"My college forgot to
instruct; I forgot to return, and was myself forgotten by the first
magistrate of the university. Without a single lecture, either public
or private, either Christian or Protestant, without any academical
subscription, without any episcopal ordination, I was left by light of
my catechism to grope my way to the chapel and communion table, where
I was admitted without question how far or by what means I might be
qualified to receive the sacrament. Such almost incredible neglect was
productive of the worst mischiefs." What did Gibbon mean by this last
sentence? Did he, when he wrote it, towards the end of his life,
regret the want of early religious instruction? Nothing leads us to
think so, or to suppose that his subsequent loss of faith was a heavy
grief, supported, but painful to bear. His mind was by nature
positive, or even pagan, and he had nothing of what the Germans call
_religiositaet_ in him. Still there is a passage in his Memoirs where
he oddly enough laments not having selected the _fat slumbers of the
Church_ as an eligible profession. Did he reflect that perhaps the
neglect of his religious education at Oxford had deprived him of a
bishopric or a good deanery, and the learned leisure which such
positions at that time conferred on those who cared for it? He could
not feel that he was morally, or even spiritually, unfit for an office
filled in his own time by such men as Warburton and Hurd.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30