This inclination for theology, co-existing with a very different temper towards religious sentiment, recalls the similar case of the author of the _Historical and Critical Dictionary_, the illustrious Pierre Bayle, whom Gibbon resembled in more ways than one.

At Oxford his religious education, like everything else connected with culture, had been entirely neglected.

It seems hardly credible, yet we have his word for it, that he never subscribed or studied the Articles of the Church of England, and was never confirmed.

When he first went up, he was judged to be too young, but the Vice-Chancellor directed him to return as soon as he had completed his fifteenth year, recommending him in the meantime to the instruction of his college.

"My college forgot to instruct; I forgot to return, and was myself forgotten by the first magistrate of the university.