Early interested, too, in the history of Christianity, his studies led him
to become a Roman Catholic; but his belief was by no means stable. Sent by
his father to Lausanne, in Switzerland, to be under the religious training
of a Protestant minister, he changed his opinions, and became again a
Protestant. His convictions, however, were once more shaken, and, at the
last, he became a man of no creed, a sceptic of the school of Voltaire, a
creature of the age of illumination. Many passages of his history display
a sneering unbelief, which moves some persons more powerfully than the
subtlest argument. This modern Platonist, beginning with sensation,
evolves his philosophy from within,--from the finite mind; whereas human
history can only be explained in the light of revelation, which gives to
humanity faith, but which educes all science from the infinite--the mind
of God.
The history written by Gibbon, called _The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_, begins with that empire in its best days, under Hadrian, and
extends to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, under Mohammed II.
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