" In this remarkable 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.
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