the example of
persecution, a clamour is raised of the increase of popery: and they are
always loud to declaim against the toleration of priests and jesuits,
who pervert so many of his majesty's subjects from their religion and
allegiance. On the present occasion, the fall of one or more of her sons
directed this clamour against the university: and it was confidently
affirmed that popish missionaries were suffered, under various
disguises, to introduce themselves into the colleges of Oxford. But
justice obliges me to declare, that, as far as relates to myself, this
assertion is false; and that I never conversed with a priest, or even
with a papist, till my resolution from books was absolutely fixed. In
my last excursion to London, I addressed myself to Mr. Lewis, a Roman
catholic bookseller in Russell-street, Covent Garden, who recommended
me to a priest, of whose name and order I am at present ignorant. In our
first interview he soon discovered that persuasion was needless. After
sounding the motives and merits of my conversion he consented to admit
me into the pale of the church; and at his feet on the eighth of June
1753, I solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of heresy. The
seduction of an English youth of family and fortune was an act of as
much danger as glory; but he bravely overlooked the danger, of which I
was not then sufficiently informed. "Where a person is reconciled to
the see of Rome, or procures others to be reconciled, the offence (says
Blackstone) amounts to high treason." And if the humanity of the age
would prevent the execution of this sanguinary statute, there were other
laws of a less odious cast, which condemned the priest to perpetual
imprisonment, and transferred the proselyte's estate to his nearest
relation. An elaborate controversial epistle, approved by my director,
and addressed to my father, announced and justified the step which I
had taken. My father was neither a bigot nor a philosopher; but his
affection deplored the loss of an only son; and his good sense was
astonished at my strange departure from the religion of my country. In
the first sally of passion he divulged a secret which prudence might
have suppressed, and the gates of Magdalen College were for ever shut
against my return. Many years afterwards, when the name of Gibbon was
become as notorious as that of Middleton, it was industriously whispered
at Oxford, that the historian had formerly "turned papist;" my characte