Yet it was, in other respects besides the matter of
pecuniary troubles, a momentous epoch in his life. The peculiar views
which he adopted and partly professed on religion must have been
formed then. But the date, the circumstance, and the occasion are left
in darkness. Up to December 18, 1763, Gibbon was evidently a believer.
In an entry in his private journal under that date he speaks of a
Communion Sunday at Lausanne as affording an "edifying spectacle," on
the ground that there is "neither business nor parties, and they
interdict even whist" on that day. How soon after this his opinions
began to change, it is impossible to say. But we are conscious of a
markedly different tone in the _Observations_, and a sneer at "the
ancient alliance between the avarice of the priests and the credulity
of the people" is in the familiar style of the Deists from Toland to
Chubb. There is no evidence of his familiarity with the widely
diffused works of the freethinkers, and as far as I am aware he does
not quote or refer to them even once. But they could hardly have
escaped his notice. Still his strong historic sense and solid
erudition would be more likely to be repelled than attracted by their
vague and inaccurate scholarship, and chimerical theories of the light
of Nature.
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