This memorable sentence, the most memorable of any from the Roman Communion in England, was written in the full confidence of privacy to his own Diocesan, Ullathorne, Roman Bishop of Birmingham. Somehow it came to light, and appeared in the public press. The publication, never explained, has been called a culpable indiscretion.[1] But whatever it be called, it assuredly represents the writer's most profound conviction, uttered with perfect frankness. Here, as to his Father in Christ, he reveals his soul. Trusted and confided in as he was by individuals on either side within the Roman body; by Ward and Faber on the one hand, and by Lord Acton on the other; profoundly intimate with modern thought and religious conceptions beyond the Roman pale; he anticipates disastrous consequences to the Church, and to the world, if the Infallibility theory be decreed.
Bishop Ullathorne[2] would undoubtedly receive this confidence with perfect sympathy. For, although a believer of the doctrine, he had himself, as a student, been taught the opposite at Downside. Indeed, his own fidelity to Ultramontane ideas was so challenged that he thought it advisable to seek a special interview with the Pope, and assure him, at the time of the Vatican Decrees. But, naturally, Newman's letter not only produced a great sensation when it appeared in the public press; it also deepened the distrust with which the partisans of Infallibility regarded him. We can well understand how one who wrote with so manifest an anxiety to stand by the historic past, and to avoid extremes, was regarded with suspicion from Rome by pronounced and uncompromising Ultramontanes.
