Apologia Pro Vita Sua | Page 6

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.
* * * * *
It is not my present accuser alone who entertains, and has entertained,
so dishonourable an opinion of me and of 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 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,
against 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 gates 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,