The book speaks, and brings salvation

Reading about church history has caused me to think about my testimony, why I am a Protestant Christian, and how I came to believe what I do. I am now reading about the reformers, Wycliffe, John Huss, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and that has brought to mind my years in a Catholic high school and the history class in which we studied that period of time known as the Reformation. There were several factors that made me (for the first time), sit up in that class and pay attention. First, I was a deep thinker, and frustrated my friends' apathy toward religion; they had no interest in learning about their religion and didn't care about the meaning behind any of the rituals. They just did what the preist told them to, no questions asked. That's where my inherited stubbornness and skepticism came in. I wasn't going to do something unless I knew what it meant, and it needed to be done. Having been brought up in a Baptist church, I knew the Bible's teachings pretty well, and I saw some discrepancies and refused to participate in many Catholic rituals with the excuse that "I am Baptist." So while my friends were confessing and taking Eucharist, I was reading my little pocket Bible, trying to figure things out. Then we started to study John Huss and Wycliffe, who centuries ago, defied the universal Catholic church, the supreme authority over all spiritual and political matters. Huss and Wycliffe insisted that the Bible was the only authority, and that Christ was the head of the church. They both worked on having the Bible, God's Word, translated and available to every person. These men and their successors faced major persecutions. John Huss was burned at the stake for declaring Christ as the head of the church, infuriating the pope. Huss didn't die in vain; because of him, anyone could read the Bible, including a kid in Catholic school in the 8Os. That's why I am a Protestant, and why I believe and do what I do. That's the story of my salvation.