From a private school he was removed to Westminster; from Westminster to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was admitted as a gentleman-commoner, April 3, 1752. About this time his constitution, hitherto extremely feeble, acquired a sudden vigour, which never deserted him during the rest of his life. At Oxford he made absolutely no proficiency in any branch of knowledge, or any useful accomplishment. “To the University of Oxford (he says) I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother.” Accordingly he exhausts the severity of his sarcasm, both upon the system which was there established, and upon the men who administered it, without honestly inquiring whether he had laboured to extract, even from an imperfect system, the modicum of advantage which it was capable of yielding. But his recollections of Oxford were embittered by his subsequent contest with some of the clergy, and the hostile treatment which he sustained at their hands; and the principles which he embraced in after life would have rendered him equally intolerant of any institution, standing on a religious foundation. During his residence at Oxford, and at the usually unreflecting age of sixteen, he was converted to the Roman Catholic faith. He was first stirred to thought by the “bold criticism” of Middleton. He then “swallowed” the miracles of the Basils, the Chrysostoms, and other Fathers of the Church; and Bossuet achieved the conquest by the ‘Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine,’ and the ‘History of the Variations.’ And then he made his formal recantation before a Jesuit, named Baker, one of the Chaplains of the Sardinian Ambassador. In his retrospect upon this the most singular incident in the history of his mind, Gibbon might indeed profess to be proud of his change of opinion, as a sacrifice of interest to principle; but he probably conveys his habitual reflections more faithfully when he says, with his usual strength: “To my present feelings it seems incredible that I should ever believe that I believed in transubstantiation.” He was immediately removed from Oxford, and placed under the care of a tutor at Lausanne. To a Swiss pastor, named Pavillard, was entrusted the delicate office of disentangling the mind of Gibbon from the intricacies of popery, and leading it back again into the pale of the Protestant Church. He succeeded: by seasonable arguments, and judicious admonitions, aided perhaps by the influence of a mild and benevolent character, he prevailed over the hasty caprice of a powerful intellect; and on Christmas-day, in 1754, Gibbon publicly renounced his adopted creed, and received the sacrament in the church of Lausanne. There is no reason to suspect the sincerity of this recantation, or to believe that he had yet fallen either into scepticism, or indifference.