But the system which encouraged it must bear a large part of the blame.

Meanwhile he had been employed by Newman on an uncongenial task.

After the discontinuance of Tracts for the Times, Newman projected another series, called Lives of the Saints.
The idea was of course taken from the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum.

But Newman had a definite polemical purpose.

Just as he felt the force of Hume's argument against the probability of miracles, so he realised the difficulty of answering Gibbon's inquiry when miracles ceased.