength, so the body and blood of Christ, immolated and shed for us, are the continual aliment of our faith, which give vigor to our souls, and are the substance of our spiritual life and salvation. The words of Christ are truly divine, full of truth and wisdom. The interpretation of the Romanists is a groveling human conception, full of error, falsehood, and absurdity. Christ could not better symbolize the effect of his passion and death. And we can not more grossly abuse it than by attributing to a sinful priest the virtue and power of the Savior ; .with the additional enormity, that what Christ has been able to do once, a wretched priest can repeat as often as he chooses. The doctrine of transubstantiation, considered in relation to Christ himself, is a falsity and an absurdity ; considered as regards
so many thousands of wicked priests, is an impiety and an abomination.
Thus did I reason with myself, and became fully convinced that such was not the meaning of Christ's words,
that such was not the Christian faith, that such was not the belief of our fathers ; that thousands of Christian doctors in all ages have refuted the doctrine of transubstantiation, the author of which was Eutychus, a heretic, andwhose dogma was presented to the Church hy Pope Innocent III., who had it confirmed hy the Council of Lateran (1215). In consequence of this reasoning, I already dishelieved in the virtue of the Mass, which can only be a propitiatory sacrifice, so far as it presents a true and living Christ, to be immolated each time it is celebrated. Take away the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the Mass, in its grand essential, is nothing but a lie — a solemn imposture, an actual sacrilegious assault against Christ; who 'being now glorious, according to our faith, is also impassible, and as such, can neither be " broken" nor eaten by, us. To eat'Christ ! the bare mention of such a thing is blasphemy. Far less was the crime of those who crucified the Lord ; indeed, they knew not that he was Christ. What should we have said to those who, knowing Christ — who, having heard the words which we read in St. John, vi., 53, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and
drink his blood, ye have no life in you," had straightway, from devotion, begun actually to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ ? Which of His disciples would not have exclaimed against a similar act of barbarity ? And yet they would not have been more guilty than the theologians of the Romish Church, who take the words of Christ literally. '
After this period, in saying mass I was no longer a Christophagus ;* I had ceased to believe in what I did. And
what, in reality, was the act that I performed ? I know not. I was like Luther, arid so many others, who no longer
believed the Mass, who had rejected its doctrine, and learnedly refuted its errors, but still continued to celebrate it. I said it, indeed, as seldom as possible ; always with a bad grace, as if under compulsion, and frequently I could not restrain my sighs. I was, moreover, ashamed of saying it in the presence of sensible and intelligent persons, as if afraid of their censure for performing an act, in the efficacy or virtue of which I no longer believed. I contrived, too, to say it at those hours when there were the fewest persons in the church, and at the most secluded altars. I always Christ-eater.
refused solemn masses. In short, the Mass, which for others was a delightful service, had become for me a very painful one. I endeavored sometimes to regard it as a simple prayer, leaving out the idea of a sacrifice or sacrament ; but this was impossible when what is termed the offertory was to take place, and still more so at the time of the consecration and elevation of the host and the chalice. Although I myself was no longer an adorer of the bread and wine, yet at my mass there never failed to be some who adored my bread and wine, believing it transubstantiated, and so I was the occasion of that idolatry. Thus I consider that the dogma which constitutes the Mass, with its double element of transubstantiation and propitiatory sacrifice, is the most fatal of Romish doctrines, the most detestable of all heresies, and the most abominable of all practices. Around this, as their sun, revolves all the rest of the papal system. The power which, according to this doctrine, the priest' has of fabricating in an hour, not one, but as many Christs as he pleases, and of offering them to God as victims of a sacrifice which in itself is enough to atone for the sins of all, and to take out of purgatory as many souls as he pleases — this pretended power, I say, is the occasion of so much pride in th& priests as to make them
think themselves privileged persons, sacred and unapproachable, and to consider their head, the pope, holy, infallible, and having all authority in heaven and in earth.
In disbelieving the doctrine I denied the power. To me friars, priests, and prelates all savored of imposture ; and
the more I advanced, the more I felt myself adverse to such hypocrisy. The pope daily became more abominable in my eyes. In him, i. e., in his ambition, I saw a Lucifer, who, after having seduced himself, has had power to seduce others, thus causing the fall of so many shining stars from heaven to hell. Now many say, " I believe so, because the pope so believes ; if the pope errs, I must err with him ; if he were to call virtue vice, and vice virtue, I must be his echo, and in all and through all follow him." Such is the language of the Jesuits, from Bellarmine to Father Perrone. " O ye foolish ones, who hath bewitched you ?" As my creed changed, so did my conversation. Lenient to the laity, I was severe toward ecclesiastics ; for the former I was full of compassion, for the latter I had only reproof ; their vices were become insufferable to me ; with their example continually before me, I endeavored to be as opposite to them as possible. It was my ambition to be unlike others of my class; they, for the most part, were unoccupied and idle ; I made it a rule to keep myself eonstantly employed ; they were generally given to gluttony, I was habitually temperate ; they were heedless spendthrifts, imprudent, dissipated, curious after other, people's business, and intriguers in private houses ; I never interfered in what did not concern me, and was an enemy to the intrigues and cabals in which they took so much satisfaction. " Why do you scarcely ever go to hear confessions?" asked one of those friars who delight in hearing them continually. -> , "
Because you and all your fraternity, not knowing how better to employ your time, pass the whole day in listening
to the business of others," answered I. " There is no reason that I should follow your example ; on the contrary, I
do what you do not', I study to learn, that I may be able to teach others ; in short, I endeavor in every way to be
useful to my fellow-creatures." " Why do you so seldom attend choir ?" was the inquiry of one of those Epicurean friars, who, had he not had the fatigue of choir, i. e., of singing at the top of his voice, and chanting psalms, would probably have had no means of 'digesting his dinner, and preparing his stomach for supper. " Because," said I, " I have so many other corporeal exercises that I am in no need of this." " But the prayer, which is a duty we all owe to the Almighty ?" " No doubt pleases me when made in spirit and in truth. But prayer, to be in spirit, should be free, not necessarily attached to the Psalms of David. What have you said or
Bom., xiv., 17. t St. John, vi., 63. t Acts, x., 13