It is not likely that his preaching suffered much by the change. If it had, he would have gone back to his old practice. He would have preferred, it is true, to do what most other priests did, for he hated singularity in any shape, but this was not a sufficient reason for running the risk of even partial failure before mixed congregations in a town where he was a stranger, and at a time when from various causes the no-Popery feeling was particularly strong. Neither does the change, though he was past middle life when he made it, seem to have been a difficulty to him. Apparently he soon discovered that the thoughts that he had in his mind when he entered the pulpit developed themselves and took new shapes while he was speaking; for the Notes which are now being published were for the most part written out not before, but after, the sermon. Aeterna Press

James Mozley, writing in 1846, said "A sermon of Mr. Newman's enters into our feelings, ideas, modes of viewing things. Persons look into Mr. Newman's sermons and see their own thoughts in them." Unpublished for ninety years, Sermon Notes shows Newman's brilliant mind at work."--BOOK JACKET.