Reading notes--Adam Kissel

Mackintosh (recorded by M---): "The causes assigned . . . for the diffusion of Christianity, must, no doubt, have contributed to it materially; but I doubt whether he saw them all. Perhaps those which he enumerates are among the most obvious. They might all be safely adopted by a Christian writer, with some change in the language and manner." 151

M---: "The art of Gibbon, or at least the unfair impression produced by these two memorable chapters, consists in confounding together, in one undistinguishable mass, the origin and apostolic propagation of the Christian religion with its later progress. The main question, the divine origin of the religion, is dexterously eluded or speciously conceded; his plan enables him to commence his account, in most parts, below the apostolic times; and it is only by the strength of the dark colouring with which he has brought out the failings and the follies of succeeding ages, that a shadow of doubt and suspicion is thrown back on the primitive period of Christianity. Divest this whole passage of the latent sarcasm betrayed by the subsequent tone of the whole disquisition, and it might commence a Christian history, written in the most Christian spirit of candour." 152

G---: "The exaggerated and declamatory opinions of Tertullian ought not to be taken as the general sentiment of the early Christians. Gibbon has too often allowed himself to consider the peculiar notions of certain Fathers of the Church as inherent in Christianity. This is not accurate." 167

M---: [The fourth cause.] "These, in the opinion of the editor, are the most uncandid paragraphs in Gibbon's History. He ought either, with manly courage, to have denied the moral reformation introduced by Christianity, or fairly to have investigated all its motives: not to have confined himself to an insidious and sarcastic description of the less pure and generous elements of the Christian character as it appeared even at that early time." 182-83

Henry Davis (excerpts in David Womersley, Religious Scepticism): Davis is the main detractor who Gibbon claims to be refuting. Davis has many strong points of contention. My favorite general comment of his: "It may not be without its use to quiet the apprehensions of many a sincere, but, I must add, ill-instructed Christian, who, imposed upon by our historian's parade of quotation and elegance of composition, have done him, what I must think, the unmerited honour of considering him as an adversary who had produced something of importance, unknown to his predecessors in the cause of infidelity, and which the friends of the Gospel would find it difficult to confute. - Be it observed, therefore, that Mr. G. does not give himself the trouble of starting any new objection against the truth of Christianity, but that his whole plan of accounting for its progress from secondary causes is a stale infidel topic, urged and confuted long before he was born." 207-08

Davis: "And nothing, I think, could be contrived so effectual . . . to deter men from Christianity, as to tell them, that, when they took it upon them, they must renounce their dearest appetites and passions, and deny their very selves. And I desire the men, who raise these objections against the divine original of the Gospel, to tell us fairly, whether, if they had lived at that time, they would have come in upon this principle? I am sure they would not; because it is this principle alone . . . which keeps them out of it now." 209-10