Apologia Pro Vita Sua — 17 - Chapter 4, Part 4

§ 2. The letter which I have last inserted, is addressed to my dear friend, Dr. Russell, the present President of Maynooth.

He had, perhaps, more to do with my conversion than any one else.

He called upon me, in passing through Oxford in the summer of 1841, and I think I took him over some of the buildings of the University.

He called again another summer, on his way from Dublin to London.

I do not recollect that he said a word on the subject of religion on either occasion.

He sent me at different times several letters; he was always gentle, mild, unobtrusive, uncontroversial.

He let me alone.

He also gave me one or two books.

Veron's Rule of Faith and some Treatises of the Wallenburghs was one; a volume of St. Alfonso Liguori's Sermons was another; and it is to those Sermons that my letter to Dr. Russell relates.

Now it must be observed that the writings of St. Alfonso, as I knew them by the extracts commonly made from them, prejudiced me as much against the Roman Church as any thing else, on account of what was called their "Mariolatry;" but there was nothing of the kind in this book.

I wrote to ask Dr. Russell whether any thing had been left out in the translation;

he answered that there certainly were omissions in one Sermon about the Blessed Virgin.

This omission, in the case of a book intended for Catholics, at least showed that such passages as are found in the works of Italian Authors were not acceptable to every part of the Catholic world.

Such devotional manifestations in honour of our Lady had been my great _crux_ as regards Catholicism; I say frankly, I do not fully enter into them now; I trust I do not love her the less, because I cannot enter into them.

They may be fully explained and defended; but sentiment and taste do not run with logic: they are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England.

But, over and above England, my own case was special; from a boy I had been led to consider that my Maker and I, His creature, were the two beings, luminously such, _in rerum naturâ_.

I

will not here speculate, however, about my own feelings.

Only this I know full well now, and did not know then, that the Catholic Church allows no image of any sort, material or immaterial, no dogmatic symbol, no rite, no sacrament, no Saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its Creator.

It is face to face, "solus cum solo," in all matters between man and his God.

He alone creates; He alone has redeemed; before His awful eyes we go in death; in the vision of Him is our eternal beatitude.

1. Solus cum solo:--I recollect but indistinctly what I gained from the Volume of which I have been speaking; but it must have been something considerable.

At least I had got a key to a difficulty; in these Sermons, (or rather heads of sermons, as they seem to be, taken down by a hearer,) there is much of what would be called legendary illustration;

but the substance of them is plain, practical, awful preaching upon the great truths of salvation.

What I can speak of with greater confidence is the effect produced on me a little later by studying the Exercises of St. Ignatius.

For here again, in a matter consisting in the purest and most direct acts of religion,--in the intercourse between God and the soul, during a season of recollection, of repentance, of good resolution, of inquiry into vocation,--the soul was "sola cum solo;"

there was no cloud interposed between the creature and the Object of his faith and love.

The command practically enforced was, "My son, give Me thy heart."

The devotions then to Angels and Saints as little interfered with the incommunicable glory of the Eternal, as the love which we bear our friends and relations, our tender human sympathies, are inconsistent with that supreme homage of the heart to the Unseen, which really does but sanctify and exalt, not jealously destroy, what is of earth.

At a later date Dr. Russell sent me a large bundle of penny or half-penny books of devotion, of all sorts, as they are found in the booksellers' shops at Rome; and, on looking them over, I was quite astonished to find how different they were from what I had fancied, how little there was in them to which I could really object.

I have given an account of them in my Essay on the Development of Doctrine.

Dr. Russell sent me St. Alfonso's book at the end of 1842; however, it was still a long time before I got over my difficulty, on the score of the devotions paid to the Saints; perhaps, as I judge from a letter I have turned up, it was some way into 1844 before I could be said fully to have got over it.

2. I am not sure that I did not also at this time feel the force of another consideration.

The idea of the Blessed Virgin was as it were _magnified_ in the Church of Rome, as time went on,--but so were all the Christian ideas; as that of the Blessed Eucharist.

The whole scene of pale, faint, distant Apostolic Christianity is seen in Rome, as through a telescope or magnifier.

The harmony of the whole, however, is of course what it was.

It is unfair then to take one Roman idea, that of the Blessed Virgin, out of what may be called its context.

3. Thus I am brought to the principle of development of doctrine in the Christian Church, to which I gave my mind at the end of 1842. I had made mention of it in the passage, which I quoted many pages back (vide p. 111), in "Home Thoughts Abroad," published in 1836; and even at an earlier date I had introduced it into my History of the Arians in 1832;

nor had I ever lost sight of it in my speculations.

And it is certainly recognized in the Treatise of Vincent of Lerins, which has so often been taken as the basis of Anglicanism.

In 1843 I began to consider it attentively; I made it the subject of my last University Sermon on February 2; and the general view to which I came is stated thus in a letter to a friend of the date of July 14, 1844;--it will be observed that, now as before, my _issue_ is still Creed _versus_ Church:-- "The kind of considerations which weighs with me are such as the following:--1. I am far more certain (according to the Fathers) that we _are_ in a state of culpable separation, _than_ that developments do _not_ exist under the Gospel, and that the Roman developments are not the true ones.

2. I am far more certain, that _our_ (modern) doctrines are wrong, _than_ that the _Roman_ (modern) doctrines are wrong.

3. Granting that the Roman (special) doctrines are not found drawn out in the early Church, yet I think there is sufficient trace of them in it, to recommend and prove them, _on the hypothesis_ of the Church having a divine guidance, though not sufficient to prove them by itself.

So that the question simply turns on the nature of the promise of the Spirit, made to the Church.

4. The proof of the Roman (modern) doctrine is as strong (or stronger) in Antiquity, as that of certain doctrines which both we and Romans hold: e. g. there is more of evidence in Antiquity for the necessity of Unity, than for the Apostolical Succession; for the Supremacy of the See of Rome, than for the Presence in the Eucharist;

for the practice of Invocation, than for certain books in the present Canon of Scripture, &c. &c. 5. The analogy of the Old Testament, and also of the New, leads to the acknowledgment of doctrinal developments."

4. And thus I was led on to a further consideration.

I saw that the principle of development not only accounted for certain facts, but was in itself a remarkable philosophical phenomenon, giving a character to the whole course of Christian thought.

It was discernible from the first years of the Catholic teaching up to the present day, and gave to that teaching a unity and individuality.

It served as a sort of test, which the Anglican could not exhibit, that modern Rome was in truth ancient Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, just as a mathematical curve has its own law and expression.

5. And thus again I was led on to examine more attentively what I doubt not was in my thoughts long before, viz.

the concatenation of argument by which the mind ascends from its first to its final religious idea;

and I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the other.

And I hold this still: I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in a God; and if I am asked why I believe in a God, I answer that it is because I believe in myself, for I feel it impossible to believe in my own existence (and of that fact I am quite sure) without believing also in the existence of Him, who lives as a Personal, All-seeing, All-judging Being in my conscience.

Now, I dare say, I have not expressed myself with philosophical correctness, because I have not given myself to the study of what metaphysicians have said on the subject; but I think I have a strong true meaning in what I say which will stand examination.

6. Moreover, I found a corroboration of the fact of the logical connexion of Theism with Catholicism in a consideration parallel to that which I had adopted on the subject of development of doctrine.

The fact of the operation from first to last of that principle of development in the truths of Revelation, is an argument in favour of the identity of Roman and Primitive Christianity; but as there is a law which acts upon the subject-matter of dogmatic theology, so is there a law in the matter of religious faith.

In the first chapter of this Narrative I spoke of certitude as the consequence, divinely intended and enjoined upon us, of the accumulative force of certain given reasons which, taken one by one, were only probabilities.

Let it be recollected that I am historically relating my state of mind, at the period of my life which I am surveying.

I am not speaking theologically, nor have I any intention of going into controversy, or of defending myself; but speaking historically of what I held in 1843-4, I say, that I believed in a God on a ground of probability, that I believed in Christianity on a probability, and that I believed in Catholicism on a probability, and that these three grounds of probability, distinct from each other of course in subject matter, were still all of them one and the same in nature of proof, as being probabilities--probabilities of a special kind, a cumulative, a transcendent probability but still probability;

inasmuch as He who made us has so willed, that in mathematics indeed we should arrive at certitude by rigid demonstration, but in religious inquiry we should arrive at certitude by accumulated probabilities;--He has willed, I say, that we should so act, and, as willing it, He co-operates with us in our acting, and thereby enables us to do that which He wills us to do, and carries us on, if our will does but co-operate with His, to a certitude which rises higher than the logical force of our conclusions.

And thus I came to see clearly, and to have a satisfaction in seeing, that, in being led on into the Church of Rome, I was not proceeding on any secondary or isolated grounds of reason, or by controversial points in detail, but was protected and justified, even in the use of those secondary or particular arguments, by a great and broad principle.

But, let it be observed, that I am stating a matter of fact, not defending it; and if any Catholic says in consequence that I have been converted in a wrong way, I cannot help that now.

I have nothing more to say on the subject of the change in my religious opinions.

On the one hand I came gradually to see that the Anglican Church was formally in the wrong, on the other that the Church of Rome was formally in the right; then, that no valid reasons could be assigned for continuing in the Anglican, and again that no valid objections could be taken to joining the Roman.

Then, I had nothing more to learn; what still remained for my conversion, was, not further change of opinion, but to change opinion itself into the clearness and firmness of intellectual conviction.

Now I proceed to detail the acts, to which I committed myself during this last stage of my inquiry.

* * * * * In 1843, I took two very significant steps:--1. In February, I made a formal Retractation of all the hard things which I had said against the Church of Rome.

2. In September, I resigned the Living of St. Mary's, Littlemore included:--I will speak of these two acts separately.

1. The words, in which I made my Retractation, have given rise to much criticism.

After quoting a number of passages from my writings against the Church of Rome, which I withdrew, I ended thus:--"If you ask me how an individual could venture, not simply to hold, but to publish such views of a communion so ancient, so wide-spreading, so fruitful in Saints, I answer that I said to myself, 'I am not speaking my own words, I am but following almost a _consensus_ of the divines of my own Church.

They have ever used the strongest language against Rome, even the most able and learned of them.

I wish to throw myself into their system.

While I say what they say, I am safe.

Such views, too, are necessary for our position.'

Yet I have reason to fear still, that such language is to be ascribed, in no small measure, to an impetuous temper, a hope of approving myself to persons I respect, and a wish to repel the charge of Romanism."

These words have been, and are, again and again cited against me, as if a confession that, when in the Anglican Church, I said things against Rome which I did not really believe.

For myself, I cannot understand how any impartial man can so take them;

and I have explained them in print several times.

I trust that by this time their plain meaning has been satisfactorily brought out by what I have said in former portions of this Narrative; still I have a word or two to say in addition to my former remarks upon them.

In the passage in question I apologize for _saying out_ in controversy charges against the Church of Rome, which withal I affirm that I fully _believed_ at the time when I made them.

What is wonderful in such an apology?

There are surely many things a man may hold, which at the same time he may feel that he has no right to say publicly, and which it may annoy him that he has said publicly.

The law recognizes this principle.

In our own time, men have been imprisoned and fined for saying true things of a bad king.

The maxim has been held, that, "The greater the truth, the greater is the libel."

And so as to the judgment of society, a just indignation would be felt against a writer who brought forward wantonly the weaknesses of a great man, though the whole world knew that they existed.

No one is at liberty to speak ill of another without a justifiable reason, even though he knows he is speaking truth, and the public knows it too.

Therefore, though I believed what I said against the Roman Church, nevertheless I could not religiously speak it out, unless I was really justified, not only in believing ill, but in speaking ill.

I did believe what I said on what I thought to be good reasons; but had I also a just cause for saying out what I believed?

I

thought I had, and it was this, viz.

that to say out what I believed was simply necessary in the controversy for self-defence.

It was impossible to let it alone: the Anglican position could not be satisfactorily maintained, without assailing the Roman.

In this, as in most cases of conflict, one party was right or the other, not both; and the best defence was to attack.

Is not this almost a truism in the Roman controversy?

Is it not what every one says, who speaks on the subject at all?

Does any serious man abuse the Church of Rome, for the sake of abusing her, or because that abuse justifies his own religious position?

What is the meaning of the very word "Protestantism," but that there is a call to speak out?

This then is what I said: "I know I spoke strongly against the Church of Rome; but it was no mere abuse, for I had a serious reason for doing so."

But, not only did I think such language necessary for my Church's religious position, but I recollected that all the great Anglican divines had thought so before me.

They had thought so, and they had acted accordingly.

And therefore I observe in the passage in question, with much propriety, that I had not used strong language simply out of my own head, but that in doing so I was following the track, or rather reproducing the teaching, of those who had preceded me.

I was pleading guilty to using violent language, but I was pleading also that there were extenuating circumstances in the case.

We all know the story of the convict, who on the scaffold bit off his mother's ear.

By doing so he did not deny the fact of his own crime, for which he was to hang; but he said that his mother's indulgence when he was a boy, had a good deal to do with it.

In like manner I had made a charge, and I had made it _ex animo_; but I accused others of having, by their own example, led me into believing it and publishing it.

I was in a humour, certainly, to bite off their ears.

I will freely confess, indeed I said it some pages back, that I was angry with the Anglican divines.

I thought they had taken me in; I had read the Fathers with their eyes; I had sometimes trusted their quotations or their reasonings; and from reliance on them, I had used words or made statements, which by right I ought rigidly to have examined myself.

I

had thought myself safe, while I had their warrant for what I said.

I

had exercised more faith than criticism in the matter.

This did not imply any broad misstatements on my part, arising from reliance on their authority, but it implied carelessness in matters of detail.

And this of course was a fault.

But there was a far deeper reason for my saying what I said in this matter, on which I have not hitherto touched; and it was this:--The most oppressive thought, in the whole process of my change of opinion, was the clear anticipation, verified by the event, that it would issue in the triumph of Liberalism.

Against the Anti-dogmatic principle I had thrown my whole mind; yet now I was doing more than any one else could do, to promote it.

I was one of those who had kept it at bay in Oxford for so many years; and thus my very retirement was its triumph.

The men who had driven me from Oxford were distinctly the Liberals; it was they who had opened the attack upon Tract 90, and it was they who would gain a second benefit, if I went on to abandon the Anglican Church.

But this was not all.

As I have already said, there are but two alternatives, the way to Rome, and the way to Atheism: Anglicanism is the halfway house on the one side, and Liberalism is the halfway house on the other.

How many men were there, as I knew full well, who would not follow me now in my advance from Anglicanism to Rome, but would at once leave Anglicanism and me for the Liberal camp.

It is not at all easy (humanly speaking) to wind up an Englishman to a dogmatic level.

I had done so in good measure, in the case both of young men and of laymen, the Anglican _Via Media_ being the representative of dogma.

The dogmatic and the Anglican principle were one, as I had taught them; but I was breaking the _Via Media_ to pieces, and would not dogmatic faith altogether be broken up, in the minds of a great number, by the demolition of the _Via Media_?

Oh!

how unhappy this made me!

I heard once from an eye-witness the account of a poor sailor whose legs were shattered by a ball, in the action off Algiers in 1816, and who was taken below for an operation.

The surgeon and the chaplain persuaded him to have a leg off; it was done and the tourniquet applied to the wound.

Then, they broke it to him that he must have the other off too.

The poor fellow said, "You should have told me that, gentlemen," and deliberately unscrewed the instrument and bled to death.

Would not that be the case with many friends of my own?

How could I ever hope to make them believe in a second theology, when I had cheated them in the first?

With what face could I publish a new edition of a dogmatic creed, and ask them to receive it as gospel?

Would it not be plain to them that no certainty was to be found any where?

Well, in my defence I could but make a lame apology; however, it was the true one, viz.

that I had not read the Fathers cautiously enough; that in such nice points, as those which determine the angle of divergence between the two Churches, I had made considerable miscalculations.

But how came this about?

why, the fact was, unpleasant as it was to avow, that I had leaned too much upon the assertions of Ussher, Jeremy Taylor, or Barrow, and had been deceived by them.

Valeat quantum,--it was all that _could_ be said.

This then was a chief reason of that wording of the Retractation, which has given so much offence, because the bitterness, with which it was written, was not understood;--and the following letter will illustrate it:-- "April 3, 1844. I wish to remark on William's chief distress, that my changing my opinion seemed to unsettle one's confidence in truth and falsehood as external things, and led one to be suspicious of the new opinion as one became distrustful of the old.

Now in what I shall say, I am not going to speak in favour of my second thoughts in comparison of my first, but against such scepticism and unsettlement about truth and falsehood generally, the idea of which is very painful.

"The case with me, then, was this, and not surely an unnatural one:--as a matter of feeling and of duty I threw myself into the system which I found myself in.

I saw that the English Church had a theological idea or theory as such, and I took it up.

I read Laud on Tradition, and thought it (as I still think it) very masterly.

The Anglican Theory was very distinctive.

I admired it and took it on faith.

It did not (I think) occur to me to doubt it; I saw that it was able, and supported by learning, and I felt it was a duty to maintain it.

Further, on looking into Antiquity and reading the Fathers, I saw such portions of it as I examined, fully confirmed (e. g. the supremacy of Scripture).

There was only one question about which I had a doubt, viz.

whether it would _work_, for it has never been more than a paper system....

"So far from my change of opinion having any fair tendency to unsettle persons as to truth and falsehood viewed as objective realities, it should be considered whether such change is not _necessary_, if truth be a real objective thing, and be made to confront a person who has been brought up in a system _short of_ truth.

Surely the _continuance_ of a person, who wishes to go right, in a wrong system, and not his _giving it up_, would be that which militated against the objectiveness of Truth, leading, as it would, to the suspicion, that one thing and another were equally pleasing to our Maker, where men were sincere.

"Nor surely is it a thing I need be sorry for, that I defended the system in which I found myself, and thus have had to unsay my words.

For is it not one's duty, instead of beginning with criticism, to throw oneself generously into that form of religion which is providentially put before one?

Is it right, or is it wrong, to begin with private judgment?

May we not, on the other hand, look for a blessing _through_ obedience even to an erroneous system, and a guidance even by means of it out of it?

Were those who were strict and conscientious in their Judaism, or those who were lukewarm and sceptical, more likely to be led into Christianity, when Christ came?

Yet in proportion to their previous zeal, would be their appearance of inconsistency.

Certainly, I have always contended that obedience even to an erring conscience was the way to gain light, and that it mattered not where a man began, so that he began on what came to hand, and in faith; and that any thing might become a divine method of Truth; that to the pure all things are pure, and have a self-correcting virtue and a power of germinating.

And though I have no right at all to assume that this mercy is granted to me, yet the fact, that a person in my situation _may_ have it granted to him, seems to me to remove the perplexity which my change of opinion may occasion.

"It may be said,--I have said it to myself,--'Why, however, did you _publish_?

had you waited quietly, you would have changed your opinion without any of the misery, which now is involved in the change, of disappointing and distressing people.'

I answer, that things are so bound up together, as to form a whole, and one cannot tell what is or is not a condition of what.

I do not see how possibly I could have published the Tracts, or other works professing to defend our Church, without accompanying them with a strong protest or argument against Rome.

The one obvious objection against the whole Anglican line is, that it is Roman; so that I really think there was no alternative between silence altogether, and forming a theory and attacking the Roman system."

2. And now, in the next place, as to my Resignation of St. Mary's, which was the second of the steps which I took in 1843. The ostensible, direct, and sufficient reason for my doing so was the persevering attack of the Bishops on Tract 90. I alluded to it in the letter which I have inserted above, addressed to one of the most influential among them.

A

series of their _ex cathedrâ_ judgments, lasting through three years, and including a notice of no little severity in a Charge of my own Bishop, came as near to a condemnation of my Tract, and, so far, to a repudiation of the ancient Catholic doctrine, which was the scope of the Tract, as was possible in the Church of England.

It was in order to shield the Tract from such a condemnation, that I had at the time of its publication in 1841 so simply put myself at the disposal of the higher powers in London.

At that time, all that was distinctly contemplated in the way of censure, was contained in the message which my Bishop sent me, that the Tract was "objectionable."

That I thought was the end of the matter.

I had refused to suppress it, and they had yielded that point.

Since I published the former portions of this Narrative, I have found what I wrote to Dr. Pusey on March 24, while the matter was in progress.

"The more I think of it," I said, "the more reluctant I am to suppress Tract 90, though _of course_ I will do it if the Bishop wishes it; I cannot, however, deny that I shall feel it a severe act."

According to the notes which I took of the letters or messages which I sent to him on that and the following days, I wrote successively, "My first feeling was to obey without a word; I will obey still; but my judgment has steadily risen against it ever since."

Then in the Postscript, "If I have done any good to the Church, I do ask the Bishop this favour, as my reward for it, that he would not insist on a measure, from which I think good will not come.

However, I will submit to him."

Afterwards, I got stronger still and wrote: "I have almost come to the resolution, if the Bishop publicly intimates that I must suppress the Tract, or speaks strongly in his charge against it, to suppress it indeed, but to resign my living also.

I could not in conscience act otherwise.

You may show this in any quarter you please."

All my then hopes, all my satisfaction at the apparent fulfilment of those hopes was at an end in 1843. It is not wonderful then, that in May of that year, when two out of the three years were gone, I wrote on the subject of my retiring from St. Mary's to the same friend, whom I had consulted upon it in 1840. But I did more now; I told him my great unsettlement of mind on the question of the Churches.

I will insert portions of two of my letters:-- "May 4, 1843....

At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God's mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of His dispensation.

I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith.

"You will now understand what gives edge to the Bishops' Charges, without any undue sensitiveness on my part.

They distress me in two ways:--first, as being in some sense protests and witnesses to my conscience against my own unfaithfulness to the English Church, and next, as being samples of her teaching, and tokens how very far she is from even aspiring to Catholicity.

"Of course my being unfaithful to a trust is my great subject of dread,--as it has long been, as you know."

When he wrote to make natural objections to my purpose, such as the apprehension that the removal of clerical obligations might have the indirect effect of propelling me towards Rome, I answered:-- "May 18, 1843....

My office or charge at St. Mary's is not a mere _state_, but a continual _energy_.

People assume and assert certain things of me in consequence.

With what sort of sincerity can I obey the Bishop?

how am I to act in the frequent cases, in which one way or another the Church of Rome comes into consideration?

I have to the utmost of my power tried to keep persons from Rome, and with some success; but even a year and a half since, my arguments, though more efficacious with the persons I aimed at than any others could be, were of a nature to infuse great suspicion of me into the minds of lookers-on.

"By retaining St. Mary's, I am an offence and a stumbling-block.

Persons are keen-sighted enough to make out what I think on certain points, and then they infer that such opinions are compatible with holding situations of trust in our Church.

A number of younger men take the validity of their interpretation of the Articles, &c. from me on _faith_.

Is not my present position a cruelty, as well as a treachery towards the Church?

"I do not see how I can either preach or publish again, while I hold St. Mary's;--but consider again the following difficulty in such a resolution, which I must state at some length.

"Last Long Vacation the idea suggested itself to me of publishing the Lives of the English Saints; and I had a conversation with [a publisher] upon it.

I thought it would be useful, as employing the minds of men who were in danger of running wild, bringing them from doctrine to history, and from speculation to fact;--again, as giving them an interest in the English soil, and the English Church, and keeping them from seeking sympathy in Rome, as she is; and further, as tending to promote the spread of right views.

"But, within the last month, it has come upon me, that, if the scheme goes on, it will be a practical carrying out of No. 90, from the character of the usages and opinions of ante-reformation times.

"It is easy to say, 'Why _will_ you do _any_ thing?

why won't you keep quiet?

what business had you to think of any such plan at all?'

But I cannot leave a number of poor fellows in the lurch.

I am bound to do my best for a great number of people both in Oxford and elsewhere.

If _I_ did not act, others would find means to do so.

"Well, the plan has been taken up with great eagerness and interest.

Many men are setting to work.

I set down the names of men, most of them engaged, the rest half engaged and probable, some actually writing."

About thirty names follow, some of them at that time of the school of Dr. Arnold, others of Dr. Pusey's, some my personal friends and of my own standing, others whom I hardly knew, while of course the majority were of the party of the new Movement.

I continue:-- "The plan has gone so far, that it would create surprise and talk, were it now suddenly given over.

Yet how is it compatible with my holding St. Mary's, being what I am?"