all, may be found the truest who are in speech more measured."[1]
Hence it was that Ward's vehement and exaggerated Ultramontanism drew down upon him one of the severest rebukes which Newman perhaps ever wrote. He told Ward that it was wholly uncatholic in spirit, and was constituting a church within the Church. Ward comically observed that after such a letter he must take a double dose of chloral if he meant to sleep.
Newman also wrote a reassuring letter to Pusey, expressing his belief that there was no fear of a decree of Papal Infallibility, except in so limited a form as practically to leave things as they were.[2] But when the Vatican Council was already met, and the probabilities that the dominant party might succeed in reducing to fixity what had hitherto been a theological opinion, at the most, became more and more convincing, Newman wrote to his Bishop in a very different and very anxious strain:—
"Why should an insolent, aggressive faction be allowed to make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful? I pray those early doctors of the Church whose intercession would decide the matter (Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome; Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Basil) to avert this great calamity. If it is God's will that the Pope's Infallibility be defined, then it is God's will to throw back the times and moments of the triumph which He has destined for His kingdom, and I shall feel that I have but to bow my head to His inscrutable Providence."[3]
