The first care of his preceptor was to bring about his religious
conversion. Gibbon showed an honourable tenacity to his new faith, and
a whole year after he had been exposed to the Protestant dialectics of
Pavillard he still, as the latter observed with much regret, continued
to abstain from meat on Fridays. There is something slightly
incongruous in the idea of Gibbon _fasting_ out of religious scruples,
but the fact shows that his religion had obtained no slight hold of
him, and that although he had embraced it quickly, he also accepted
with intrepid frankness all its consequences. His was not an intellect
that could endure half measures and half lights; he did not belong to
that class of persons who do not know their own minds.
However it is not surprising that his religion, placed where he was,
was slowly but steadily undermined. The Swiss clergy, he says, were
acute and learned on the topics of controversy, and Pavillard seems to
have been a good specimen of his class. An adult and able man, in
daily contact with a youth in his own house, urging persistently but
with tact one side of a thesis, could hardly fail in the course of
time to carry his point.
Pages:
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40