If I may suppose this paper read by someone who is not yet acquainted with Newman's writings I would advise him, unless he is bent on theology, to begin not with the _Sermons_, not even with the _Apologia_, but with the _Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England_. Then let him take up the _Lectures on the Idea of an University_, and on _University Subjects_. These may be followed by _Discussions and Arguments_, after which he will be well disposed to read the _Lectures on the Difficulties felt by Anglicans_. If after he has despatched these volumes he is not infected with what one of those charging Bishops called 'Newmania,' he is possessed of a devil of obtuseness no wit of man can expel. Of the strength of Dr. Newman's philosophical position, which he has explained in his _Grammar of Assent_, it would ill become me to speak. He there strikes the shield of John Locke. _Non nostrum est tantas componere lites._ But it is difficult for the most ignorant of us not to have shy notions and lurking suspicions even about such big subjects and great men. Locke maintained that a man's belief in a proposition really depended upon and bore a relation to the weight of evidence forthcoming in its favour. Dr. Newman asserts that certainty is a quality of propositions, and he has discovered in man 'an illative sense' whereby conclusions are converted into dogmas and a measured concurrence into an unlimited and absolute assurance. This illative sense is hardly a thing (if I may use an expression for ever associated with Lord Macaulay) to be cocksure about. Wedges, said the mediæval mechanic to his pupils, split wood by virtue of a wood-splitting quality in wedges--but now we are indisposed to endow wedges with qualities, and if not wedges, why propositions? But the _Grammar of Assent_ is a beautiful book, and with a quotation from it I will close my quotations: 'Thus it is that Christianity is the fulfilment of the promise made to Abraham and of the Mosaic revelations; this is how it has been able from the first to occupy the world, and gain a hold on every class of human society to which its preachers reached; this is why the Roman power and the multitude of religions which it embraced could not stand against it; this is the secret of its sustained energy, and its never-flagging martyrdoms; this is how at present it is so mysteriously potent, in spite of the new and fearful adversaries which beset its path. It has with it that gift of stanching and healing the one deep wound of human nature, which avails more for its success than a full encyclopædia of scientific knowledge and a whole library of controversy, and therefore it must last while human nature lasts.' It is fitting that our last quotation should be one which leaves the Cardinal face to face with his faith.