Early in his career John Henry Newman held the view that the Anglican Church of England provided a sort of “middle way” between the perceived errors of the Roman Catholic church on the one hand, and those perceived errors manifested in many Protestant churches on the other hand. This two volume work outlines Newman‘s argument in support of this view and his recommendations for enacting further reform within the Anglican church.
The quality of his literary style is so successful that it succeeds in escaping definition. The quality of his logic is that of a long but passionate patience, which waits until he has fixed all corners of an iron trap. But the quality of his moral comment on the age remains what I have said: a protest of the rationality of religion as against the increasing irrationality of mere Victorian comfort and compromise.
The philosophical and theological thought and the spirituality of Cardinal Newman, so deeply rooted in and enriched by Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Fathers, still retain their particular originality and value.
—Pope John Paul II
Newman placed the key in our hand to build historical thought into theology, or much more, he taught us to think historically in theology and so to recognize the identity of faith in all developments.
—Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)