should incur were I not to speak out to him my whole mind. I put the matter from me when I had said my say, and kept no proper copy of the letter. To my dismay I saw it in the public prints: to this day I do not know, nor suspect, how it got there. I cannot withdraw it, for I never put it forward, so it will remain on the columns of newspapers whether I will or not; but I withdraw it as far as I can by declaring that it was never meant for the public eye."
Certainly it needed no assurance from the writer to convince us that this letter was not designed for publicity. It is equally impossible not to feel that in that letter we have the writer's mind in its full expression. The very fact that it was never meant for the public eye means that it was written without that caution and restraint imposed by watchful critics and extremist partisans always ready to pounce upon
Newman and denounce him as a minimiser at Rome. Thus we have his frankest declaration here. And that declaration was much too frank to be convenient. It naturally hampered him now that the doctrine was decreed. A certain inconsistency was required of him, and is reflected in his letters. Before the Council decreed he wrote[1] of the disputed doctrine, " I have ever thought it likely to be true; never thought it certain." After the decision he wrote:[2] "For myself, ever since I was a Catholic, I have held the Pope's Infallibility as a matter of theological opinion; at least I see nothing in the definition which necessarily contradicts Scripture, Tradition, or History." Before the decision he wrote: "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
