The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the contrast between the ideal concept of religion and the imperfections it acquires over time through human influence.
Edward Gibbon highlights the duality of religion's existence: while it may have originated in a pure and divine state, its journey through history has led to its association with various errors and corruptions. This observation speaks to the struggle between idealism and reality, questioning how human engagement has impacted something that was once considered sacred.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of religion on society, you might say, 'As Gibbon noted, religion often bears the scars of human imperfection.'
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.
In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time.
The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. Each has a life that fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.
I was always fascinated by people who are considered completely normal, because I find them the weirdest of all
It destroys the soul to hear that you're all hype, that you have no talent, and that your whole career has been contrived.
The average Christian is so cold and so contented with His wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness.
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
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