I thrust the thing into the back of my mind,
the more certain I grew of what Thing it was. And by a paradox that
does not frighten me now in the least, it may be that I shall never
again have such absolute assurance that the thing is true as I had
when I made my last effort to deny it.*

[* Ibid., pp. 62-3.]

The whole of Catholic theology can be justified, says Gilbert, if you
are allowed to start with those two ideas that the Church is
popularly supposed to oppose: Reason and Liberty. "To become a
Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think. It
is so in exactly the same sense in which to recover from palsy is not
to leave off moving but to learn how to move." The convert has learnt
long before his conversion that the Church will not force him to
abandon his will. "But he is not unreasonably dismayed at the extent
to which he may have to use his will." This was the crux for Gilbert.
"There is in the last second of time or hairbreadth of space, before
the iron leaps to the magnet, an abyss full of all the unfathomable
forces of the universe. The space between doing and not doing such a
thing is so tiny and so vast."

Father Maturin said after his conversion that for at least ten years
before it the question had never been out of his mind for ten waking
minutes. It was about ten years since Gilbert had first talked to
Father O'Connor of his intention to join the Church, but in his case
thought on the subject could not have been so continuous. Still he
had time for patronising, discovery, and running away, all in
leisurely fashion. External efforts to help him had been worse than
useless: as he indicates in _The Catholic Church and Conversion_,
they had always put him back.

"Gilbert could not be hustled," says Maurice Baring of his whole
habit of mind and body.

"You could fluster Gilbert but not hustle him," says Father O'Connor.

They were both too wise to try.

In two letters Gilbert said that the two people who helped him most
at this time were Maurice Baring and Father Ronald Knox, who had both
gone through the same experience themselves.

Besides the positive mental processes of recognition, repulsion and
attraction exercised by the Church, Gilbert was affected to some
extent both by affection for the Church of England and disappointment
with it. The profound joy of his early conversion to Christianity was
linked with Anglicanism and so too were many friendships and the
c