Gib, Adam, one of the founders of the anti-burgher secession in Scotland, was born in Perthshire in 1713, and educated in Edinburgh. He was a bitter oppo- nent of private church patronage, and in 1733 was dis- missed from his pastoral charge. He was made pas- tor of a secession church in Edinburgh in 1711, and when the dispute began in 1746 about the swearing of tlie oaths of burgesses, Mr. Gib was considered the aldest advocate of the anti-burgher party. He died in 1788. He published A Display of the Secession Tes- timony (1744, 2 vols. 8vo) : — Sacred Contemplntions, with an essaj' appended on Liberty and Necessity in replv to Lord Kanies (178G). — AXWhonQ , Dictionary of Authors, i, 060; Eose, Neiu Gemral Biographical Dictionary, viii, 18.
Gib'bar (Chald. Gihhar', "naa, for Heb. ^"123, a hero, as in Dan. iii, 20; Sept. Fn/^ff), Vulgate Gehhar), given as the name of a man whose descendants to the number of 95 returned with Zerubbabcl from Babylon (Ezra ii, 20), probabh^ an error for the remnants of the natives of Gibeon (Xeh. vii, 25).
Gib 'bethon (Hebrew 6i66e^^o«', "i'^??) ^ heiykt; Sept. Fdj-iaOdii' V. r. VaiSiS^tov, rajSawj', Te^tSav and Hiyi^oJi'), a city of the Philistines, which was included in the territories of the trilje of Dan (Josh, xix, 44), and was assigned, with its " suburbs," to the Kohathite Levites (Josh, xxi, 23). It was still in the hands of the Pliilistines in the time of Nadab, king of Israel, who besieged it, and was slain under its walls by Baa- sha, one of his own officers (1 Kings xv, 27). B.C. 950. The effort to expel the Philistines seems to have been continued l)y the forces of the northern kingdom, till the siege was finally raised l)y Omri in consequence of tlie necessity of pursuing the usurper Ziuiri (1 Kings xvi, 15). B.C. 926. It is said by Eusebius and Je- rome (apparently even to tlieir time) to be inhabited
bj' Gentiles (rair 'AXXo^i'Xwi' TaPaSro'jv), but they ex- pressly distinguish this from tlie Danite town, and they seem uncertain whether to identify it with a village (ttoXIxi't]) called Gabe (r«/^t), about 16 It. miles from Cresarea, near the great plain of Legio, or with one of two or three other places named Gabbutha (Onomast. s. V. Fa/Sa-jwi', Gabathon). Josephus (.4«^ viii, 12, 5) calls it Gabatkone (rn/5o3-w)/?;). The signification of the name and the great strength of the place seem to fix it upon the hills west of Gibeah of Benjamin (with which M. D. Saulcy confounds its locality, Xarnifire, i, 98). It is possibly the modern large village Saidim, a short distance beyond the well S.E. of Ramleh (Rob- inson, Researches, iii, 21). Van de Velde calls it also Sheik Mnsa (jMemoir, p. 114).
Gibbites, The, a small fanatical sect in Scotland about 1681, named from their leader, John Gilj, a sail- or. They never exceeded thirty persons. Their doc- trines were a compound of Quaker ideas, with some of the extreme speculative views of the strict Covenant- ers. They were seized as a bodj', put into the House of Correction, and soon ceased to exist as a sect.— Heth- erington, Church of Scotland, ii, 114.
Gibbon, Edward, historian, was born at Putnej', in Surrey, A'jiril 27, 1737. He was sent to Oxford too j'oung, and did not learn much there. At sixteen he emliraced Komanism. He was immediately placed un- der the care of a Calvinist minister at Lausanne, whose instructions led him in a few months back to Protes- tantism. " The five j-ears he spent at Lausanne, clos- ing in 1758, when he was just of age, formed the real commencement of his education ; and at their close, he was, not onl}^ a ripe scholar in French and Latin, but possessed of an extraordinary amount of historical and other information. He found leisure, however, for fall- ing in love, inisuccessfullj', with a young ladv, who afterwards became the wife of M. Necker, and the mother of Madame de Stael. For several years after Gibbon's return to England he lived chiefly at his fa- ther's house in Hampshire, and, failing in attempts to obtain diplomatic emploj'ment, he accepted a militia commission, attended zealously to his duties, and rose to be lieutenant colonel. But the studious habits and literary ambition which he had acquired never flagged. In. 1761 he published, in French, a short essay On the Study of Literature. He extended his acquaintance with Eniilish authors, and, beginning to learn Greek thoroughly, pursued the study zealouslj', when, in 1763, he was allowed again to visit the Continent. In Rome, next year, he conceived the design of his great liistor- ical work. Returning home in 1765, he passed some years unsatisfactorih^ to himself, but not without much improvement both in knowledge and in skill of writ- ing. In 1774 he entered the House of Commons, in which he sat for eight sessions; and he was rewarded for his silent votes in favor of Lord North's adminis- tration by holding for three years a seat at the Board of Trade. In 1770 he published, in answer to Warbur- ton, his sjHrited Dissertation on the Sixth Book of the uEneid. In the same j'ear, the death of his father placed him in possession of a fortune, which, though embarrassed, he was able to extricate so far that it af- forded a handsome com])etence, and enabled him to de- vote himself exclusively to study and composition. In 1776 he published the first volume of The History of the Decline arid Fall of the Roman Empire, the first edition of which was sold in a few days, and was rap- idly followed by others. The second and third vol- umes, appearing in 1781, brought down the narrative to the fall of the Western Empire; and for a while the author hesitated whether he should not here allow the work to drop" (Rich, Bioy. s. v.). He rcsimied the de- sign, however, in-1783, when he fixed his abode at Lau- sanne, and prepared the remaining volumes, the last of which appeared in 1788. He died January 16, 1794, during his last visit to England. His posthumous