somewhat diminished by polemical bias and the occasional want of accuracy. Dr. Merle conceived
the idea of the work during the celebration of the third centenary of the German Reformation in
1817, in the Wartburg at Eisenach, where Luther translated, the New Testament and threw his
inkstand at the devil. He labored on it till the year of his death.^35
Dr. Edmund De Pressensé (pastor of a free church in Paris, member of the National
Assembly, then senator of France), and able scholar, with evangelical Protestant convictions similar
to those of Dr. Merle, wrote a Life of Christ against Renan, and a History of Ancient Christianity,
both of which are translated into English.^36
Ernest Renan, the celebrated Orientalist and member of the French Academy, prepared
from the opposite standpoint of sceptical criticism, and mixing history with romance, but in brilliant,
and fascinating style, the Life of Christ, and the history of the Beginnings of Christianity to the
middle of the second century.^37
(c) English works.
English literature is rich in works on Christian antiquity, English church history, and other
special departments, but poor in general histories of Christianity.
The first place among English historians, perhaps, is due to Edward Gibbon (d. 1794). In
his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(finished after twenty years’
labor, at Lausanne, June 27,1787), he notices throughout the chief events in ecclesiastical history
from the introduction of the Christian religion to the times of the crusades and the capture of
Constantinople (1453), with an accurate knowledge of the chief sources and the consummate skill
of a master in the art of composition, with occasional admiration for heroic characters like Athanasius
and Chrysostom, but with a keener eye to the failings of Christians and the imperfections of the
visible church, and unfortunately without sympathy and understanding of the spirit of Christianity
which runs like a golden thread even through the darkest centuries. He conceived the idea of his
magnificent work in papal Rome, among the ruins of the Capitol, and in tracing the gradual decline
and fall of imperial Rome, which he calls "the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history
of mankind," he has involuntarily become a witness to the gradual growth and triumph of the
religion of the cross, of which no historian of the future will ever record a history of decline and(^35) Histoire de la Réformat du 16 siècle Paris, 1835 sqq., 4th ed. 1861 sqq., 5 vols. Histoire de la Réformation en Europe au
temps de Calvin. Paris, 1863 sqq. German translation of both works, Stuttgart (Steinkopf), 1861 and 1863 sqq. English translation
repeatedly published in England and the United States by the Amer. Tract Society (with sundry changes), and by Carter &
Brothers. The Carter ed. (N. York, 1863-1879) is in 5 vols. for the Lutheran Reformation, and in 8 vols. for the Reformation in
the time of Calvin. The last three vols. of the second series were translated and published after the author’s death by W L. Cates.
By a singular mistake Dr. Merle goes in England and America by the name of D’Aubigné, which is merely an assumed by-name
from his Huguenot ancestors.
(^36) Jésus Christ, son temps, sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 1866. Histoire des trois premiers siècles de l’église chrétienne. Paris,
1858 sqq. German translation by Fabarius (Leipzig, 1862-65), English translation by Annie Harwood. Lond. and N. York, 1870
sqq., 4 vols. Superseded by a revised ed. of the original, Paris, 1887 sqq.
(^37) Vie de Jèsus. Paris, 1863, and in many editions in different languages. This book created even a greater sensation than the
Leben Jesu of Strauss, but is very superficial and turns the gospel history into a novel with a self-contradictory and impossible
hero. It forms the first volume of his Histoire des origines du christianisme. The other volumes are: 2. Les Apótres, Paris, 1866;
- St. Paul, 1869; 4. L’Antechrist, 1873; 5. La évangiles et la, seconde génération des chrétiens, 1877; 6. L’église chrétienne,
1879; Marc-Aurèle et la fin du monde antique, 1882. The work of twenty years. Renan wrote, he says, "without any other passion
than a very keen curiosity."
A.D. 1-100.