Log in here for access. Two new challenges confronted the study of history in the 17th century. In this lesson, we will learn about English historian Edward Gibbon. The story of the emergence of a ‘liberal’, confessionally non-aligned and ethically-oriented species of Protestant Christianity has been sketched before. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that Ahnert did not explore more extensively some of the avenues he opens up – including the complex, but clear affinities between Hume’s scepticism regarding natural religion and that of his moderate Presbyterian compatriots and personal friends. On this point Ahnert invites a conclusion which he nonetheless refrains from drawing. Any perceived deviation from it was decried as Socinianism, Arminianism or worse, and led to prosecution – as indicated by the prolonged proceedings against the heterodox Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, John Simson from 1714. But how many of us are familiar with the important historians of the past? Gibbon's thesis about the rise of Christianity and the decline of Rome no longer holds credibility within modern academia. The Enlightenment has been condemned as “unhistorical.” It did lack sympathy, and thus full understanding, of some cultures and periods. It was for this reason that the orthodox accused the Moderates of being slavishly devoted to Shaftesbury and the Stoics. It was a question which Hume’s Moderate compatriots struggled to answer. The controversy aroused by Simson’s trial is presented by Ahnert as a test-case which confirms this larger thesis. (7) There is similarly little mention of engagement with the Socinian and Arminian currents of thought flowing on the Continent (and in England). The most influential philosopher of the 17th century, René Descartes, included history in his catalogue of dubious sciences. The Christian revelation, then, had enlarged exponentially on the insights offered by even the greatest philosophers, the Stoics: a position Ahnert also ascribes to Hutcheson. It was left to thinkers of the next generation, including the baron l’Aulne Turgot (1727–81) and the marquis de Condorcet (1743–94), to construe history as gradually but inevitably moving toward the elimination of bigotry, superstition, and ignorance. By subscribing to this mailing list you will be subject to the School of Advanced Study privacy policy. As mentioned before, he is mainly known for his six-volume work on the Roman Empire. Here Ahnert’s work engages with recent scholarship which explores the revival in the early-modern period of a conception of philosophy as intended to offer regimens for curing, ordering and educating the mind towards an ethical purpose in line with the ancient cultura animi tradition. Voltaire was curious about everything—but not tolerant of everything. The philosopher David Hume (1711–76) took from it the sober empiricism and distrust of grand schemes that informed his History of England (1754–62). flashcard set{{course.flashcardSetCoun > 1 ? For these reasons, Gibbon is a noteworthy historian. His big break came, however, with the publication of his first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. study As unapologetic admirers of Shaftesbury, moderate Scottish Presbyterians were arguably more conscious of – and vexed by – the problematic nature of this relationship between a broadly Stoic ethical theory and Christian teaching than Ahnert allows. It suggests that the ‘religious Enlightenment’ in Scotland grew up from ‘enthusiastic’ theological roots, and sought to cultivate a ‘moral culture’ which conduced to national spiritual regeneration rather than merely to social peace, politeness or the Anglicisation of Scottish culture. Gibbon’s work illustrates that the concept of ‘enlightened’ ecclesiastical history is no more paradoxical than that of the ‘clerical Enlightenment’ of which it was a product – even though it took a religious sceptic to write it.

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