SOURCE: “Newman's Assent to Reality, Natural and Supernatural,” in Newman Today: Papers Presented at a Conference on John Henry Cardinal Newman, Ignatius Press, 1989, pp. 189-220.

In the following essay, Jaki analyzes the philosophical and logical merits of Newman's An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent.

On Tuesday, March 15, 1870, Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent was published and sold out on that same day.¹ A week later, to Newman's great surprise, there followed a second edition.² Still another ten days later a long review of it was carried in the Spectator throughout the intellectual and literary world. The reviewer, Richard Holt Hutton, began with a reference to the title as “superfluously modest” and a “deprecation by Dr. Newman of extravagant expectations on behalf of his readers”.³ Pressed by a correspondent about the title, Newman pointed in its defense to the difference between an essay...