belief and defence of all the Hebrew Scriptures, with all their prodigies, from the garden of Eden to the visions of the prophet Daniel; and they were bound like the Catholics, to justify against the Jews the abolition of a divine law. In the great mysteries of the Trinity and incarnation the reformers were severely orthodox: they freely adopted the theology of the four, or the six, first councils; and with the Athanasian creed, they pronounced the eternal damnation of all who did not believe the Catholic faith. Transubstantiation, the invisible change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, is a tenet that may defy the power of argument and pleasantry; but instead of consulting the evidence of their senses, of their sight, their feel ing, and their taste, the first Protestants were entangled in their own scruples, and awed by the words of Jesus in the institution of the sacrament. Luther maintained a corporeal, and Calvin a real, presence of Christ in the eucharist; and the opinion of Zuinglius, that it is no more than a spiritual communion, a simple memorial, has slowly prevailed in the reformed churches.* But the loss of one mystery was amply compensated by the stupendous doctrines of original sin, redemption, faith, grace, and predestination, which had been strained from the epistles of St. Paul. These subtle questions had most assuredly been prepared by the fathers and schoolmen; but the final improvement and popular use may be attributed to the first reformers, who enforced them as the absolute and essential terms of salvation. Hitherto the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the Protestants, and many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God, than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

Yet the services of Luther and his rivals are solid and important; and the philosopher must own his obligations to

value of the Reformation, we must watch in all its stages, the long previous struggle by which it was prepared, and unveil the antagonist ascendancy in its earliest form. There is not a brighter hour in the history of man. It was the birth of public opinion, that offspring of Gothic mind, that dread of tyrants, that power which is now so rapidly advancing to govern the world.-ED.]

* Under Edward VI. our Reformation was more bold and perfect : but in the fundamental articles of the Church of England, a strong and explicit declaration against the real presence was obliterated in the original copy, to please the people, or the Lutherans, or queen

252

CONSEQUENCES OF

[CH. LIV. these fearless enthusiasts.* I. By their hands the lofty fabric of superstition, from the abuse of indulgences to the intercession of the Virgin, has been levelled with the ground. Myriads of both sexes of the monastic profession were restored to the liberty and labours of social life. A hierarchy of saints and angels, of imperfect and subordinate deities, were stripped of their temporal power, and reduced to the enjoyment of celestial happiness; their images and relics were banished from the church; and the credulity of the people was no longer nourished with the daily repetition of miracles and visions. The imitation of Paganism was supplied by a pure and spiritual worship of prayer and thanksgiving, the most worthy of man, the least unworthy of the Deity. It only remains to observe whether such sublime simplicity be consistent with popular devotion; whether the vulgar, in the absence of all visible objects, will not be inflamed by enthusiasm, or insensibly subside in languor and indifference. II. The chain of authority was broken, which restrains the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave from speaking as he thinks: the popes, fathers, and councils, were no longer the supreme and infallible judges of the world; and each Christian was taught to acknowledge no law but the Scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience. This freedom, however, was the consequence, rather than the design, of the Reformation. The patriot reformers were ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal rigour their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The pious or personal animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetust the guilt of his own rebellion;+

Elizabeth. (Burnet's History of the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 82. 128. 302.) *"Had it not been for such men as Luther and myself," said the fanatic Whiston, to Halley the philosopher, "you would now be kneeling before an image of St. Winifred."

+ The article of Servet in the Dictionnaire Critique of Chauffepié, is the best account which I have seen of this shameful transaction. See likewise the Abbé d'Artigny, Nouveaux Mémoires d'Histoire, &c. tom. ii. p. 55-154. I am more deeply scandalized at the single execution of Servetus, than at the hecatombs which have blazed in the auto-da-fés of Spain and Portugal. 1. The zeal of Calvin seems to have been envenomed by personal malice, and perhaps euvy. He accused his adversary before their common enemies, the

and the flames of Smithfield, in which he was afterwards consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists by the zeal of Cranmer.* The nature of the tiger was the same, but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs. A spiritual and temporal kingdom was possessed by the Roman pontiff: the Protestant doctors were subjects of an humble rank, without revenue or jurisdiction. His decrees were consecrated by the antiquity of the Catholic church: their arguments and disputes were submitted to the people; and their appeal to private judgment was accepted beyond their wishes, by curiosity and enthusiasm. Since the days of Luther and Calvin, a secret reformation has been silently

judges of Vienne, and betrayed, for his destruction, the sacred trust of a private correspondence. 2. The deed of cruelty was not varnished by the pretence of danger to the church or state. In his passage through Geneva, Servetus was a harmless stranger, who neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes. 3. A Catholic inquisitor yields the same obedience which he requires, but Calvin violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by; a rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in Nicocles, tom. i. p. 93, edit. Battie), four hundred years before the publication of the gospel. "A TάoxovTES ὑφ ̓ ἑτέρων ὀργίζεσθε, ταῦτα τοῖς ἄλλοις μὴ ποιεῖτε. [M. Guizot complains that Gibbon's version of this passage is not accurate. The words of Isocrates may not have been rendered with literal exactness; but their spirit has undoubtedly been preserved. The leaders of the Reformation did not understand the impulse by which they were carried forward; they did not perceive that it could not be stopped at their point, that mind was set free from its confinement of twelve hundred years, and would not be again coerced. Calvin erected for himself a church, over which his sway was as absolute as that of another pope. To fortify this, he issued his intolerant decree: "Jure gladii hæreticos coercendos esse," and darkened his fame by a deed, above all others, hideous for its malignity and hateful for its perfidy. The work for which Servetus suffered, Christianismi Restitutio, was doomed to share its author's fate. Every copy that could be found, was used by the bigots of Vienne for fuel when they burned his effigy. In the horrid tragedy at Geneva, "femori auctoris alligatus, cum ipso combustus est." (See Pettigrew's Bibliotheca Sussexiana, Lat. MSS. No. 101.) A copy that had escaped destruction came into Dr. Mead's possession, who was preparing to publish it in 1723, when the impression was seized by Dr. Gibson, then bishop of London, and committed to the flames. Four copies were saved, which, with two of the original edition are now the bibliographical treasures of royal and scientific libraries. But they have afforded to the press the means of multiplying the book, so that it is now generally obtainable.—ED.]

*See Burnet, vol. ii. p. 84-86. The sense and humanity of the young king were oppressed by the authority of the primate.

<

254

CONSEQUENCES OF

[CH. LIV. working in the bosom of the reformed churches; many weeds of prejudice were eradicated; and the disciples of Erasmus * diffused a spirit of freedom and moderation. The liberty of conscience has been claimed as a common benefit, an inalienable right: the free governments of Holland ‡ and England § introduced the practice of toleration; and the narrow allowance of the laws has been enlarged by the prudence and humanity of the times. In the exercise, the mind has understood the limits, of its powers, and the words and shadows that might amuse the child can no longer satisfy his manly reason. The volumes of controversy are

* Erasmus may be considered as the father of rational theology. After a slumber of a hundred years, it was revived by the Arminians of Holland, Grotius, Limborch, and Le Clerc; in England by Chillingworth, the Latitudinarians of Cambridge (Burnet, Hist. of Own Times, vol. i. p. 261-268, octavo edition), Tillotson, Clarke, Hoadley, &c.

I am sorry to observe, that the three writers of the last age, by whom the rights of toleration have been so nobly defended, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke, are all laymen and philosophers.

See the excellent chapter of Sir William Temple on the religion of the United Provinces. I am not satisfied with Grotius (de Rebus Belgicis, Annal. 1. 1, p. 13, 14, edit. in 12mo.), who approves the imperial laws of persecution, and only condemns the bloody tribunal of the Inquisition. [The "Reformed Church" of Holland imbibed too much the spirit, and followed the example, of its Genevan founder. As soon as it was itself secure, it began, under the second Staathouder, Moritz, to persecute the Arminian Remonstrants; and the synod of Dordrecht emulated the council of Constance. Grotius himself was one of its victims. His escape from the castle of Leeuwensteen is a popular tale, read by many who do not know that he was confined there for his religious opinions. The progress of toleration has restrained, and now forbids, such proceedings. But even as late as 1787, when the Prussian arms reinstated the expelled prince of Orange, licentious multitudes were let loose to assault and plunder the "godless heretics;" and even in these days the orthodox teachers do not discourage, as they ought, the prejudices of ignorant fanaticism.-ED.]

§ Sir William Blackstone (Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 53, 54) explains the law of England as it was fixed at the Revolution. The exceptions of Papists, and of those who deny the Trinity, would still leave a tolerable scope for persecution, if the national spirit were not more effectual than a hundred statutes. [That spirit has since expunged these statutes from our code. Its characteristics and progress illuminate every page of English history, but more particularly those of the three centuries, since it broke from hierarchical bondage. Its distinguishing qualities cannot be found so conspicuously displayed in the annals of any other country. (See Hallam, 2. 374.) But laws are formed by, not the formers of, a people.-ED.]

overspread with cobwebs; the doctrine of a Protestant church is far removed from the knowledge or belief of its private members; and the forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are subscribed with a sigh or a smile by the modern clergy. Yet the friends of Christianity are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry and scepticism. The predictions of the Catholics are accomplished; the web of mystery is unravelled by the Arminians, Arians, and Socinians, whose numbers must not be computed from their separate congregations; and the pillars of revelation are shaken by those men who preserve the name without the substance of religion, who indulge the license, without the temper, of philosophy.*

CHAPTER LV.—THE BULGARIANS.-ORIGIN, MIGRATIONS, AND SETTLEMENT OF THE HUNGARIANS.-THEIR INROADS IN THE EAST AND WEST. THE MONARCHY OF RUSSIA.-GEOGRAPHY AND TRADE.-WARS OF THE RUSSIANS AGAINST THE GREEK EMPIRE.-CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS.

UNDER the reign of Constantine, the grandson of Heraclius, the ancient barrier of the Danube, so often violated and so often restored, was irretrievably swept away by a new deluge of Barbarians. Their progress was favoured by the caliphs, their unknown and accidental auxiliaries; the Roman legions were occupied in Asia; and after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, the Cæsars were twice reduced to the danger and disgrace of defending their capital against the Saracens. If, in the account of this interesting people, I have deviated from the strict and original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will hide my transgression or solicit my excuse. In the East, in the West, in war, in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and in

* I shall recommend to public animadversion two passages in Dr. Priestley, which betray the ultimate tendency of his opinions. At the first of these (Hist. of the Corruptions of Christianity, vol. i. p. 275, 276), the priest, at the second (vol. ii. p. 484), the magistrate, may tremble! [Gibbon evidently felt nettled at the attack made on him in Dr. Priestley's Letter to a Philosophical Unbeliever. See his "Memoir of my Life and Writings," p. 232, and Letters, No. 161-166. -ED.]