THE following essay forms a complete treatise in itself and may rank with the Development of Christian Doctrine and the Grammar of Assent as one of Newman's most important works. It stands in the Apologia under the title, " The Position of my Mind since 1845," - a final chapter summarising Newman's reply to Kingsley's charge of intellectual dishonesty: the last pages, which are relevant only to that particular controversy, are here omitted. The pamphlet as it stands is a treatise on one of the most difficult of all questions in connection with the Catholic claim: how to reconcile submission to a revelation of supernatural truth with that activity of mind which is necessary for the apprehension of truths in the natural order. It describes the attitude of one who acknowledges the absoluteclaims of the Divine Reason as revealed in Christ and embodied in the Church, His mystical body, who yet is acutely conscious of the claims of alltruth perceived by human reason in the more limited order of nature. Newman refuses to shirk any of the difficulties involved in the Church's claim; indeed, he forces them upon our attention: yet he is convinced, with the certitude which makes martyrs, that here, in the Catholic Roman Church, is the key to an order of truth and life which completes and transcends all that is most vital in human life and thought.
John Henry Newman was a Roman Catholic priest and cardinal who converted to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism in October 1845. In early life, he was a major figure in the Oxford Movement to bring the Church of England back to its Catholic roots.
Eventually his studies in history persuaded him to become a Roman Catholic. Both before and after becoming a Roman Catholic, he wrote a number of influential books.
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