‘Up to Christ’s coming in the flesh [he said] the course of things ran straight towards that end, nearing it by every step, but now, under the Gospel, that course has (if I may so speak) altered its direction, as regards His second coming, and runs, not towards the end, but along it, and on the brink of it, and is at all times equally near that great event, which, did it run towards it, it would at once run into. Christ, then, is ever at our doors; as near eighteen hundred years ago as now, and not nearer now than then; and not nearer when He comes than now’.

(J H Newman, ‘Waiting for Christ’, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vi . Quoted in F F Bruce, The Real Jesus, p. 195).