ver, 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.

Part III

History of My Religious Opinions

It may easily be conceived how great a trial it is to me to write the
following history of myself; but I must not shrink from the task. The
words, "Secretum meum mihi," keep ringing in my ears; but as men draw
towards their end, they care less for disclosures. Nor is it the
least part of my trial, to anticipate that my friends may, upon first
reading what I have written, consider much in it irrelevant to my
purpose; yet I cannot help thinking that, viewed as a whole, it will
effect what I wish it to do.

I was brought up from a child to take great delight in reading the
Bible; but I had no formed religious convictions till I was fifteen.
Of course I had perfect knowledge of my Catechism.

After I was grown up, I put on paper such recollections as I had of
my thoughts and feelings on religious subjects, at the time that I
was a child and a boy. Out of these I select two, which are at once
the most definite among the