[166] admission of supernatural truths is much less an active consent
than a cold and passive acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observe
and to respect the invariable order of nature, our reason, or at least
our imagination, is not sufficiently prepared to sustain the visible
action of the Deity.”

Gibbon had not the advantage of the minute critical labours which in the
following century were expended on his sources of information, but his
masterly exposure of the conventional history of the early Church
remains in many of its most important points perfectly valid to-day. I
suspect that his artillery has produced more effect on intelligent minds
in subsequent generations than the archery of Voltaire. For his book
became indispensable as the great history of the Middle Ages; the most
orthodox could not do without it; and the poison must have often worked.

We have seen how theological controversy in the first half of the
eighteenth century had turned on the question whether the revealed
religion was consistent and compatible with natural religion. The
deistic attacks, on this line, were almost exhausted by the middle of
the century, and the orthodox thought that they had been satisfactorily
answered. But it was not enough to show that the revelation

[167] is reasonable; it was necessary to prove that it is real and rests
on a solid historical basis. This was the question raised in an acute
form by the criticisms of Hume and Middleton (1748) on miracles. The
ablest answer was given by Paley in his Evidences of Christianity
(1794), the only one of the apologies of that age which is still read,
though it has ceased to have any value. Paley’s theology illustrates how
orthodox opinions are coloured, unconsciously, by the spirit of the
time. He proved (in his Natural Theology) the existence of God by the