“Rome ought to be a name to lighten the heart at all times, and a Council’s proper office is, when some great heresy or other evil impends, to inspire hope and confidence in the faithful; but now we have the greatest meeting which ever has been, and that at Rome, infusing into us by the accredited organs of Rome and of its partisans (such as the _Civiltà_ [the _Armonia_], the _Univers_, and the _Tablet_) little else than fear and dismay. When we are all at rest, and have no doubts, and—at least practically, not to say doctrinally—hold the Holy Father to be infallible, suddenly there is thunder in the clearest sky, and we are told to prepare for something, we know not what, to try our faith, we know not how. No impending danger is to be averted, but a great difficulty is to be created. Is this the proper work of an Œcumenical Council? “As to myself personally, please God, I do not expect any trial at all; but I cannot help suffering with the many souls who are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to defend decisions which may not be difficult to my own private judgment, but may be most difficult to maintain logically in the face of historical facts. “What have we done to be treated as the faithful never were treated before? When has a definition _de fide_ been a luxury of devotion and not a stern, painful necessity? Why should an aggressive, insolent faction be allowed to ‘make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful’? Why cannot we be let alone when we have pursued peace and thought no evil? “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 which a book like Janus says,’—others doubting about ‘the capacity possessed by bishops drawn from all 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 tending towards their ultimate absorption into the Catholic Church.