No wonder their manners are gentler and their intercourse more disposed to friendliness, there is something to appeal to and uphold, something to love.
The Protestant Reformation breaking up these relations and all the ceremonial observance in which they found expression, necessarily produced deterioration of manners.

As soon as anyone, especially a child, becomes--not rightly but aggressively--independent, argumentatively preoccupied in asserting that "I am as good as you are, and I can do without you"-- he falls from the right proportion of things, becomes less instead of greater, because he stands alone, and from this to warfare against all order and control the step is short.

So it has proved.

The principles of Protestantism worked out to the principles of the Revolution, and to their natural outcome, seen at its worst in the Reign of Terror and the Commune of 1871 in Paris.
Again the influence of the Church on manners was dominant in the age of chivalry.

At that time religion and manners were known to be inseparable, and it was the Church that handled the rough vigour of her sons to make them gentle as knights.