5 - The Legacy of Ancient Rome: Edward Gibbon and Conyers Middleton

Summary

The Church of England and the Antonines

In Decline and Fall and his other writings, Gibbon's conception of civil religion was as much pagan in focus as Christian. The relationship between religious belief and civil order underpinned Gibbon's analysis of ancient pagan society, Christian Rome, and modern Europe. He praised the worldliness and patriotism of Roman paganism as well as the moral perfection and spiritual purity of primitive Christianity. But he abjured corrupt religion, both pagan and Christian, and analysed it by distinguishing between superstition and enthusiasm. To purge the world of corrupt religion, Gibbon hoped to regulate public religion through a church establishment. But his ecclesiology went far beyond pragmatic statements of the civil utility of an established faith. He hoped to maintain the status of the Church of England as the civil religion by defending its articles of faith. Its clergymen were public officeholders responsible for preaching the revealed faith in the reformed tradition. Gibbon's Church of England relied on the magisterial Reformation to remove sacerdotal priestliness from society. Clergymen would be learned in techniques of studying scripture, reversing the corruptions that were attached to Christianity during the centuries after Jesus Christ. Clergymen would also become pedagogical and pastoral, preaching a worldly morality based upon gospel Christianity, and providing public worship to undermine enthusiasm.

Traditionally, Gibbon has been associated with the Enlightenment conceived as ‘the triumph of human reason’ or ‘the rise of modern paganism’. Another strand of scholarship has cast Gibbon as, first, a Christian writer who, second, defended the need for public worship. To focus primarily on Gibbon's inward faith is to obscure the role that he believed religion should play in society. Gibbon remained sceptical of the capacities of the human mind to comprehend the mysteries of the universe. Howsoever imperfect the articles of faith of the Church of England might have been, he did not believe they were perfectible in this world. Even if the elite philosopher or religionist doubted the veracity of the Thirty-Nine Articles, it behove them to respect the creed not simply as the lawful established religion but also to reinforce the beliefs of the laity, provided they did not endanger the safety and welfare of the civil state.