were forgeries, muft in that learned age, by their eafy detection, have rather impeded, than accelerated the progrefs of Christianity: and it appears very probable to me, that nothing but the recent prevailing evidence, of real, unquestioned, apoftolical miracles, could have fecured the infant church from being destroyed by thofe, which were falsely ascribed to it.'

In his fourth letter, which is à fhort one, Dr. Watson confiders what Mr. Gibbon has advanced concerning the fourth of the causes of the rapid growth of Chriftianity, viz. the virtues of the firft Chriflians.-He obferves, that Mr. Gibbon is eloquent in defcribing the auftere morality of the primitive Chriftians, as adverse to the propenfities of fenfe, and abhorrent from all the innocent pleasures and amusements of life; that he enlarges with a ftudied minutenefs upon their cenfures of luxury, and their fentiments concerning marriage and chastity; but that in this circumftantial enumeration of their errors, or their faults (which he is under no neceffity of denying or excufing) he feems to have forgot the very purpose for which he profeffes to have introduced the mention of them; for that the picture he has drawn is fo hideous, and the colouring fo difmal, that inftead of alluring to a clofer inspection, it must have made every man of pleasure, or of fenfe, turn from it with horror or dif guft; and that fo far from contributing to the rapid growth of Christianity by the aufterity of their manners, it must be a wonder to any one, how the firft Chriftians ever made a fingle

convert.

The union and the difcipline of the Chriftian Church, or, as Mr. Gibbon calls it, the Chriftian republic, is the last of the five secondary caufes affigned for the rapid and extensive spread of Chriftianity, and is the subject of our author's fifth letter, which contains many pertinent and judicious remarks, but for which, we must refer our readers to the work itself; though it is not without a confiderable degree of reluctance that we deny ourfelves the pleafure of extending, to a greater length, our acCount of fo fenfible and fpirited a performance.

The fixth letter is introduced in the following manner:

⚫ I mean not to detain you long with my remarks upon your fixteenth Chapter; for in a fhort apology for Christianity, it cannot be expected, that I fhould apologize at length, for the indifcretions of the first Christians. Nor have I any difpofition to reap a malicious pleafure, from exaggerating, what you have had fo much goodnatured pleasure in extenuating, the truculent barbarity of their Ro. man perfecutors.

M. de Voltaire has embraced every opportunity of contrafting the perfecuting temper of the Chriftians with the mild tolerance of the ancient heathens; and I never read a page of his upon this fubject, without thinking Christianity materially, if not intentionally, obliged to him, for his endeavours to deprefs the lofty fpirit of religious

bigotry.

bigotry. I may with juftice pay the fame compliment to you; and I do it with fincerity; heartily withing, that in the profecution of your work, you may render every fpecies of intolerance univerfally deteftable. There is no reason, why you should abate the afperity of your invective; fince no one can fufpect you of a defign to traduce Christianity, under the guise of a zeal against perfecution; or if any one fhould be fo fimple, he need but open the gospel to be convinced, that such a scheme is too palpably abfurd, to have ever entered the head of any fenfible and impartial man.'

The Doctor concludes his fixth and laft letter in the fame genteel manner in which he introduced his first.

I may not probably have convinced you, fays he, that you are wrong in any thing, which you have advanced; or that the authors you have quoted, will not fupport you in the inferences you have drawn from their works; or that Christianity ought to be diftinguished from it's corruptions; yet I may, perhaps, have had the good fortune to leffen, in the minds of others, fome of that diflike to the Chriftian religion, which the perufal of your book had unhappily excited. I have touched but upon general topics; for I fhould have wearied out your patience, to fay nothing of my readers, or my own, had I enlarged upon every thing in which I diffent from you; and a minute examination of your work would, moreover, have had the appearance of a captious difpofition, to defcend into illiberal perfonalities; and might have produced a certain acrimony of fentiment er expreffion, which may be ferviceable in fupplying the place of argument, or adding a zeft to a dull compofition; but has nothing to do with the investigation of truth. Sorry fhall I be, if what I have written, should give the leaft interruption to the profecution of the great work, in which you are engaged; the world is now poffeffed of the opinion of us both, upon the fubject in queftion; and it may, perhaps, be proper for us both to leave it in this fiate; I fay not this, from any backwardness to acknowledge my mistakes, when I am convinced that I am in an error; but to exprefs the almoft infuperable reluctance, which I feel to the bandying abufive argument, in public controverfy: it is not, in good truth, a difficult tafk, to chaftife the froward petulance of those, who mistake perfonal invective for reasoning, and clumfy banter for ingenuity; but it is a dirty business at best, and should never be undertaken by a man of any temper, except when the interets of truth may fuffer by his neglect. Nothing of this nature, I am fenfible, is to be expected from you; and if any thing of the kind has happened to escape myself, I hereby disclaim the intention of laying it, and heartily with it anfaid.

• Will you permit me, Sir, through this channel (I may not, perhaps, have another fo good an opportunity of doing it) to addrefs a few words? not to yourself, but to a fet of men, who disturb all ferious company with their profane declamation against Chriflianity; and who having picked up in their travels, or the writings of the deis, a few flimfy objections, infect with their ignorant and irreverent ri dicule, the ingenuous minds of the rifing generation.'

We moft fincerely and earnestly recommend an attentive perufal of our Author's concluding Address to thofe perfons for

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whom

whom it is intended, it being impoffible, in our opinion, to read it with any degree of care and ferioufnefs, without being ftruck with the force and manly fpirit wherewith it is written. The following extract, upon a curious fubject, we need make no apology for inferting.

Before I put an end to this Addrefs, fays our Author, I cannot help taking notice of an argument, by which fome philofophers have of late endeavoured to overturn the whole fyftem of revelation: and it is the more neceffary to give an answer to their objection, as it is become a common fubject of philofophical converfation, especially amongst thefe, who have vifited the continent. The objection tends to invalidate, as is fuppofed, the authority of Mofes; by thewing, that the earth is much older, than it can be proved to be from his account of the creation, and the fcripture chronology. We contend, that fix thousand years have not yet elapfed, fince the creation; and thefe philofophers contend, that they have indubitable proof of the earth's being at the leaft fourteen thousand years old; and they complain, that Mofes hangs as a dead weight upon them, and blunts all their zeal for inquiry *.

• The Canonico Recupero, who, it feems, is engaged in writing the hiftory of mount Etna, has difcovered a ftratum of lava, which flowed from that mountain, according to his opinion, in the time of the fecond Punic war, or about two thousand years ago; this firatum is not yet covered with foil, fufficient for the production of either corn or vines; it requires then, fays the canon, two thousand years, at least, to convert a ftratum of lava into a fertile field. In finking a pit near faci, in the neighbourhood of Etna, they have discovered evident marks of seven distinct lavas, one under the other; the farfaces of which are parallel, and most of them covered with a thick bed of rich earth; now, the eruption, which formed the loweft of these lavas (if we may be allowed to reafon, fays the Canon, from analogy), flowed from the mountain at least fourteen thousand years ago. It might be briefly anfwered to this objection, by denying, that there is any thing in the hiftory of Mofes repugnant to this opinion concerning the great antiquity of the earth; for though the rife and progrefs of arts and fciences, and the small multiplication of the human fpecies, render it almoft to a demonftration probable, that man has not exifted longer upon the furface of this earth, than according to the Mofaic account; yet, that the earth itself was then created out of nothing, when man was placed upon it, is not, according to the fentiments of fome philofophers, to be proved from the original text of facred fcripture; we might, I fay, reply, with thefe philofophers, to this formidable objection of the Canon, by granting it in it's full extent; we are under no neceffity, however, of adopting their opinion, in order to fhew the weakness of the Canon's reafoning. For in the first place, the Canon has not fatisfactorily established his main fact, that the lava in queftion, is the identical lava, which Diodorus Siculus mentions to have flowed from Etna, in the

* Brydone's Trave's; or our extract of that work, Rev. vol. xlix.

P. 28.

fecond

fecond Carthaginian war; and in the fecond place, it may be obferved, that the time neceffary for converting lavas into fertile fields, must be very different, according to the different confiftencies of the lavas, and their different fituations, with refpect to elevation or depreffion; to their being expofed to winds, rains, and to other circumftances; just as the time, in which the heaps of iron flag (which resembles lava) are covered with verdure, is different at different furnaces, according to the nature of the flag, and fituation of the furnace; and fomething of this kind is deducible from the account of the Canon himself; fince the crevices of this famous ftratum are really full of rich, good foil, and have pretty large trees growing in them.

But if this fhould be thought not fufficient to remove the objection, I will produce the Canon an analogy in oppofition to his analogy, and which is grounded on more certain facts. Etna and Vefuvius refemble each other, in the caufes which produce their eruptions, and in the nature of their lavas, and in the time neceffary to mellow them into foil fit for vegetation; or if there be any flight difference in this refpect, it is probably not greater than what fubfifts between different lavas of the fame mountain. This being admitted, which no philofopher will deny, the Canon's analogy will prove juft nothing at all, if we can produce an inftance of feven different lavas (with interjacent ftrata of vegetable earth) which have flowed from mount Vefuvius, within the space, not of fourteen thousand, but of fomewhat less than feventeen hundred years; for then, according to our analogy, a ftratum of lava may be covered with vegetable foil, in about two hundred and fifty years, inftead of requiring two thoufand for the purpose. The eruption of Vefuvius, which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii, is rendered ftill more famous by the death of Pliny, recorded by his nephew, in his letter to Tacitus ; this event happened in the year 79; it is not yet then quite feventeen hundred years, fince Herculaneum was fwallowed up: but we are informed by unquestionable authority, that "the matter which co"vers the ancient town of Herculaneum, is not the produce of one "eruption only; for there are evident marks, that the matter of fix eruptions has taken it's courfe over that which lies immediately "above the town, and was the caufe of it's deftruction. Thefe "ftrata are either of lava or burnt matter, with veins of good foil "betwixt them."-I will not add another word upon this fubject; except that the bishop of the diocefe, was not much out in his advice to Canonico Recupero-to take care, not to make his mountain older than Moses; though it would have been full as well, to have fhut his mouth with a reafon, as to have stopped it with the dread of an ecclefiaftical cenfure.'

We now conclude this article with acquainting our readers, that fome judicious remarks on certain paffages in Mr. Gibbon's hiftory are annexed to our Author's letters; they were communicated to him, he tells us, when his letters were in a great measure printed off, by R. Wynne, rector of St. Alphage, London."

*Sir W. Hamilton's Remarks on the foil of Naples, &c. Phil. Tranfactions, vol. Ixi.

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ART.

ART. XI. Remarks on the Two laft Chapters of Mr. Gibbon's Hiftory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In a Letter to a Friend. 8vo. 1 s. 6 d. Payne, &c.

THA

THAT the two laft chapters of Mr. Gibbon's elegant and valuable history should not pafs without public animadverfion, can be matter of furprise to no one who has attentively perufed them, and who confiders the difficulty of treating a fubject of fo delicate and interefting a nature, in fuch a manner as fhall give fatisfaction to Readers of different views and prejudices. Two Anfwers have, accordingly, made their appearance, and others, we are informed, will foon be published.

The Remarks now before us are written in a candid and liberal manner; they fhew the Author to be a scholar and a gentleman, and they contain íome things that merit Mr. Gibbon's attention.

One unhappy bias, we are told, prevails throughout the whole courfe of Mr. Gibbon's refearches; the apologists of Christianity are vilified on every occafion; the objections of its adverfaries induftriously brought forward, and the teftimonies in favour of our religion, fometimes wholly concealed, at other times mifrepresented.

The paffages, fays our Author, which I allude to, from the nature of the work itself, affect only, for the most part, the hiftory of the first ages of Chriftianity. But there are alfo, far too many oblique and ungenerous infinuations, which fail not to fuggeft their own proper inferences, and which affect materially, the general credit of Chriflianity.

The enemy himself in the mean time, often lies hid behind the fhield of fome bolder warrior; and shoots his envenomed darts, under the protection of fome avowed heretic, of the age. It may be added, that the fingular addrefs of the hiftorian, has ferved even to make the laboured arguments of modern writers, coincide with the defcription of a remote period of antiquity; and has introduced many well-known objections to Chriftianity, which the refined scepticism of the prefent age, claims for its own. I thall endeavour to oppofe his oblique cenfures, by open argument; and fhall enquire into the real weight of the objections, which he has thought fit to fet before us, with the ftrictest candour.

It should be remarked carefully, that it is not the Author's defign, to account for the propagation of Chriftianity from its earliest date, but during a particular period only.

We are obliged to attribute to the prefent age, the invention of many metaphyfical fubtleties, and perhaps of fome arguments of .another kind; but for the most part, even the licentiousness of modern infidelity, has been only able to revive old arguments, difguifed under fome new form. This is a truth, which must strike every ene, verfed in the hiftory of infidelity, with the ftrongest conviction.'

• The