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I wonder how “deep” Newman went in that history.

NKP_Vet, please pay attention to the following, and then perhaps you may be able to begin to understand why the Newman quote just doesn't work, and instead is silly, coming across not as factual, but rather from limited actual knowledge (of history) resulting in the quote being an expression of Romanist bigotry.

Newman is likely to not have known the ECF's as well as Coxe, Roberts, Donaldson & Schaff, for those made more in- depth (than previous) translation of what can be known of ECF's and with Schaff, the history of the Church.

As A.C.C (A. Cleveland Coxe) noted in the Preface in Ante Nicene Fathers

The American Editor has performed the humble task of ushering these works into American use, with scanty contributions of his own. Such was the understanding with the public: they were to be presented with the Edinburgh series, free from appreciable colour or alloy. His duty was (1) to give historic arrangement to the confused mass of the original series; (2) to supply, in continuity, such brief introductory notices as might slightly popularize what was apparently meant for scholars only, in the introductions of the translators; (3) to supply a few deficiencies by short notes and references; (4) to add such references to Scripture, or to authors of general repute, as might lend additional aid to students, without clogging or overlaying the comments of the translators; and (5) to note such corruptions or distortions of Patristic testimony as have been circulated, in the spirit of the forged Decretals, by those who carry on the old imposture by means essentially equivalent. Too long have they been allowed to speak to the popular mind as if the Fathers were their own; while, to every candid reader, it must be evident that, alike, the testimony, the arguments, and the silence of the Ante-Nicene writers confound all attempts to identify the ecclesiastical establishment of “the Holy Roman Empire,” with “the Holy Catholic Church” of the ancient creeds.
...
...May the Lord God of our Fathers bless the undertaking to all my fellow-Christians, and make good to them the promise which was once felicitously chosen for the motto of a similar series of publications: “Yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers.”

As Schaff related in his General Introduction to History of The Church

From Jesus Christ, since his manifestation in the flesh, an unbroken stream of divine light and life has been and is still flowing, and will continue to flow, in ever-growing volume through the waste of our fallen race; and all that is truly great and good and holy in the annals of church history is due, ultimately, to the impulse of his spirit. He is the fly-wheel in the world’s progress. But he works upon the world through sinful and fallible men, who, while as self-conscious and free agents they are accountable for all their actions, must still, willing or unwilling, serve the great purpose of God. As Christ, in the days of his flesh, was bated, mocked, and crucified, his church likewise is assailed and persecuted by the powers of darkness. The history of Christianity includes therefore a history of Antichrist. With an unending succession of works of saving power and manifestations of divine truth and holiness, it uncovers also a fearful mass of corruption and error. The church militant must, from its very nature, be at perpetual warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil, both without and within. For as Judas sat among the apostles, so "the man of sin" sits in the temple of God; and as even a Peter denied the Lord, though he afterwards wept bitterly and regained his holy office, so do many disciples in all ages deny him in word and in deed.[bolding and size enlargement for emphasis my own]

None of the men mentioned here (other than Newman, and late in life, Gibbons, who Newman mercilessly and perhaps unjustifiably critiqued, though Gibbons very much was a queer duck, as the older sense of that phrase would mean) converted to [Roman] Catholicism, and in their own works, uncover some of the historical details and present reasons why one need not do so -- in fact -- would need disregard particular aspects of history itself, or view it through distinctively Romanist lens to do so with anything resembling scholastic integrity.

As Schaff further noted during brief discussion of his own extensive list of other historians of note, whose works he also consulted/and or utilized among his own assortment of source materials;

IV. Roman Catholic historians.
The Roman Catholic Church was roused by the shock of the Reformation, in the sixteenth century, to great activity in this and other departments of theology, and produced some works of immense learning and antiquarian research, but generally characterized rather by zeal for the papacy, and against Protestantism, than by the purely historical spirit. Her best historians are either Italians, and ultramontane in spirit, or Frenchmen, mostly on the side of the more liberal but less consistent Gallicanism.

In that intensive bibliography of sorts regarding church historians, both Romanist and Protestant, includes mention also of Dollinger:

Dr. John Joseph Ignatius Döllinger (Professor in Munich, born 1799), the most learned historian of the Roman Church in the nineteenth century, represents the opposite course from popery to anti-popery. He began, but never finished, a Handbook of Christian Church History (Landshut, 1833, 2 vols.) till a.d. 680, and a Manual of Church History (1836, 2d ed., 1843, 2 vols.) to the fifteenth century, and in part to 1517.21 He wrote also learned works against the Reformation (Die Reformation, 1846–’48, in 3 vols.), on Hippolytus and Callistus (1853), on the preparation for Christianity (Heidenthum u Judenthum, 1857), Christianity and the Church in the time of its Founding (1860), The Church and the Churches (1862), Papal Fables of the Middle Age (1865), The Pope and the Council (under the assumed name of "Janus," 1869), etc.
During the Vatican Council in 1870 Döllinger broke with Rome, became the theological leader of the Old Catholic recession, and was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Munich (his former pupil), April 17, 1871, as being guilty of "the crime of open and formal heresy." He knows too much of church history to believe in the infallibility of the pope. He solemnly declared (March 28, 1871) that "as a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, and as a citizen," he could not accept the Vatican decrees, because they contradict the spirit of the gospel and the genuine tradition of the church, and, if carried out, must involve church and state, the clergy and the laity, in irreconcilable conflict.22[underlining for emphasis, my own]

And mentioning Gibbons, listing under

(c) English works.
English literature is rich in works on Christian antiquity, English church history, and other special departments, but poor in general histories of Christianity.
The first place among English historians, perhaps, is due to Edward Gibbon (d. 1794). In his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (finished after twenty years’ labor, at Lausanne, June 27,1787), he notices throughout the chief events in ecclesiastical history from the introduction of the Christian religion to the times of the crusades and the capture of Constantinople (1453), with an accurate knowledge of the chief sources and the consummate skill of a master in the art of composition, with occasional admiration for heroic characters like Athanasius and Chrysostom, but with a keener eye to the failings of Christians and the imperfections of the visible church, and unfortunately without sympathy and understanding of the spirit of Christianity which runs like a golden thread even through the darkest centuries. He conceived the idea of his magnificent work in papal Rome, among the ruins of the Capitol, and in tracing the gradual decline and fall of imperial Rome, which he calls "the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind," he has involuntarily become a witness to the gradual growth and triumph of the religion of the cross, of which no historian of the future will ever record a history of decline and fall, though some "lonely traveller from New Zealand," taking his stand on "a broken arch" of the bridge of St. Angelo, may sketch the ruins of St. Peter’s.37

Which footnote (#37) lead to none other than the deeply opinionated (but not as studied as Schaff) -- Newman himself;

Cardinal Newman, shortly before his transition from Oxford Tractarianism to Romanism (in his essay on Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845), declared "the infidel Gibbon to be the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian." This is certainly not true any longer. Dr. McDonald, in an essay "Was Gibbon an infidel?" (in the "Bibliotheca Sacra" for July, 1868, Andover, Ham.), tried to vindicate him against the charge of infidelity. But Gibbon was undoubtedly a Deist and deeply affected by the skepticism of Hume and Voltaire. While a student at Oxford he was converted to Romanism by reading Bossuet’s Variations of Protestantism, and afterwards passed over to infidelity, with scarcely a ray of hope of any immortality but that of fame, See his Autobiography, Ch. VIII., and his letter to Lord Sheffield of April 27, 1793, where he says that his "only consolation" in view of death and the trials of life was "the presence of a friend." Best ed. of Gibbon, by W. Smith.

Now do you see why I had posted to you some days ago now, that Schaff and Co.(by which I meant historians contemporary to Schaff's era) --which overlapped but succeeded (came on the heels of) as it were Newman's own scholastic period --- puts that particular quote of Newman's to rest?

I doubt you'll be able to admit to it, for that would entail admitting Romanist promotional, triumphalist crowing is less well founded than Roman Catholics have been led to believe, but which myself and a few others continue to take pains to explain the factual reasons for, yet continue to be seemingly ignored (as to content, information, and various issues discussed).

From the in-case-you-missed-it department, posted here on FR there were two recent replies which include Roman Catholic historians (some of them priests) disagreeing with fairly common RC misapprehension (if not deliberate distortion?) of historical facts, as those distortions are frequently repeated by adherents of [Roman] Catholicism.

The wheels are coming off of the bus...not only for the goofy "social justice" ride that certain particular Nuns advertise themselves as touring upon.

See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3135058/posts?page=796#796 and http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3135058/posts?page=772#772

I suggest that one stop, drop the Newman quote (retire it) and check the torque on ye olde lug nuts. The wheels still are going 'round & 'round perhaps, but from this angle I can see some big 'ol scary looking wobbly action to them. There are some serious issues somehow out of whack...