This book was originally meant to be a chapter in a larger work on Newman; and the intention was to compress into it most of the severe things which, in common honesty, it seemed needful to say about Newman's use of words and evidence in controversy, so as to leave freedom for a more sympathetic treatment of the subject as a whole in the rest of the work.<br><br>But, on investigation, the grounds for censure appeared much larger than I had anticipated; and, when I came to study the Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles, the mental and almost moral shock which I received from that portentous work - and from the amazing fact that it had been thought well to reprint such a production in the year 1890 - caused my single chapter to grow first into several chapters and ultimately into a separate volume.