Edward Gibbons
Edward Gibbons
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) was an influential English historian best known for his monumental work, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Born to a country gentleman and a merchant's daughter, Gibbon was a sickly child with a passion for reading.
Gibbon's central thesis in his explanation of how the Roman Empire fell, that it was due to embracing Christianity, is not widely accepted by scholars today but there is a reason for that which may be because today we are engaged in the same decline.
First, there is a question which Christianity?
Was it the early Church doing what early Christians were doing or was it the Church established by Constantine?
It may help to understand Public religion, legal charity and the welfare State and Private religion of the early Church.
"The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is important as work of recorded history more than a singular conclusion by Edward Gibbons.
It was the centralization of political power and the dependence of the people upon the free bread of that government that brought the morals of the people into degeneration and decline. It was the benefits of that government that ruined Rome and destroyed liberty.
Edward Gibbons wrote,
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom. A feeble senate and enervated people cheerfully acquiesced in the pleasing illusion, as long as it was supported by the virtue, or even by the prudence, of the successors of Augustus. It was a motive of self-preservation, not a principle of liberty, that animated the conspirators against Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. They attacked the person of the tyrant, without aiming their blow at the authority of the emperor."[1]
- “Some scholars regard the ancient confederation of Hebrew tribes that endured in Palestine from the 15th century BC until a monarchy was established about 1020 BC as an embryonic republic. That would make the ancient Israelite commonwealth the earliest republic in history....”[2]
Edward Gibbons in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire identified the early Church as a "viable Republic" and early American churches were called "embryonic republics" by historians.
While Edward Gibbons explained in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that the collapse was due to the corruption of the leaders but the power they were given by the greed and apathy of the people and the over extension of its dept through a growing welfare state which granted the people public gratuities that undermined their own character. Gibbons understood that it was the decay of virtues and values amongst the people that made the return path so difficult.
Also, their constant and continued wars eroded the treasury and burdened the people. These two elements drove Rome to its self-destruction.
While Gibbon knew that government policies aligned society, he concluded there were five marks of the Roman decaying found in the practice of their culture by the people themselves:
1. Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth. Americans measure wealth and success on how much they have, although they are in debt beyond their means to pay. Thanks to the greed and centralized power of the socialist state.
2. Obsession with sex and perversions of sex. This is due to idleness, and the perversion of the natural use of sex to produce a family. Families are no longer the mainstay of social welfare because they and your natural fathers have been replaced by a substitute father, the socialist state.
3. Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original. This is really a part of that calling good evil and evil good syndrome when the normal drive to honor and care for one another is strangled by socialism.
4. Widening disparity between very rich and very poor. First, the middle class is destroyed in a socialist state. The rich maintain their position of power until the rich and poor are devastated in their corrupt state.
5. Increased demand to live off the state. This of course remains the passion of the selfish socialist, addicted to benefits like a meth addict. They cannot exercise a righteous heart, and though the government is bankrupt and must borrow from the future children, people still make no provision for an alternate system and continue to go the way that Polybius believed all democracies go.
- "The masses continue with an appetite for benefits and the habit of receiving them by way of a rule of force and violence. The people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others... institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch.”
From Persecution
- “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.” Edward Gibbons (1776)(Chapter II: The Internal Prosperity In The Age Of The Antonines.—Part I. Second Paragraph)
But when Gibbons wrote this quote he was not referring to religion as much as he was speaking of superstition for it appears between two lines with that reference.[3] The real problem with what had become Roman religion was its connection to civil government. Like Herod’s system of Corban the Κορβάν system of Greece and Rome were religious institutions through the overseership of its “Roman Pontiffs”[4] but forced its offerings through the secular authority of magistrates appointed by civil and imperial governments.[5]
A useful Religion
It has been reported that Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Younger once said "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." Atheists and anti-religion factions love to quote him but I find no evidence that he ever did actually say or write this.
In fact he makes a distinction between the two Latin words that are each sometimes translated as “religion”. One is “riligio” which he regarded as virtue and “superstitio” which he believed became a vice.[6]
- “...just as religion does honour to the gods, while superstition wrongs them, so good men will all display mercy and gentleness,...” Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Younger , De Clementia On Mercy , II. iv. 4-v. 4
He went on to connect religion with patrimonial duty, the weightier matters of Christ and the whole list of Social virtues that appear in true fellowship. The Religion of Christians was called pure religion and was rooted in charity. The Public religion of Rome was operated through the government temples of the Roman government through legal taxation and tribute.
And Gibbons points out that it is avarice of those Masses that degenerates society:
- “ ...[Philosophy’s] sole function is to discover the truth about things divine and things human. From her side religion never departs, nor duty, nor justice, nor any of the whole company of virtues which cling together in close-united fellowship. Philosophy has taught us to worship that which is divine, to love that which is human; she has told us that with the gods lies dominion, and among men, fellowship. This fellowship remained unspoiled for a long time, until avarice tore the community asunder and became the cause of poverty, even in the case of those whom she herself had most enriched. For men cease to possess all things the moment they desire all things for their own.” [7]
The Decline of Freedom
The Foundation of Tyranny
- Part two of The Real Destroyers of the Liberty of the people?
Appeared first on NewsWithViews 3-21-09
http://www.hisholychurch.org/news/articles/declinefreedom.php
- ↑ Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 3 The Constitution In The Age Of The Antonines. Part II. Sec. I. The death of Caesar
- ↑ “Republic,” Microsoft ® Encarta. © 1994 Ms. Corp. and F & W Corp.
- ↑ “The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects....The superstition of the people was not embittered by any mixture of theological rancour; nor was it confined by the chains of any speculative system.”
- ↑ A pontiff is from Latin pontifex. In Roman antiquity they were the high priests of the Roman religion. Julius Caesar was a priest before he was a general and the Son of God.
- ↑ “The magistrates could not be actuated by a blind, though honest bigotry, since the magistrates were themselves philosophers; and the schools of Athens had given laws to the senate. They could not be impelled by ambition or avarice, as the temporal and ecclesiastical powers were united in the same hands. The pontiffs were chosen among the most illustrious of the senators; and the office of Supreme Pontiff was constantly exercised by the emperors themselves. They knew and valued the advantages of religion, as it is connected with civil government.” Chapter 2, Fall In The West from The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons
- ↑ RELIGIO et superstitio quid different. What difference between religion and superstition
- ↑ Moral letters to Lucilius by Seneca, Letter XC. On the Part Played by Philosophy in the Progress of Man