THE CONVERSION OF A PRIEST IN SPAIN

Written by Himself

I was born in Samora of devout Catholic parents, counting among my relatives of previous generations, several priests, monks, and nuns, and living from my childhood in the midst of an atmosphere of exaggerated fanaticism, especially in that town and in Toro, where I passed a great part of my youth, it was natural that I felt a strong inclination to the functions of Roman Catholic worship, which impressed me by their splendor and display. When a child, my favorite games were to dress myself as a priest with chasuble and sacerdotal ornaments which I made of colored paper and cloth, and calling other children I played with them the Mass and sermon. With such antecedents it was not difficult for my father to direct my way to the ecclesiastical career, and after studying the years of primary and higher education in the College of Esculapius in the town of Samora where we lived, I went to the seminary of Samora; and later was ordained priest with the report “excellent” in almost all the subjects — three years of Latin and Humanities, three years of philosophy, and six years of theology and Holy Scriptures.

Before finishing my course and being ordained, I took part in the general competition of the parishes of the bishopric of Samora, obtaining the approbation and qualifications for benefices, and when I was made a priest, I was the youngest of those ordained in the diocese. I was in charge of a parish in the town of Lauroles. I was next appointed to Villaescusa which was given to me with rank of “parroca di ascenso,” that is, the second rank in the order of merit, the only priest in the whole diocese who at so early an age had been given this title.

In this parish, the only one in the bishopric in which there were Protestants, and to which they sent me through believing me without doubt the best qualified to contend with them and overcome them, I was eleven years, during which I put forth superhuman efforts to “make an end” of those heretics, as I called them. This was the golden dream of that epoch of my life, and to realize it I never spared any means. Money (all that I inherited from my parents and grandparents), political influence, works of zeal (not according to God), deception, promises, threats, and even denunciations of several evangelicals before the courts, doing them grave injury, guided in everything by the eager desire to annihilate the Protestants, and I am sorry to say, in a large degree I succeeded, for of more than forty evangelical families that were there, very devoted and long affiliated to their church, two-thirds were weakened by me to such an extent that they attached themselves to Catholicism, evidently without belief in it, but compelled by such pressure.

But God in His inscrutable designs knows how to extract good from evil, made use of that zeal, of that fanaticism that dominated me, to make me think in my inmost heart: “How is it, that you, being by temperament and habit peaceful and tolerant, irritate yourself about these poor people, deprived of all protection, and persecute them with implacable hatred?” And other times reflecting on what I saw and heard in them, that they did not blaspheme nor work on God’s day, nor were so given to vice as the Catholics, I thought “Why is this difference so unfavorable to us? They, the children of Luther, the followers of a false religion, are moral, prudent, peaceful, and consistent; and we the Catholics, the true Christians, how we trample underfoot in everything the law of God.”

It happened one day that I was going, as I was accustomed to do frequently, to the boys’ school, and met a boy who was carrying in his pocket a book that attracted my attention, suspecting that it belonged to the Protestants; and when I took it from him, without knowing why, I took it home and did not burn it, but felt impatient to read it.

It was a tract of the Religious Tract Society, entitled “Nights with the Romanists.” From the first chapter I was interested, and surprised at the clearness of the biblical texts which were quoted in his favor by the pastor who disputed with the Catholic, it occurred to me to do what I never did (the priests generally read their Bible little; all the literature they use for preaching is usually books and collections of sermons in which the texts already selected by the authors facilitate the work greatly) to consult the version of Scio, the Bible most used by the Catholic clergy in Spain, and I saw with astonishment that this said the same; that they were not apocryphal texts. Then commenced the preoccupation in my spirit, so deep and constant that from day to day I was being transformed into another man. I felt no pleasure in the Catholic ceremonies, and much less in sectarian propaganda.

But a very agonising doubt assailed me. I was greatly devoted to the Virgin. Everything the book said about confession, indulgences, purgatory, the Pope, etc., succeeded in convincing me completely, but with regard to the worship of Mary, the heart continued to deny its effect. I made then a calm and prolonged study, in the presence of God, of the Holy Gospels with my Bible, seeking and comparing all the passages in which Jesus and His mother intervened more or less directly, and then I found this fact clearly established which decided me completely: Our Divine Master, even at the risk of appearing in the eyes of the profane as a son disaffected towards His mother, never wished to show Himself in His life of preaching and teaching in familiar relations, but even more, appears as if in those answers and words to Mary He wished to say to the Catholics “Let it never occur to you to consider Mary with intercessory power, because Mary in the order of salvation is no more than a simple creature like any of you.”

This, as I said, decided me, and now I thought of nothing but of preparing for the day in which I should have to leave everything to follow Christ, my only Saviour, and Mediator with the Heavenly Father. At last I found myself in Madrid, completely released from all connection with the Roman Church, and seeking among my brethren, the evangelicals, how to be able to work with all my soul in the holy cause of the Gospel and of Christ, against whom I had worked so many years and with so much energy.

To recount now what in the first eleven months I had to bear and suffer is not easy in such short space. Suffice it to say that God sustained me, in every trial and tribuation, and that the more they persecuted me and injured me, the more God comforted me. In May, I was able to obtain from Bishop Cabrera (whose people I persecuted so much) opportunity for work and public testimony to the evangelical faith, and in the Press and in lectures I began to confess the mercy of the Lord to this poor sinner whom He brought from darkness to light.

Two years later I attached myself to a Protestant Church which appeared to me to have religious worship that is simplest and most spiritual, most in closest conformity with the Gospel, and since then, thanks to God, I have been able to go as itinerant preacher through more than two-thirds of Spain.... I have had the immense privilege of visiting the brethern in Villaescusa, to whom I caused so much suffering, and I shall never forget the gateful emotions I experienced in those two days in which I had the opportunity of preaching the Christ of the Gospels to those poor people who had been by me deceived with preaching the Christ of the Pope. — The Evangelical Congress, Madrid.

(Rev. Augustin Aranoles, was afterward minister of a Protestant Church in Spain.)

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