heology or philosophy. Hume had a profound
contempt for everything Puritanic on the one hand, and hierarchical and
traditional on the other. He would make every trace disappear beneath
his scathing pen. He ignored the development of religious life in
England, and would subject all events which indicated a deep Christian
piety and purpose, to his cold system of philosophy. Writing with an
inflexible adherence to his theological opinions, he cast over
historical events the drapery of his own interpretation. The question
with him was not, "What is the history of England during the period of
which I treat?" but "Does not the history of England sustain my
philosophy?" And his own answer was, "Yes; I record facts, and draw my
own conclusions. Is not that a good philosophy!"

Gibbon was even more of a Frenchman than Hume. Sundering his relation to
Oxford in his seventeenth year, he embarked upon a course of living and
thinking which, whatever advantage it might afford to his purse, was not
likely to aid his faith. By a sudden caprice he became a Roman Catholic,
and afterwards as unceremoniously denied his adopted creed. In due time
he found himself in Paris publishing a book in the French language. He
there fell in with the fashionable infidelity, and so far yielded to the
flattery of Helvetius and all the frequenters of Holbach's house that he
jested at Christianity and assailed its divine character.

While residing at Lausanne, Switzerland, he cultivated the florid French
style of composition, and applied it in his _Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire_. That work has been severely censured, but despite its
defects, it is one of the permanent master-pieces of English literature.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters the author gives his opinion of
Christianity. He attributes the progress of the Christian religion to
the zeal of the Jews, to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as
stated by philosophers, to the miraculous powers claimed by the
primitive church, to the virtues of the first Christians, and to the
activity of the Christians in the government of the church. He
attributed to outward agencies what could have been effected only by
inward forces. But he did not assume the philosopher's cap, for, not
being metaphysical by nature, he never did violence to his own
constitution. He has left much less on record against Christianity than
Hume, but they must be ranked together as the last of the family of
English