Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 1 | Page 7

is
rarely chargeable even with the suppression of any material fact, which bears upon
individual character; he may, with apparently invidious hostility, enhance the errors and
crimes, and disparage the virtues of certain persons; yet, in general, he leaves us the
materials for forming a fairer judgment; and if he is not exempt from his own prejudices,
perhaps we might write passions, yet it must be candidly acknowledged, that his
philosophical bigotry is not more unjust than the theological partialities of those
ecclesiastical writers who were before in undisputed possession of this province of
history.
We are thus naturally led to that great misrepresentation which pervades his history - his
false estimate of the nature and influence of Christianity.
But on this subject some preliminary caution is necessary, lest that should be expected
from a new edition, which it is impossible that it should completely accomplish. We must
first be prepared with the only sound preservative against the false impression likely to be
produced by the perusal of Gibbon; and we must see clearly the real cause of that false
impression. The former of these cautions will be briefly suggested in its proper place, but
it may be as well to state it, here, somewhat more at length. The art of Gibbon, or at least
the unfair impression produced by his two memorable chapters, consists in his
confounding together, in one indistinguishable mass, the origin and apostolic propagation
of the new religion, with its later progress. No argument for the divine authority of
Christianity has been urged with greater force, or traced with higher eloquence, than that
deduced from its primary development, explicable on no other hypothesis than a
heavenly origin, and from its rapid extension through great part of the Roman empire.
But this argument - one, when confined within reasonable limits, of unanswerable force -
becomes more feeble and disputable in proportion as it recedes from the birthplace, as it
were, of the religion. The further Christianity advanced, the more causes purely human
were enlisted in its favor; nor can it be doubted that those developed with such artful
exclusiveness by Gibbon did concur most essentially to its establishment. It is in the
Christian dispensation, as in the material world. In both it is as the great First Cause, that
the Deity is most undeniably manifest. When once launched in regular motion upon the
bosom of space, and endowed with all their properties and relations of weight and mutual
attraction, the heavenly bodies appear to pursue their courses according to secondary

laws, which account for all their sublime regularity. So Christianity proclaims its Divine
Author chiefly in its first origin and development. When it had once received its impulse
from above - when it had once been infused into the minds of its first teachers - when it
had gained full possession of the reason and affections of the favored few - it might be -
and to the Protestant, the rationa Christian, it is impossible to define when it really was -
left to make its way by its native force, under the ordinary secret agencies of all-ruling
Providence. The main question, the divine origin of the religion, was dexterously eluded,
or speciously conceded by Gibbon; his plan enabled him to commence his account, in
most parts, below the apostolic times; and it was only by the strength of the dark coloring
with which he brought out the failings and the follies of the succeeding ages, that a
shadow of doubt and suspicion was thrown back upon the primitive period of
Christianity.
"The theologian," says Gibbon, "may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as
she descended from heaven, arrayed in her native purity; a more melancholy duty is
imposed upon the historian: - he must discover the inevitable mixture of error and
corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth among a weak and
degenerate race of beings." Divest this passage of the latent sarcasm betrayed by the
subsequent tone of the whole disquisition, and it might commence a Christian history
written in the most Christian spirit of candor. But as the historian, by seeming to respect,
yet by dexterously confounding the limits of the sacred land, contrived to insinuate that it
was an Utopia which had no existence but in the imagination of the theologian - as he
suggested rather than affirmed that the days of Christian purity were a kind of poetic
golden age; - so the theologian, by venturing too far into the domain of the historian, has
been perpetually obliged to contest points on which he had little chance of victory - to
deny facts established on unshaken evidence - and thence, to retire, if not with the shame
of defeat, yet with but doubtful and imperfect success. Paley, with his