Gibbon was a hater of the Church and that badly colored his scholarship.
That hate comes through and I make allowances but the corruption and injustice were deep in church and state. That’s a leadership problem (sound familiar) but they could not change their leadership. We have no such excuse and our churches are failing us.
Gibbon’s life was rather sad, wasn’t it? Protestant, Catholic, kind of Protestant again, then a kind of atheism, as I read. Oh well, he’s with his Maker now.