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Gibbon in Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

David Dillon Smith
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Extract

Church is not the first place we should think of looking for ‘the historian of the Roman Empire’. He is more usually thought of as the opponent of organised Christianity and of the established church whether under Constantine or the Hanoverians. Yet we know that he dutifully sat in the family pew at Buriton, occasionally attended services elsewhere and was indeed something of a connoisseur of sermons. Our aim is to seek him out during times of worship and, by an imaginative interpretation of certain known facts, to enter as far as possible into his mind. Such informed reading between the lines, using the documents which reveal to complement those which leave things unsaid, is hardly going beyond what the historian does when he deduces probable causes or demonstrable effects from a set of well-documented facts.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 1984 , pp. 452 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Memoirs of My Life, ed. Bonnard, G. A., London 1966, 37, 36Google Scholar.

2 See, e.g., Memoirs, 20–1.

3 Ibid., 43; Gibbon's Journal to January 28th, 1763, ed. Low, D. M., London 1929 (hereafter cited as JA), xxxii-xxxv, lxxxviiGoogle Scholar; and The Letters of Edward Gibbon (hereafter cited as Letters), ed. J. E. Norton, no. 26, London 1956, i. 105.

4 Memoirs, 57.

5 Ibid, 57–8.

6 Ibid, 60. See also Lord Sheffield's 1814 edition of Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, i. 64 note (hereafter cited as MW).

7 MW, i. 63 note.

8 Memoirs, 72.

9 Feb. 1755. Letters, i. 3. See also Memoirs, 74.

10 Memoirs, 74. See, however, his reference to his further investigation of the evidences of Christianity five years after this, ibid., app. 1, 211.

11 Joyce, Michael, Edward Gibbon, London 1953, 141Google Scholar.

12 See, e.g., JA, 130, 151, 163, 28, 29 Aug., 29 Sept., 27 Oct. 1762, and cf. the entry for 23 Sept. concerning Wilkes.

13 JA, 18 July 1762, 94.

14 JA, 107, 1 Aug. 1762.

15 Memoirs, 30.

16 JA, 98, 18 July 1762.

17 The Decline and Fall ofthe Roman Empire (hereafter cited as DF), ed. Bury, J. B., 7 vols., London 1909, iii. 185–6Google Scholar. Cf. also Ambrose's treatment of the Emperor's mother, Justina, in his sermons when she attempted to bend the archbishop's principles, iii. 166.

18 JA, 98, 18 July, 1762.

19 DF, v, c. xlvii.

20 John vi. 46–7.

21 DF, i. 7, 12. These objections, he claimed, derive ‘from our incapacity to form an adequate judgement of the divine oeconomy’.

22 Collins's book was published in 1719, Sherlock's, The Use and Intent of Prophecy in the Several Ages of the World, in 1735. This, like Sherlock's Lectures on Prophecy, was seen as an answer even if not directly aimed at Collins. Gibbon owned a copy of Sherlock's book as well as 5 vols. of his Discourses preached at the Temple Church.

23 See, e.g., Monthly Review, i, 239; ii, 286–301, 386; iii, 10, 16, 17, 111, 121, 122.

24 Richard Hurd, An Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies Concerning the Christian Church, &c., 1772 (also in Gibbon's library). See Letters, i. 327–38 (no. 196), to Richard Hurd, DD, c. Aug. 1772, i. 327–38.

25 JA, 107, no, Aug. 1762.

26 DF, ii. 13–14.

27 JA, 106, 110, 179, 1 Aug., 8 Aug., 31 Oct. 1762.

28 DF, v. 105.

29 Middleton, , Miscellaneous Works, London 1752, i. The Free Inquiry appeared in 1749Google Scholar.

30 DF, ii. 30. Gibbon actually makes reference in a footnote to Middleton (n. 75).

31 DF, ii. 32. This is precisely the point on which Middleton rests his case.

32 Memoirs, app. i. 211. This arose out of his study of Grotius's De veritate Religionis Chnstianae.

33 DF, v, c.xlvii.

34 DF, v. 105.

35 DF, v. iii. n. 17.

36 See Porson, R., ‘Letters to Mr. Archdeacon Travis &c.’, Works. London 1790, and esp. Letter XIIGoogle Scholar; cf. Gibbon, Memoirs, 174.

37 Cited in The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon…Printed verbatim from hitherto unprinted manuscripts, ed. Murray, John, London 1897. 248–9Google Scholar. The passage also appears in app. i of Bonnard's edition of the Memoirs, 211.

38 MW, ii. 83–94, Letter xxxi, dated Thurcaston, 29 Aug., 1772. There is also a fragment of Gibbon's answer to Hurd's reply, on pp. 94–5. See also Letters, i. 327–38. and notes on pp. 327 and 339.

39 DF, vi. 315.

40 DF, ii. 380–2.

41 DF, v. 103.

42 DF, vi. 263: ‘they aspired to persecute their spiritual brethren’.

43 Though Gibbon himself denied its connection with Athanasius, DF, iii. 96 and n. 116.

44 DF, vi. 132. See also his ‘Vindication of some passages in the with and. with chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, MW, iv. 605–6.

45 Memoirs, 189, 196.

46 DF, vii. 390; though he also wrote when his Aunt Kitty died that ‘the immortality of the soul is, on some occasions a very comfortable doctrine’. Letters, iii. 46 (no. 634, 10 May 1786).

47 Cf. DF, vi. 131, 132; ii. 135ff; v. 103ff.

48 Letters, i. 305 (no. 168, 8 Feb. 1762).

49 DF, vi. 242. On the polemical aspect, see Lewis, Bernard, ‘Gibbon on Muhammad’, in Bowersock, G. W., Edward Gibbon and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Cambridge, Mass. 1977, 65, 70–1Google Scholar.

50 DF, v. 523; v. 369.

51 DF, v. 369.

52 DF, ii. 346.

53 Though such ‘smooth applause’ could sometimes be replaced by ‘sedition’ from the pulpit, DF, iv. 88.

54 See Letters, ii, 218: ‘la decadence de Deux Empires le Romain et le Britannique s'avancent à pas egaux’ (no. 452, 4 June 1779). (The French accentuation here and elsewhere is Gibbon's own.)

55 See, e.g., DF, v. 471–2; vi. 280, 319.

56 JA, 106, 110, 179, 1 Aug., 8 Aug., 31 Oct. 1762.

57 JA, 126–7, 22 Aug. 1762.

58 DF, ii. 346. Gibbon here pointed to other less ‘salutary’ fruits of preaching.

59 JA, 127.

60 Le Journal de Gibbon à Lausanne. 17 Aôut 1763–19 Avril 1764, ed. G. Bonnard, Lausanne, 1945 (hereafter cited as JB), 127 (1r Septembre 1763), 20 and n. 3. Foster's Sermons were published in London in 1733.

61 JB, 161, 1r Décembre 1763. Cf. his remarks on the careful, strict observance of Communion Sunday in the region: ‘c'est un spectacle très edifiant’. (JB 18me Décembre 1763. 177).

62 Letters, i. 123–6, no. 35, Summer 1760; cf. JA, 22 March 1761.

63 But, for t he belief that Gibbon continued to make regular use of his English Bible, see Read, Meredith, Historic Studies in Vaud, Bern and Savoy, London 1897, ii. 286–7Google Scholar.

64 The phrase is Becker's, Carl, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers', New Haven, 1955, 118Google Scholar. Bond, H. L. called The Decline and Fall a commemorative address on the fate of the Roman Empire', The Literary Art of Edward Gibbon, Oxford 1960, 56–7Google Scholar.

65 DF, vii. 336.

66 DF, iv. 172ff.

67 Edward Gibbon and his Age, Arthur Skemp Memorial Lecture, Bristol 1935, 38Google Scholar.