Since the appearance of volume I of The decline and fall of
the Roman empire
in 1776, the religion of Edward Gibbon has been subject to intense debate.
He has been variously
identified as an atheist, a deist, even as a somewhat detached Christian.
Examination of his relations,
both personal and scholarly, with the varieties of religion and
irreligion current in eighteenth-century
Britain leads to the conclusion that he remained resolutely critical
of all such positions. He did not
share the convictions of dogmatic freethinkers, still less those of
determined atheists. The product of
a nonjuring family, Gibbon benefited from the scholarly legacy of
several high church writers, while
maintaining a critical attitude towards the claims of Anglican orthodoxy.
It was through the deliberate
and ironical adoption of the idiom of via media Anglicanism, represented
by such theologians as the
clerical historian John Jortin, that Gibbon developed a woundingly sceptical
appraisal of the history
of the early church. This stance made it as difficult for his contemporaries
to identify Gibbon's religion
as it has since proved to be for modern historians. Gibbon appreciated
the
central role of religion in
shaping history, but he remained decidedly sceptical as to Christianity's
ultimate status as revealed and unassailable truth.
