morally, or even spiritually, unfit for an office
filled in his own time by such men as Warburton and Hurd. He would not
have disgraced the episcopal bench; he would have been dignified,
courteous, and hospitable; a patron and promoter of learning, we may
be sure. His literary labours would probably have consisted of an
edition of a Greek play or two, and certainly some treatise on the
Evidences of Christianity. But in that case we should not have had the
_Decline and Fall_.

The "blind activity of idleness" to which he was exposed at Oxford,
prevented any result of this kind. For want of anything better to do, he
was led to read Middleton's _Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers
which are Supposed to have Subsisted in the Christian Church_. Gibbon
says that the effect of Middleton's "bold criticism" upon him was
singular, and that instead of making him a sceptic, it made him more of
a believer. He might have reflected that it is the commonest of
occurrences for controversialists to produce exactly the opposite result
to that which they intend, and that as many an apology for Christianity
has sown the first seeds of infidelity, so an attack upon it might well
intensify faith. What follows is very curious. "The elegance of style
and freedom of argument were repelled by a shield of prejudice. I still
revered the character, or rather the names of the saints and fathers
whom Dr. Middleton exposes; nor could he destroy my implicit belief
that the gift of miraculous powers was continued in the Church during
the first 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 re