Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/173

 The freethinker held that the Church had not, and had never had, miraculous powers; the Catholic that it had such powers formerly, and possessed them still; and the Protestant that the powers had disappeared at some date which it was rather difficult to fix. To Gibbon the Protestant view seemed to be in any case illogical. So it still seemed when he wrote the fifteenth chapter of his History. As, however, he was not prepared to give up the miraculous power altogether, and as he knew enough to see that it was claimed long after some of the Catholic dogmas were current, he adopted the Church which held at least a consistent position. Of the logic of this argument I say nothing; but its power over Gibbon is one more proof that he was a heaven-born historian. He tells us that his own memory convinced him of the fallacy of the opinion held by Johnson and Reynolds that a man of ability could turn his powers in any direction. His own idiosyncrasy was too unequivocal. A poet may perhaps be content to think of the past as a region of romance and wonder; the born historian is one who feels instinctively that the men of old were governed by die laws which are operative now; he takes for granted, though unconsciously, the great doctrine of