Religion cannot fail to be changed by the neighbourhood of irreligion.

If it is persecuted, it may burn up with greater fervour; but if it is not persecuted, it must in some measure be chilled.

Believers and unbelievers, separated as they are by their tenets, are yet in these days mixed together in all the acts and relations of life.

They are united by habits, by blood, and by friendship, and they are each obliged continually to ignore or excuse what they hold to be the errors of the other.

In a state of things like this, it is plain that the conviction of believers can have neither the fierce intensity that belongs to a minority under persecution, nor the placid confidence that belongs to an overwhelming majority.