or belief of its
private members; and the forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith,
are subscribed with a sigh, or a smile, by the modern clergy. Yet the
friends of Christianity are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry
and scepticism. The predictions of the Catholics are accomplished: the
web of mystery is unravelled by the Arminians, Arians, and Socinians,
whose number must not be computed from their separate congregations; and
the pillars of Revelation are shaken by those men who preserve the name
without the substance of religion, who indulge the license without the
temper of philosophy. [42] [4211]

[Footnote 34: "Had it not been for such men as Luther and myself,"
said the fanatic Whiston to Halley the philosopher, "you would now be
kneeling before an image of St. Winifred."]

[Footnote 35: The article of Servet in the Dictionnaire Critique of
Chauffepie is the best account which I have seen of this shameful
transaction. See likewise the Abbe d'Artigny, Nouveaux Memoires
d'Histoire, &c., tom. ii. p. 55-154.]

[Footnote 36: I am more deeply scandalized at the single execution of
Servetus, than at the hecatombs which have blazed in the Auto de Fes of
Spain and Portugal. 1. The zeal of Calvin seems to have been envenomed
by personal malice, and perhaps envy. He accused his adversary before
their common enemies, the judges of Vienna, and betrayed, for his
destruction, the sacred trust of a private correspondence. 2. The deed
of cruelty was not varnished by the pretence of danger to the church or
state. In his passage through Geneva, Servetus was a harmless stranger,
who neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes. 3. A Catholic
inquisition yields the same obedience which he requires, but Calvin
violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by; a rule which I
read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in Nicocle, tom. i. p. 93, edit.
Battie) four hundred years before the publication of the Gospel. * Note:
Gibbon has not accurately rendered the sense of this passage, which does
not contain the maxim of charity Do unto others as you would they should
do unto you, but simply the maxim of justice, Do not to others the which
would offend you if they should do it to you.--G.]

[Footnote 37: See Burnet, vol. ii. p. 84-86. The sense and humanity of
the young king were oppressed by the authority of the primate.]

[Footnote 38: Erasmus may be considered as the father of rational
theology. After a slumber