CARDINAL NEWMAN'S CATHOLIC WRITINGS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."' SIR,—In support of Mr. Wilfrid Ward's letter in the Spectator of October 4th, may I be allowed to state that in December, 1869, the late Cardinal Newman laid stress on what he then called his "five constructive books,"—i.e., (1), the" Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church" (now Vol. I. of the "Via Media "); (2), the "Lectures on Justification ;" (3), the "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine ;" (4), the "Dublin University "Lectures (now in "The Idea of a Uni- versity," &c.) ; and (5), the "Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent"? As to these, he subsequently observed that the first had "come to pieces" (see also here the "Apologia," ed. 1882, p. 120), and the third (unfinished) ended in his submission to Rome, and (disapproved of by Dr. Pusey) was in no sense an Anglican work. Of the remaining three, then, only one is the work of his Anglican life, while two are the work of his P.S.—So far from the "Grammar of Assent" being ap- parently connected in any direct manner with the assembling of the Vatican Council, a letter of the late Cardinal, dated August, 1868, refers to a future work entitled "Assent, Certi- tude, Proof," which, says he, "I have wished to do all my life."
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