There is something slightly incongruous in the idea of Gibbon _fasting_ out of religious scruples, but the fact shows that his religion had obtained no slight hold of him, and that although he had embraced it quickly, he also accepted with intrepid frankness all its consequences.

His was not an intellect that could endure half measures and half lights; he did not belong to that class of persons who do not know their own minds.
However it is not surprising that his religion, placed where he was, was slowly but steadily undermined.

The Swiss clergy, he says, were acute and learned on the topics of controversy, and Pavillard seems to have been a good specimen of his class.

An adult and able man, in daily contact with a youth in his own house, urging persistently but with tact one side of a thesis, could hardly fail in the course of time to carry his point.

But though Gibbon is willing to allow his tutor a handsome share in the work of his conversion, he maintains that it was chiefly effected by his own private reflections.