"My first thought was that no Provincial or Father General had any obligation to multiply and perfect his Order greater or more absolute than I had to multiply and to perfect the priesthood of the diocese of Westminster. . . . What was the esteem in which the laity held them? They, with exceptions, were held to be at a disadvantage as compared with the Regulars: as preachers, confessors, directors, judges of vocation, advisers in spiritual and even in worldly things they were held to be of less esteem. Many of them no doubt were so. But the whole as such was higher in parts. On the other hand, many of the Regulars, with longer training and greater advantages, were better qualified than the priests of the diocese; but many were not so. And yet the laity took for granted that the clergy were 'seculars' and spoke of them as such. 'He is only a secular priest' was often heard, and it revealed a whole world of prejudice, depreciation and mistrust. This was bad enough, but there was worse to come. The priesthood accepted the depreciation which depresses and paralyses the will. A conquered people lose the sense of power, and what is worse, take their state as a standard; so that priests have come to plead against invitations and exhortations to higher things. 'I am only a secular priest.' What can be greater than a priest? For itself does it not contain all perfection? What can black or white or brown cloth add to it? This seemed to me to be the first thing wanting. The world is governed by ideas, and the idea of our Lord's priesthood, truly and fully conceived, has a motive power to raise men to anything. "The first thing needed, as it seemed to me, was to bring out into the clearest light what the priesthood is. It seemed to me to be obscured by the traditional prejudice that to be a Regular is to be everything, and to be a priest is to be functionary for sacraments and ceremonies. Even the priesthood of the Regular was lost sight of in his Order, habit and privileges. "This conviction was the motive of all that I did and wrote at Bayswater. And more explicitly since 1869 in St. Thomas's Seminary and in two books, _The Pastoral Office_ and _The Eternal Priesthood._"