True Mode of Meeting Mr. Kingsley
What shall be the special imputation, against which I shall throw
myself in these pages, out of the thousand and one which my accuser
directs upon me? I mean to confine myself to one, for there is only
one about which I much care--the charge of untruthfulness. He may
cast upon me as many other imputations as he pleases, and they may
stick on me, as long as they can, in the course of nature. They will
fall to the ground in their season.
And indeed I think the same of the charge of untruthfulness, and I
select it from the rest, not because it is more formidable, but
because it is more serious. Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a
time, but it will not stain: Archbishop Whately used to say, "Throw
dirt enough, and some will stick;" well, will stick, but not stain. I
think he used to mean "stain," and I do not agree with him. Some dirt
sticks longer than other dirt; but no dirt is immortal. According to
the old saying, Praevalebit Veritas. There are virtues indeed, which
the world is not fitted to judge about or to uphold, such as faith,
hope, and charity: but it can judge about truthfulness; it can judge
about the natural virtues, and truthfulness is one of them. Natural
virtues may also become supernatural; truthfulness is such; but that
does not withdraw it from the jurisdiction of mankind at large. It
may be more difficult in this or that particular case for men to take
cognizance of it, as it may be difficult for the Court of Queen's
Bench at Westminster to try a case fairly which took place in
Hindoostan; but that is a question of capacity, not of right. Mankind
has the right to judge of truthfulness in the case of a Catholic, as
in the case of a Protestant, of an Italian, or of a Chinese. I have
never doubted, that in my hour, in God's hour, my avenger will
appear, and the world will acquit me of untruthfulness, even though
it be not while I live.
Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal, seeing that my
judges are my own countrymen. I think, indeed, Englishmen the most
suspicious and touchy of mankind; I think them unreasonable and
unjust in their seasons of excitement; but I had rather be an
Englishman (as in fact I am) than belong to any other race under
heaven. They are as generous, as they are hasty and burly; and their
repentance for their injustice is greater than their sin.
For twenty years and more I have borne an imputation, of which I am
at least as sensitive, who am the object of it, as they can be, who
are only the judges. I have not set myself to remove it, first,
because I never have had an opening to speak, and, next, because I
never saw in them the disposition to hear. I have wished to appeal
from Philip drunk to Philip sober. When shall I pronounce him to be
himself again? If I may judge from the tone of the public press,
which represents the public voice, I have great reason to take heart
at this time. I have been treated by contemporary critics in this
controversy with great fairness and gentleness, and I am grateful to
them for it. However, the decision of the time and mode of my defence
has been taken out of my hands; and I am thankful that it has been
so. I am bound now as a duty to myself, to the Catholic cause, to the
Catholic priesthood, to give account of myself without any delay,
when I am so rudely and circumstantially charged with untruthfulness.
I accept the challenge; I shall do my best to meet it, and I shall be
content when I have done so.
I confine myself then, in these pages, to the charge of
untruthfulness; and I hereby cart away, as so much rubbish, the
impertinences, with which the pamphlet of Accusation swarms. I shall
not think it necessary here to examine, whether I am "worked into a
pitch of confusion," or have "carried self-deception to perfection,"
or am "anxious to show my credulity," or am "in a morbid state of
mind," or "hunger for nonsense as my food," or "indulge in subtle
paradoxes" and "rhetorical exaggerations," or have "eccentricities"
or teach in a style "utterly beyond" my accuser's "comprehension," or
create in him "blank astonishment," or "exalt the magical powers of
my Church," or have "unconsciously committed myself to a statement
which strikes at the root of all morality," or "look down on the
Protestant gentry as without hope of heaven," or "had better be sent
to the furthest" Catholic "mission among the savages of the South
seas," than "to teach in an Irish Catholic University," or have
"gambled away my reason," or adopt "sophistries," or have published
"sophisms piled upon sophisms," or have in my sermons "culminating
wonders," or have a "seemingly sceptical method," or have
"barristerial ability" and "almost boundless silliness," or "make
great mistakes," or am "a subtle dialectician," or perhaps have "lost
my temper," or "misquote Scripture," or am "antiscriptural," or
"border very closely on the Pelagian heresy."--Pp. 5, 7, 26,
29-34, 37, 38, 41, 43, 44, 48.
These all are impertinences; and the list is so long that I am almost
sorry to have given them room which might be better used. However,
there they are, or at least a portion of them; and having noticed
them thus much, I shall notice them no more.
Coming then to the subject, which is to furnish the staple of my
publication, the question of my truthfulness, I first direct
attention to the passage which the Act of Accusation contains at p. 8
and p. 42. I shall give my reason presently, why I begin with it.
My accuser is speaking of my sermon on Wisdom and Innocence, and he
says, "It must be _remembered always_ that it is not a Protestant,
but a Romish sermon."--P. 8.
Then at p. 42 he continues, "Dr. Newman does not apply to it that
epithet. He called it in his letter to me of the 7th of January
(published by him) a 'Protestant' one. I remarked that, but
considered it a mere slip of the pen. Besides, I have now nothing to
say to that letter. It is to his 'Reflections,' in p. 32, which are
open ground to me, that I refer. In them he deliberately repeats the
epithet 'Protestant:' only he, in an utterly imaginary conversation,
puts it into my mouth, 'which you preached when a Protestant.' I call
the man who preached that Sermon a Protestant? I should have sooner
called him a Buddhist. _At that very time he was teaching his
disciples to scorn_ and repudiate that name of Protestant, under
which, for some reason or other, he _now finds it convenient to take
shelter_. If _he_ forgets, the world does not, the famous article in
the _British Critic_ (the then organ of his party), of three years
before, July 1841, which, after denouncing the name of Protestant,
declared the object of the party to be none other than the
'_unprotestantising_' the English Church."
In this passage my accuser asserts or implies, 1, that the sermon, on
which he originally grounded his slander against me in the January
No. of the magazine, was really and in matter of fact a "Romish"
Sermon; 2, that I ought in my pamphlet to have acknowledged this
fact; 3, that I didn't. 4, That I actually called it instead a
Protestant Sermon. 5, That at the time when I published it, twenty
years ago, I should have denied that it was a Protestant sermon. 6,
By consequence, I should in that denial have avowed that it was a
"Romish" Sermon; 7, and therefore, not only, when I was in the
Established Church, was I guilty of the dishonesty of preaching what
at the time I knew to be a "Romish" Sermon, but now too, in 1864, I
have committed the additional dishonesty of calling it a Protestant
sermon. If my accuser does not mean this, I submit to such reparation
as I owe him for my mistake, but I cannot make out that he means
anything else.
Here are two main points to be considered; 1, I in 1864 have called
it a Protestant Sermon. 2, He in 1844 and now has styled it a Popish
Sermon. Let me take these two points separately.
1. Certainly, when I was in the English Church, I _did_ disown the
word "Protestant," and that, even at an earlier date than my accuser
names; but just let us see whether this fact is anything at all to
the purpose of his accusation. Last January 7th I spoke to this
effect: "How can you prove that _Father_ Newman informs us of a
certain thing about the Roman Clergy," by referring to a _Protestant_
sermon of the Vicar of St. Mary's? My accuser answers me thus:
"There's a quibble! why, _Protestant_ is _not_ the word which you
would have used when at St. Mary's, and yet you use it now!" Very
true; I do; but what on earth does this matter to my _argument_? how
does this word "Protestant," which I used, tend in any degree to make
my argument a quibble? What word _should_ I have used twenty years
ago instead of "Protestant?" "Roman" or "Romish?" by no manner of
means.
My accuser indeed says that "it must always be remembered that it is
not a Protestant _but_ a Romish sermon." He implies, and, I suppose,
he thinks, that not to be a Protestant is to be a Roman; he may say
so, if he pleases, but so did not say that large body who have been
called by the name of Tractarians, as all the world knows. The
movement proceeded on the very basis of denying that position which
my accuser takes for granted that I allowed. It ever said, and it
says now, that there is something _between_ Protestant and Romish;
that there is a "Via Media" which is neither the one nor the other.
Had I been asked twenty years ago, what the doctrine of the
Established Church was, I should have answered, "Neither Romish _nor_
Protestant, _but_ 'Anglican' or 'Anglo-catholic.'" I should never
have granted that the sermon was Romish; I should have denied, and
that with an internal denial, quite as much as I do now, that it was
a Roman or Romish sermon. Well then, substitute the word "Anglican"
or "Anglo-catholic" for "Protestant" in my question, and see if the
argument is a bit the worse for it--thus: "How can you prove that
_Father_ Newman informs us a certain thing about the Roman Clergy, by
referring to an _Anglican_ or _Anglo-catholic_ Sermon of the Vicar of
St. Mary's?" The cogency of the argument remains just where it was.
What have I gained in the argument, what has he lost, by my having
said, not "an Anglican Sermon," but "a Protestant Sermon?" What dust
then is he throwing into our eyes!
For instance: in 1844 I lived at Littlemore; two or three miles
distant from Oxford; and Littlemore lies in three, perhaps in four,
distinct parishes, so that of particular houses it is difficult to
say, whether they are in St. Mary's, Oxford, or in Cowley, or in
Iffley, or in Sandford, the line of demarcation running even through
them. Now, supposing I were to say in 1864, that "twenty years ago I
did not live in Oxford, _because_ I lived out at Littlemore, in the
parish of Cowley;" and if upon this there were letters of mine
produced dated Littlemore, 1844, in one of which I said that "I
lived, not in Cowley, but at Littlemore, in St. Mary's parish," how
would that prove that I contradicted myself, and that therefore after
all I must be supposed to have been living in Oxford in 1844? The
utmost that would be proved by the discrepancy, such as it was,
would be, that there was some confusion either in me, or in the state
of the fact as to the limits of the parishes. There would be no
confusion about the place or spot of my residence. I should be saying
in 1864, "I did not live in Oxford twenty years ago, because I lived
at Littlemore in the Parish of Cowley." I should have been saying
in 1844, "I do not live in Oxford, because I live in St. Mary's,
Littlemore." In either case I should be saying that my _habitat_ in
1844 was _not_ Oxford, but Littlemore; and I should be giving the
same reason for it. I should be proving an _alibi_. I should be
naming the same place for the _alibi_; but twenty years ago I should
have spoken of it as St. Mary's, Littlemore, and to-day I should have
spoken of it as Littlemore in the Parish of Cowley.
And so as to my Sermon; in January, 1864, I called it a _Protestant_
sermon, and not a Roman; but in 1844 I should, if asked, have called
it an _Anglican_ sermon, and not a Roman. In both cases I should have
denied that it was Roman, and that on the ground of its being
something else; though I should have called that something else, then
by one name, now by another. The doctrine of the _Via Media_ is a
_fact_, whatever name we give to it; I, as a Roman Priest, find it
more natural and usual to call it Protestant: I, as all Oxford Vicar,
thought it more exact to call it Anglican; but, whatever I then
called it, and whatever I now call it, I mean one and the same object
by my name, and therefore not another object--viz. not the Roman
Church. The argument, I repeat, is sound, whether the _Via Media_ and
the Vicar of St. Mary's be called Anglican or Protestant.
This is a specimen of what my accuser means by my "economies;" nay,
it is actually one of those special two, three, or four, committed
after February 1, which he thinks sufficient to connect me with the
shifty casuists and the double-dealing moralists, as he considers
them, of the Catholic Church. What a "Much ado about nothing!"
2. But, whether or not he can prove that I in 1864 have committed any
logical fault in calling my Sermon on Wisdom and Innocence a
Protestant Sermon, he is and has been all along, most firm in the
belief himself that a Romish sermon it is; and this is the point on
which I wish specially to insist. It is for this cause that I made
the above extract from his pamphlet, not merely in order to answer
him, though, when I had made it, I could not pass by the attack on me
which it contains. I shall notice his charges one by one by and by;
but I have made this extract here in order to insist and to dwell on
this phenomenon--viz. that he does consider it an undeniable fact,
that the sermon is "Romish,"--meaning by "Romish" not "savouring of
Romish doctrine" merely, but "the work of a real Romanist, of a
conscious Romanist." This belief it is which leads him to be so
severe on me, for now calling it "Protestant." He thinks that,
whether I have committed any logical self-contradiction or not, I am
very well aware that, when I wrote it, I ought to have been
elsewhere, that I was a conscious Romanist, teaching Romanism;--or if
he does not believe this himself, he wishes others to think so, which
comes to the same thing; certainly I prefer to consider that he
thinks so himself, but, if he likes the other hypothesis better, he
is welcome to it.
He believes then so firmly that the sermon was a "Romish Sermon,"
that he pointedly takes it for granted, before he has adduced a
syllable of proof of the matter of fact. He _starts_ by saying that
it is a fact to be "remembered." "It _must_ be _remembered always_,"
he says, "that it is not a Protestant, but a Romish Sermon," (p. 8).
Its Romish parentage is a great truth for the memory, not a thesis
for inquiry. Merely to refer his readers to the sermon is, he
considers, to secure them on his side. Hence it is that, in his
letter of January 18, he said to me, "It seems to me, that, by
_referring_ publicly to the Sermon on which my allegations are
founded, I have given every one _an opportunity of judging of their
injustice_," that is, an opportunity of seeing that they are
transparently just. The notion of there being a _Via Media_, held all
along by a large party in the Anglican Church, and now at least not
less than at any former time, is too subtle for his intellect.
Accordingly, he thinks it was an allowable figure of speech--not
more, I suppose, than an "hyperbole"--when referring to a sermon of
the Vicar of St. Mary's in the magazine, to say that it was the
writing of a Roman priest; and as to serious arguments to prove the
point, why, they may indeed be necessary, as a matter of form, in an
act of accusation, such as his pamphlet, but they are superfluous to
the good sense of any one who will only just look into the matter
himself.
Now, with respect to the so-called arguments which he ventures to put
forward in proof that the sermon is Romish, I shall answer them,
together with all his other arguments, in the latter portion of this
reply; here I do but draw the attention of the reader, as I have said
already, to the phenomenon itself, which he exhibits, of an unclouded
confidence that the sermon is the writing of a virtual member of the
Roman communion, and I do so because it has made a great impression
on my own mind, and has suggested to me the course that I shall
pursue in my answer to him.
I say, he takes it for granted that the Sermon is the writing of a
virtual or actual, of a conscious Roman Catholic; and is impatient at
the very notion of having to prove it. Father Newman and the Vicar of
St. Mary's are one and the same: there has been no change of mind in
him; what he believed then he believes now, and what he believes now
he believed then. To dispute this is frivolous; to distinguish
between his past self and his present is subtlety, and to ask for
proof of their identity is seeking opportunity to be sophistical.
This writer really thinks that he acts a straightforward honest part,
when he says "A Catholic Priest informs us in his Sermon on Wisdom
and Innocence preached at St. Mary's," and he thinks that I am the
shuffler and quibbler when I forbid him to do so. So singular a
phenomenon in a man of undoubted ability has struck me forcibly, and
I shall pursue the train of thought which it opens.
It is not he alone who entertains, and has entertained, such an
opinion of me and my writings. It is the impression of large classes
of men; the impression twenty years ago and the impression now. There
has been a general feeling that I was for years where I had no right
to be; that I was a "Romanist" in Protestant livery and service; that
I was doing the work of a hostile church in the bosom of the English
Establishment, and knew it, or ought to have known it. There was no
need of arguing about particular passages in my writings, when the
fact was so patent, as men thought it to be.
First it was certain, and I could not myself deny it, that I scouted
the name "Protestant." It was certain again, that many of the
doctrines which I professed were popularly and generally known as
badges of the Roman Church, as distinguished from the faith of the
Reformation. Next, how could I have come by them? Evidently, I had
certain friends and advisers who did not appear; there was some
underground communication between Stonyhurst or Oscott and my rooms
at Oriel. Beyond a doubt, I was advocating certain doctrines, not
by accident, but on an understanding with ecclesiastics of the old
religion. Then men went further, and said that I had actually been
received into that religion, and withal had leave given me to profess
myself a Protestant still. Others went even further, and gave it out
to the world, as a matter of fact, of which they themselves had the
proof in their hands, that I was actually a Jesuit. And when the
opinions which I advocated spread, and younger men went further than
I, the feeling against me waxed stronger and took a wider range.
And now indignation arose at the knavery of a conspiracy such as
this:--and it became of course all the greater, in consequence of its
being the received belief of the public at large, that craft and
intrigue, such as they fancied they beheld with their own eyes, were
the very instruments to which the Catholic Church has in these last
centuries been indebted for her maintenance and extension.
There was another circumstance still, which increased the irritation
and aversion felt by the large classes, of whom I have been speaking,
as regards the preachers of doctrines, so new to them and so
unpalatable; and that was, that they developed them in so measured a
way. If they were inspired by Roman theologians (and this was taken
for granted), why did they not speak out at once? Why did they keep
the world in such suspense and anxiety as to what was coming next,
and what was to be the upshot of the whole? Why this reticence, and
half-speaking, and apparent indecision? It was plain that the plan of
operations had been carefully mapped out from the first, and that
these men were cautiously advancing towards its accomplishment, as
far as was safe at the moment; that their aim and their hope was to
carry off a large body with them of the young and the ignorant; that
they meant gradually to leaven the minds of the rising generation,
and to open the gate of that city, of which they were the sworn
defenders, to the enemy who lay in ambush outside of it. And when in
spite of the many protestations of the party to the contrary, there
was at length an actual movement among their disciples, and one went
over to Rome, and then another, the worst anticipations and the worst
judgments which had been formed of them received their justification.
And, lastly, when men first had said of me, "You will see, _he_ will
go, he is only biding his time, he is waiting the word of command
from Rome," and, when after all, after my arguments and denunciations
of former years, at length I did leave the Anglican Church for the
Roman, then they said to each other, "It is just as we said: I told
you so."
This was the state of mind of masses of men twenty years ago, who
took no more than an external and common-sense view of what was going
on. And partly the tradition, partly the effect of that feeling,
remains to the present time. Certainly I consider that, in my own
case, it is the great obstacle in the way of my being favourably
heard, as at present, when I have to make my defence. Not only am I
now a member of a most un-English communion, whose great aim is
considered to be the extinction of Protestantism and the Protestant
Church, and whose means of attack are popularly supposed to be
unscrupulous cunning and deceit, but besides, how came I originally
to have any relations with the Church of Rome at all? did I, or my
opinions, drop from the sky? how came I, in Oxford, _in gremio
Universitatis_, to present myself to the eyes of men in that
full-blown investiture of Popery? How could I dare, how could I have
the conscience, with warnings, with prophecies, with accusations
against me, to persevere in a path which steadily advanced towards,
which ended in, the religion of Rome? And how am I now to be trusted,
when long ago I was trusted, and was found wanting?
It is this which is the strength of the case of my accuser against
me;--not his arguments in themselves, which I shall easily crumble
into dust, but the bias of the court. It is the state of the
atmosphere; it is the vibration all around which will more or less
echo his assertion of my dishonesty; it is that prepossession against
me, which takes it for granted that, when my reasoning is convincing
it is only ingenious, and that when my statements are unanswerable,
there is always something put out of sight or hidden in my sleeve; it
is that plausible, but cruel conclusion to which men are so apt to
jump, that when much is imputed, something must be true, and that it
is more likely that one should be to blame, than that many should be
mistaken in blaming him;--these are the real foes which I have to
fight, and the auxiliaries to whom my accuser makes his court.
Well, I must break through this barrier of prejudice against me, if I
can; and I think I shall be able to do so. When first I read the
pamphlet of Accusation, I almost despaired of meeting effectively
such a heap of misrepresentation and such a vehemence of animosity.
What was the good of answering first one point, and then another, and
going through the whole circle of its abuse; when my answer to the
first point would be forgotten, as soon as I got to the second? What
was the use of bringing out half a hundred separate principles or
views for the refutation of the separate counts in the indictment,
when rejoinders of this sort would but confuse and torment the
reader by their number and their diversity? What hope was there of
condensing into a pamphlet of a readable length, matter which ought
freely to expand itself into half a dozen volumes? What means was
there, except the expenditure of interminable pages, to set right
even one of that series of "single passing hints," to use my
assailant's own language, which, "as with his finger tip, he had
delivered" against me?
All those separate charges of his had their force in being
illustrations of one and the same great imputation. He had a positive
idea to illuminate his whole matter, and to stamp it with a form, and
to quicken it with an interpretation. He called me a _liar_--a
simple, a broad, an intelligible, to the English public a plausible
arraignment; but for me, to answer in detail charge one by reason
one, and charge two by reason two, and charge three by reason three,
and so to proceed through the whole string both of accusations and
replies, each of which was to be independent of the rest, this would
be certainly labour lost as regards any effective result. What I
needed was a corresponding antagonist unity in my defence, and where
was that to be found? We see, in the case of commentators on the
prophecies of Scripture, an exemplification of the principle on
which I am insisting; viz. how much more powerful even a false
interpretation of the sacred text is than none at all;--how a certain
key to the visions of the Apocalypse, for instance, may cling to the
mind--(I have found it so in my own case)--mainly because they are
positive and objective, in spite of the fullest demonstration that
they really have no claim upon our belief. The reader says, "What
else can the prophecy mean?" just as my accuser asks, "What, then,
does Dr. Newman mean?" ... I reflected, and I saw a way out of my
perplexity.
Yes, I said to myself, his very question is about my _meaning_; "What
does Dr. Newman mean?" It pointed in the very same direction as that
into which my musings had turned me already. He asks what I _mean_;
not about my words, not about my arguments, not about my actions, as
his ultimate point, but about that living intelligence, by which I
write, and argue, and act. He asks about my mind and its beliefs and
its sentiments; and he shall be answered;--not for his own sake, but
for mine, for the sake of the religion which I profess, and of the
priesthood in which I am unworthily included, and of my friends and
of my foes, and of that general public which consists of neither one
nor the other, but of well-wishers, lovers of fair play, sceptical
cross-questioners, interested inquirers, curious lookers-on, and
simple strangers, unconcerned yet not careless about the issue.
My perplexity did not last half an hour. I recognised what I had to
do, though I shrank from both the task and the exposure which it
would entail. I must, I said, give the true key to my whole life; I
must show what I am that it may be seen what I am not, and that the
phantom may be extinguished which gibbers instead of me. I wish to be
known as a living man, and not as a scarecrow which is dressed up in
my clothes. False ideas may be refuted indeed by argument, but by
true ideas alone are they expelled. I will vanquish, not my accuser,
but my judges. I will indeed answer his charges and criticisms on me
one by one, lest any one should say that they are unanswerable, but
such a work shall not be the scope nor the substance of my reply. I
will draw out, as far as may be, the history of my mind; I will state
the point at which I began, in what external suggestion or accident
each opinion had its rise, how far and how they were developed from
within, how they grew, were modified, were combined, were in
collision with each other, and were changed; again how I conducted
myself towards them, and how, and how far, and for how long a time, I
thought I could hold them consistently with the ecclesiastical
engagements which I had made and with the position which I filled. I
must show--what is the very truth--that the doctrines which I held,
and have held for so many years, have been taught me (speaking
humanly) partly by the suggestions of Protestant friends, partly by
the teaching of books, and partly by the action of my own mind: and
thus I shall account for that phenomenon which to so many seems so
wonderful, that I should have left "my kindred and my father's house"
for a Church from which once I turned away with dread;--so wonderful
to them! as if forsooth a religion which has flourished through so
many ages, among so many nations, amid such varieties of social life,
in such contrary classes and conditions of men, and after so many
revolutions, political and civil, could not subdue the reason and
overcome the heart, without the aid of fraud and the sophistries of
the schools.
What I had proposed to myself in the course of half an hour, I
determined on at the end of ten days. However, I have many
difficulties in fulfilling my design. How am I to say all that has to
be said in a reasonable compass? And then as to the materials of my
narrative; I have no autobiographical notes to consult, no written
explanations of particular treatises or of tracts which at the
time gave offence, hardly any minutes of definite transactions
or conversations, and few contemporary memoranda, I fear, of the
feelings or motives under which from time to time I acted. I have an
abundance of letters from friends with some copies or drafts of my
answers to them, but they are for the most part unsorted, and, till
this process has taken place, they are even too numerous and various
to be available at a moment for my purpose. Then, as to the volumes
which I have published, they would in many ways serve me, were I well
up in them; but though I took great pains in their composition, I
have thought little about them, when they were at length out of my
hands, and, for the most part, the last time I read them has been
when I revised their proof sheets.
Under these circumstances my sketch will of course be incomplete. I
now for the first time contemplate my course as a whole; it is a
first essay, but it will contain, I trust, no serious or substantial
mistake, and so far will answer the purpose for which I write it. I
purpose to set nothing down in it as certain, for which I have not a
clear memory, or some written memorial, or the corroboration of some
friend. There are witnesses enough up and down the country to verify,
or correct, or complete it; and letters moreover of my own in
abundance, unless they have been destroyed.
Moreover, I mean to be simply personal and historical: I am not
expounding Catholic doctrine, I am doing no more than explaining
myself, and my opinions and actions. I wish, as far as I am able,
simply to state facts, whether they are ultimately determined to
be for me or against me. Of course there will be room enough for
contrariety of judgment among my readers, as to the necessity, or
appositeness, or value, or good taste, or religious prudence of the
details which I shall introduce. I may be accused of laying stress on
little things, of being beside the mark, of going into impertinent or
ridiculous details, of sounding my own praise, of giving scandal; but
this is a case above all others, in which I am bound to follow my own
lights and to speak out my own heart. It is not at all pleasant for
me to be egotistical; nor to be criticised for being so. It is not
pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old, what has gone on
within me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to
every shallow or flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing
my most private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between
myself and my Maker. But I do not like to be called to my face a liar
and a knave: nor should I be doing my duty to my faith or to my name,
if I were to suffer it. I know I have done nothing to deserve such an
insult; and if I prove this, as I hope to do, I must not care for
such incidental annoyances as are involved in the process.