He plunges into the Arian
controversy with manifest delight, and has given in a few pages one of
the clearest and most memorable _resumes_ of that great struggle. But
it is when he comes to the hero of that struggle, to an historic
character who can be seen with clearness, that he shows his wonted
tact and insight. A great man hardly ever fails to awaken Gibbon into
admiration and sympathy. The "Great Athanasius," as he often calls
him, caught his eye at once, and the impulse to draw a fine character,
promptly silenced any prejudices which might interfere with faithful
portraiture. "Athanasius stands out more grandly in Gibbon, than in
the pages of the orthodox ecclesiastical historians"--Dr. Newman has
said,--a judge whose competence will not be questioned. And as if to
show how much insight depends on sympathy, Gibbon is immediately more
just and open to the merits of the Christian community, than he had
been hitherto. He now sees "that the privileges of the Church had
already revived a sense of order and freedom in the Roman government."
His chapter on the rise of monasticism is more fair and discriminating
than the average Protestant treatment of that subject.
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