markable 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
rega