I was born in Rigand County in the province of Vaudreuil, Quebec, Canada. I was the ninth of ten children; eight boys and two girls. My parents were extremely devout Roman Catholics. They were good, correct, sober, hardworking people who did their best to raise their children for God and the country, but alas! how ignorant they were. All they knew was how to count the rosary, go to confession, attend mass, and comply with the will and orders of their priests.
French and Catholic upbringing
I don't blame the Roman Catholic people but the Roman Catholic system and the men who rule it. The day after I was born I was taken to the local church to be baptized. At the age of seven, I was forced to go confess my sins to the priest. The priest asked me such obscene questions that I cannot put them in writing. Then I had my first communion and was duly confirmed by the Bishop of Montreal.
I am ordered to become a priest
After about ten years at Bourget College, Canon Charles Edouard, then adviser to the old Bishop Bourget, told me that I was called by God and by him to be a priest. I decided to obey my superior and went to the major seminary in Montreal where I stayed for four long years from 1862 to 1866. During that time I had no contact with the real world. Day after day he studied the theologies of Liguri and Perrone. I was very demanding in my studies and very responsible with my obligations in the seminary. Then, on December 22, 1866, surrounded by sixty priests, I was ordained a priest by Bishop Bourget.
I write to the Pope
After fourteen years as a priest, I had seen many things that disturbed me. In the end, I was so concerned about the sin and weakness that I saw in the parishes of Montreal, New Brunswick, Massachusetts, New York, and Minnesota that I put together a 150-page document that I sent it to Pope Leo XIII. In it, I informed him how truly sick his representatives were in the American continent.
Searching for the peace that passes all understanding
I finally got out of the Roman Catholic Church. It was during a week-long visit that I made to Detroit, Michigan. Although I was not yet saved, I spoke out against Romanism for the first time in a French Baptist church. My sermon was on the new dogma of 1870 regarding papal infallibility. Around this time I also learned from Charles Chiniquy, a former priest, who had been used by God to bring many lost souls from the Roman Catholic Church to Christ. I learned that Charles Chiniquy had a home for priests who, like me, were beginning to see the light and whose shoulders could no longer bear the yoke of the Pope of Rome.
I wrote to Charles Chiniquy asking for the hospitality of his home and the wealth of his experience in handling the perplexities I was facing. His response was: "Come here my dear brother Sequin, I will take care of you." He did, and with all nobility as always befits a true minister of Christ. There I met two other priests who, like me, were seeking that peace that passes all understanding.
The grace of God comes to me
How much old Chiniquy prayed that God would place in my heart the conviction that I was a lost man unless I repented and gave myself to the One who had come to save the lost. One day after lunch we read a chapter from the Bible as usual and then he prayed. For the first time in my life, I could see how my sins made me ugly and dirty in God's sight. On my knees and with tears in my eyes I cried out to God: "What should I do?"
The rest of the afternoon I begged God on my knees, in the name of his dear Son, to show me the way to reach Him. I opened my New Testament and read: “For by grace you are saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one can boast ” (Ephesians 2: 8-9). Suddenly I saw that salvation was a gift from God, and I looked at the Lord Jesus Christ, and God saved me.
Christ, the Pearl of great price
In that solemn moment of my conversion to God, when the cloud had passed, and the sun was shining on me, I shed many tears, but like the woman of the Gospel, not of bitterness but of joy. I ran and told my friend Chiniquy and, calling friends and neighbors, I told them: “Rejoice with me because today I have found peace, the gem, the pearl that I had lost; I have found the gift." There was joy throughout the house. Also the kingdom of heaven is similar to a merchant looking for good pearls, who having found a precious pearl, went and sold all that he had, and bought it" (Matthew 13: 45-46). Salvation is only in Christ.
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