WARD, WILLIAM Of EORGE ( 1412-52). An English philosopher and Roman Catholic theolo gian, horn in London. the son of William financier. Be studied at Winchester College (1823-29), at Christ church, oxford (1830-33), and then at Lincoln l'idlege. lle showed marked ability in mathematics and beeame famed as a debater hi the Union club. His theological views were ill•defilled Until Ile wade the ae• quaintance of NeNN man, against whom he had previously been prejudiced, hut now by the single (irguinent that the Catholic church third or fourth century could never have de veloped from anything resembling modern Pro te-tanti,m made !lira an ardent Traeta1iml and a hitter assailant of Anglican Protestantism. Ile became a in 1838, a priest in 1830, editor of the '1'r9eta•ian organ. the British Critic, in Is39, and, after 1811, when he openly defended Newman's Tract se. and was deprived of his lectureship at Banjo), an open advocate of union with Nome, position Was definitely Slated ill 184.1 ill The Ideal of a Christian Church Con sidered in Comparison with Existing Practice. The book was censured by the Convocation of Ox ford, and Ward was deprived of his degrees. This was iu February, 1845, and in September of the year he joined the Homan Catholie com munion. Ile settled at Saint Edmund's College,
Ware, becalm- professor of moral philosophy there in 1852, and held this chair nntil 1858. He seas made Ph.D, by the Pope in 1851. In 1861 ho returned to Saint Edninturg. In the preceding year he lead punished on Nuture'and Grace, an able attack on agnosticism. He was editor of the Dublin lteriew M 1863-75. and as a leader of Ultramontanists and Infallibilists went to such startling lengths as to suggest that, were scien title hypotheses first submitted to the infallible Pope, science must surely and speedily advance. His hreadth of vision and sympathy is indicated by his place as a founder of the Metaphysical Society (1869), and a fellow member in it of Huxley, of Martineau, and of Tennyson; and by his friendship with Archbishop Tait. his antago nist even in university days, with Newman and Manning, in spite of the difference between his mental mold and theirs, and with John Stuart Mill, though their views were so divergent. His son, Wilfrid Philip Ward, wrote William George Ward and the Oxford Morement (London, 1889) and William George Ward and the Catholic Re viral (ib., 18113). See OXFORD MOVEMENT.