Gibbon | Page 6

four or five centuries of Christianity. But I was unable to resist
the weight of historical evidence, that within the same period most of

the leading doctrines of Popery were already introduced in theory and
practice. Nor was my conclusion absurd that miracles are the test of
truth, and that the Church must be orthodox and pure which was so
often approved by the visible interposition of the Deity. The marvellous
tales which are boldly attested by the Basils and Chrysostoms, the
Austins and Jeromes, compelled me to embrace the superior merits of
celibacy, the institution of the monastic life, the use of the sign of the
cross, of holy oil, and even of images, the invocation of saints, the
worship of relics, the rudiments of purgatory in prayers for the dead,
and the tremendous mystery of the sacrifice of the body and the blood
of Christ, which insensibly swelled into the prodigy of
transubstantiation." In this remarkable passage we have a distinct
foreshadow of the Tractarian movement, which came seventy or eighty
years afterwards. Gibbon in 1752, at the age of fifteen, took up a
position practically the same as Froude and Newman took up about the
year 1830. In other words, he reached the famous via media at a bound.
But a second spring soon carried him clear of it, into the bosom of the
Church of Rome.
He had come to what are now called Church principles, by the energy
of his own mind working on the scanty data furnished him by
Middleton. By one of those accidents which usually happen in such
cases, he made the acquaintance of a young gentleman who had already
embraced Catholicism, and who was well provided with controversial
tracts in favour of Romanism. Among these were the two works of
Bossuet, the Exposition of Catholic Doctrine and the History of the
Protestant Variations. Gibbon says: "I read, I applauded, I believed,
and surely I fell by a noble hand. I have since examined the originals
with a more discerning eye, and shall not hesitate to pronounce that
Bossuet is indeed a master of all the weapons of controversy. In the
Exposition, a specious apology, the orator assumes with consummate
art the tone of candour and simplicity, and the ten horned monster is
transformed at his magic touch into the milk-white hind, who must be
loved as soon as she is seen. In the History, a bold and well-aimed
attack, he displays, with a happy mixture of narrative and argument, the
faults and follies, the changes and contradictions of our first Reformers,
whose variations, as he dexterously contends, are the mark of historical

error, while the perpetual unity of the Catholic Church is the sign and
test of infallible truth. To my present feelings it seems incredible that I
should ever believe that I believed in transubstantiation. But my
conqueror oppressed me with the sacramental words, 'Hoc est corpus
meum,' and dashed against each other the figurative half meanings of
the Protestant sects; every objection was resolved into omnipotence,
and, after repeating at St. Mary's the Athanasian Creed, I humbly
acquiesced in the mystery of the Real Presence."
Many reflections are suggested on the respective domains of reason and
faith by these words, but they cannot be enlarged on here. No one,
nowadays, one may hope, would think of making Gibbon's conversion
a subject of reproach to him. The danger is rather that it should be
regarded with too much honour. It unquestionably shows the early and
trenchant force of his intellect: he mastered the logical position in a
moment; saw the necessity of a criterion of faith; and being told that it
was to be found in the practice of antiquity, boldly went there, and
abided by the result. But this praise to his head does not extend to his
heart. A more tender and deep moral nature would not have moved so
rapidly. We must in fairness remember that it was not his fault that his
religious education had been neglected at home, at school, and at
college. But we have no reason to think that had it been attended to, the
result would have been much otherwise. The root of spiritual life did
not exist in him. It never withered, because it never shot up. Thus when
he applied his acute mind to a religious problem, he contemplated it
with the coolness and impartiality of a geometer or chess player, his
intellect operated in vacuo so to speak, untrammelled by any bias of
sentiment or early training. He had no profound associations to tear out
of his heart. He merely altered the premisses of a syllogism. When
Catholicism was presented to him in a logical form, it met with no
inward bar and repugnance. The house was empty and ready for