In the previous year, the Tractarian movement had been launched: Ward was attracted to it by his hatred of moderation and what he called "respectability".

He treated the question at issue as one of pure logic: disliking the Reformers, the right of private judgment which Protestants claimed, and the somewhat prosaic uniformity of the English Church, he flung himself into a campaign against Protestantism in general and the Anglican form of it in particular.

The University of Oxford was invited, on 13 February 1845, to condemn Tract 90, to censure the Ideal, and to deprive Ward of his degrees.

The two latter propositions were carried with Ward being deprived of his tutorship[3] and Tract 90 only escaped censure by the non-placet of the proctors, Guillemard and Church.

In 1851 he became a professor of moral philosophy at St Edmund's College, Ware, and the following year he was appointed to the chair of dogmatic theology.

He was an opponent of Liberal Catholicism and defender of papal authority, and attacked the views of Charles Forbes René de Montalembert and Ignaz von Döllinger.

He also dealt with the condemnation of Pope Honorius I, carried on a controversial correspondence with John Stuart Mill, and took a leading part in the discussions of the Metaphysical Society.