t of time when it was too
strong to suppress with propriety. Certitude of course is a point, but
doubt is a progress: I was not near certitude yet. Certitude is a
reflex action; it is to know that one knows. Of that I believe I was
not possest, till close upon my reception into the Catholic Church.
Again, a practical, effective doubt is a point too; but who can easily
ascertain it for himself? Who can determine when it is that the scales
in the balance of opinion begin to turn, and what was a greater
probability in behalf of a belief becomes a positive doubt against it?

In considering this question in its bearing upon my conduct in 1843,
my own simple answer to my great difficulty had been, Do what your
present state of opinion requires in the light of duty, and let that
doing tell; speak by acts. This I had done; my first act of the year
had been in February. After three months' deliberation I had published
my retractation of the violent charges which I had made against Rome:
I could not be wrong in doing so much as this; but I did no more at
the time: I did not retract my Anglican teaching. My second act had
been in September in the same year: after much sorrowful lingering and
hesitation, I had resigned my Living. I tried indeed, before I did so,
to keep Littlemore for myself, even tho it was still to remain an
integral part of St. Mary's.[6] I had given to it a church and a sort
of parsonage; I had made it a parish, and I loved it: I thought in
1843 that perhaps I need not forfeit my existing relations toward it.
I could indeed submit to become a curate at will of another; but I
hoped an arrangement was possible by which, while I had the curacy, I
might have been my own master in serving it. I had hoped an exception
might have been made in my favor, under the circumstances; but I did
not gain my request. Perhaps I was asking what was impracticable, and
it is well for me that it was so.

[Footnote 6: St. Mary's was the church of the University of Oxford,
Newman being its vicar. Littlemore was an outlying place attached to
St. Mary's and to which Newman withdrew on leaving Oxford in 1842.
Here, with several young men who had attached themselves to his
fortunes, he established himself in a building which came to be known
as "the Littlemore Monastery." It was here that Newman passed the
three years of meditation and anxiety which preceded his final
decision to join the Roman Church.]

These had been my two acts of t