tion. Such introduction, however, seems
unobjectionable in the case of compositions, which are _detached_
from the sacred place and service to which they once belonged, and
_submitted to the reason_ and judgment of the general reader."

This volume of sermons then cannot be criticised at all as
_preachments_; they are _essays_; essays of a man who, at the time of
publishing them, was _not_ a preacher. Such passages, as that in
question, are just the very ones which I added _upon_ my publishing
them. I always was on my guard in the pulpit of saying anything which
looked towards Rome; and therefore all his rhetoric about my
"disciples," "admiring young gentlemen who listened to me," "fanatic
and hot-headed young men, who hung upon my every word," becomes
simple rubbish.

I have more to say on this point. This writer says, p. 14, "I know
that men used to suspect Dr. Newman--I have been inclined to do so
myself--of _writing a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or
of the matter_, but for the sake of one simple passing hint--one
phrase, one epithet." Can there be a plainer testimony borne to the
practical character of my sermons at St. Mary's than this gratuitous
insinuation? Many a preacher of Tractarian doctrine has been accused
of not letting his parishioners alone, and of teasing them with his
private theological notions. You would gather from the general tone
of this writer that that was my way. Every one who was in the habit
of hearing me, knows that it wasn't. This writer either knows nothing
about it, and then he ought to be silent; or he does know, and then
he ought to speak the truth. Others spread the same report twenty
years ago as he does now, and the world believed that my sermons at
St. Mary's were full of red-hot Tractarianism. Then strangers came to
hear me preach, and were astonished at their own disappointment. I
recollect the wife of a great prelate from a distance coming to hear
me, and then expressing her surprise to find that I preached nothing
but a plain humdrum sermon. I recollect how, when on the Sunday
before Commemoration one year, a number of strangers came to hear
me, and I preached in my usual way, residents in Oxford, of high
position, were loud in their satisfaction that on a great occasion, I
had made a simple failure, for after all there was nothing in the
sermon to hear. Well, but they were not going to let me off, for all
my common-sense view of duty. Accordingly, they got up th