But this does not account for the stress he
lays on the _ascription_ of miracles. He seems to think that the claim
of supernatural gifts somehow had the same efficacy as the gifts
themselves would have had, if they had existed.
The fourth cause is the virtues of the primitive Christians. The
paragraphs upon it, Dean Milman considers the most uncandid in all the
history, and they certainly do Gibbon no credit. With a strange
ignorance of the human heart, he attributes the austere morals of the
early Christians to their care for their reputation. The ascetic
temper, one of the most widely manifested in history, was beyond his
comprehension.
The fifth cause was the union and discipline of the Christian
republic. For the last time the effect figures as the cause. Union and
discipline we know are powerful, but we know also that they are the
result of deep antecedent forces, and that prudence and policy alone
never produced them.
It can surprise no one that Gibbon has treated the early Church in a
way which is highly unsatisfactory if judged by a modern standard. Not
only is it a period which criticism has gone over again and again with
a microscope, but the standpoint from which such periods are observed
has materially changed since his day.
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