[Footnote 18: Ammianus Marcellinus (died c. 390) wrote a history of
Rome in thirty-one books, of which Gibbon thought rather highly. The
history may be taken as a continuation of Tacitus and Suetonius. [T.
S.]
Page 120. "I shall, in the following part of my discourse, shew that this doctrine is so far from serving the ends of religion, that, 1. It prevents the spreading of the gospel, &c." This independent power in the church is like the worms; being the cause of all diseases.
Page 124. "How easily could the Roman emperors have destroyed the Church?" Just as if he had said; how easily could Herod kill Christ whilst a child, &c.
Page 125. "The people were set against bishops by reason of their tyranny." Wrong. For the bishops were no tyrants: Their power was swallowed up by the Popes, and the people desired they should have more. It were the regulars that tyrannized and formed priestcraft. He is ignorant.
Page 139. "He is not bound by the laws of Christ to leave his friends in order to be baptized, &c." This directly against the Gospel.—One would think him an emissary, by his preaching schism.
Page 142. "Then will the communion of saints be practicable, to which the principles of all parties, the occasional conformists only excepted, stand in direct opposition, &c." So that all are wrong but they. The Scripture is fully against schism. Tindal promoteth it and placeth in it all the present and future happiness of man.
Page 144. All he has hitherto said on this matter, with a very little turn, were arguments for Popery: For, it is certain, that religion had share in very few wars for many hundred years before the Reformation, because they were all of a mind. It is the ambition of rebels, preaching upon the discontents of sectaries, that they are not supreme, which hath caused wars for religion. He is mistaken altogether. His little narrow understanding and want of learning.
Page 145. "Though some say the high-fliers' lives might serve for a very good rule, if men would act quite contrary to them," Is he one of those some? Beside the new turn of wit, &c. all the clergy in England come under his notion of high-fliers, as he states it.
Page 147. "None of them (Churchmen) could be brought to acknowledge it lawful upon any account whatever, to exclude the Duke of York." This account false in fact.
Ibid. "And the body-politic, whether ecclesiastical or civil, must be dealt with after the same manner, as the body-natural." What, because it is called a body, and is a simile, must it hold in all circumstances?