“I assure you, my Lord, some of the truest minds are driven one way and another, and do not know where to rest their feet—one day determining ‘to give up all theology as a bad job,’ and recklessly to believe henceforth almost that the Pope is impeccable; at another, tempted to ‘believe all the worst that a book like Janus says;’ others doubting about ‘the capacity possessed by Bishops drawn from corners of the earth, to judge what is fitting for European society;’ and then, again, angry with the Holy See for listening to ‘the flattery of a clique of Jesuits, redemptorists, and converts.’
“Then, again, think of the store of Pontifical scandals in the history of eighteen centuries, which have partly been poured forth, and partly are still to come. What Murphy inflicted upon us in one way, M. Veuillot is indirectly bringing on us in another. And then, again, the blight which is falling upon the multitude of Anglican Ritualists, etc., who, themselves, perhaps—at least their leaders—may never become Catholics, but who are leavening the various English denominations and parties (far beyond their own range), with principles and sentiments towards their ultimate absorption into the Catholic Church.
“With these thoughts ever before me, I am continually asking myself whether I ought not to make my feelings public? But all I do is to 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 movements’ of that triumph which He has destined for His kingdom, and I shall feel I have but to bow my head to His adorable, inscrutable providence.
“You have not touched upon the subject yourself, but I think you will allow me to express to you feeling which, for the most part, I keep to myself.”[[C]]
[C]. “The Pope, the Kings, and the People.” (Mullan & Son, Paternoster Square, pp. 269-70.) Also see (London) Standard, 7th April, 1870.
These eloquent complaints of the new convert exceedingly irritated Pius IX. and the Jesuits at Rome; they entirely destroyed their confidence in him. They were too shrewd to ignore that he had never been anything else but a kind of free-thinker, whose Christian faith was without any basis, as he himself confessed. They had received him, of course, with pleasure, for he was the very best man in England to unsettle the minds of the young ministers of the Church, but they had left him alone in his oratory of Birmingham, where they seemed to ignore him.
However, when the protest of the new so-called convert showed that his submission was but a sham, and that he was more Protestant than ever, they lashed him without mercy. But before we hear the stern answers of the Roman Catholics to their new recruit, let us remember the fact that when that letter appeared, Dr. Newman had lost the memory of it; he boldly denied its paternity at first; it was only when the proofs were publicly given that he had written it, that he acknowledged it, saying for his excuse that he had forgotten his writing it!!