universe. He seems to grow, if possible, increasingly sharp, incisive, uncompromising, as his words speed on.
"The Ultramontane opinion is simply this, that the Pontiff, speaking ex cathedra on faith or morals, is infallible. In this there are no shades or moderations. It is simply aye or no."
Of qualifications, of restrictions, nothing is said. It is all sweepingly universal. Yet with all his heart, he says, he desires to find a mode of conciliation—"but not a via media which is the essential method of falsehood." Of the philosophic temper, the balancing of opposing truths, the holding truths unreconciled, through faith in their ultimate yet hitherto undiscovered synthesis, there is not a shadow in these amazing Pastorals.
Nothing can surpass the confidence with which Manning expressed his ideas of the work which the Council would effect.
"It is certain that upon a multitude of minds who are wavering and doubtful … the voice of a General Council will have great power. The Council of Trent," he tells us, "fixed the epoch after which Protestantism never spread. The next General Council will probably date the period of its dissolution."[1]
Not less singular, especially when read in the light of Manning's incessant polemical correspondence on the doctrine, is the picture which he has drawn of the state of the Roman Church in this crisis.
There is universal excitement, he says, in the outer world, caused by the assembling of the Council at Rome; "not, indeed, within the unity of the Catholic Church, where all is calm in the strength of quiet and
- ↑ Pastoral (1867), p. 90.
