To my present feelings it seems incredible that I should ever believe that I believed in transubstantiation.

But my conqueror oppressed me with the sacramental words, '_Hoc est corpus meum_,' and dashed against each other the figurative half meanings of the Protestant sects; every objection was resolved into omnipotence, and, after repeating at St.Mary's the Athanasian Creed, I humbly acquiesced in the mystery of the Real Presence." Many reflections are suggested on the respective domains of reason and faith by these words, but they cannot be enlarged on here.

No one, nowadays, one may hope, would think of making Gibbon's conversion a subject of reproach to him.

The danger is rather that it should be regarded with too much honour.

It unquestionably shows the early and trenchant force of his intellect: he mastered the logical position in a moment; saw the necessity of a criterion of faith; and being told that it was to be found in the practice of antiquity, boldly went there, and abided by the result.