Many preachers and teachers over the years have drawn parallels between Rome and various modern societies, gleaning lessons from the great empire's fall and warning us that we may share the same fate. Take this opportunity to purchase Gibbon's magnum opus and read for yourself the how and why of Rome's destruction!
About the Libronix DLS Edition
Various electronic editions of Gibbon's work are available. The Libronix DLS edition is priced to acknowledge two facts: the text is freely available on the Internet, but there is added value in the Libronix edition. This edition integrates with your digital library and provides quick, powerful full-text searching of the six volumes. It also enables you to paste quotations into other documents with automatically-generated, properly-formatted citations.
Praise for the Print Edition
"In Chs. 15 and 16, and throughout his great work, Gibbon dwells on the outside, and on the defects rather than the virtues of ecclesiastical Christianity, without entering into the heart of spiritual Christianity which continued beating through all ages; but for fullness and general accuracy of information and artistic representation his work is still unsurpassed."
Schaff, P., & Schaff, D. S. (1997). History of the Christian church. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
"Gibbon, like all historians before the establishment of the science of archaeology, relied on literary sources. He very rarely and reservedly used the secondary sources of later scholars or historians, preferring contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous accounts. One important reason that Gibbon's work has stood the test of time so very well is his astute and insightful judgement as to the reliability of various sources and his diligent efforts at substantiation of the claims of other historians."
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
About the Author (from Who's Who in Christian History)
GIBBON, EDWARD (1737–1794)
English historian
Gibbon was born at Putney, Surrey. While a student at Westminster, he read history voraciously, but in 1749 left because of poor health. After a series of indifferent tutors, he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1752. He was soon expelled for espousing Roman Catholicism. (He later became cynical of Christian beliefs.) Sent to study under a Calvinist minister in Lausanne (Switzerland), he received excellent instruction, reading Latin classics, philosophers Locke and Grotius, and French writers Montesquieu and Pascal.
In 1764 he visited Rome, where the ancient ruins inspired him to write a history of antiquity. The seven–volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published, 1776–1788), based on intensive research of original sources, is a monumental study of the late Roman Empire and early church history. Gibbon concluded that the rapid spread of Christianity was primarily due to the strict morality, discipline, and courageous martyrdom of the early church members. Gibbon, however, ridiculed the Christians’ belief in the supernatural and derided medieval Christianity as anti–intellectual. N.Hillyer
Douglas, J. D., Comfort, P. W., & Mitchell, D. (1997, c1992). Who's who in Christian history. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House.
Sample Quotation
"But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long." (Vol 1, Chapter 39)
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