nly
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 b