Believers shrink from every train of ideas which would lead the mind to a clear conception and an elevated standard of excellence, because they feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such a standard would conflict with many of the dispensations of nature, and with much of what they are accustomed to consider as the Christian creed.

And thus morality continues a matter of blind tradition, with no consistent principle, nor even any consistent feeling, to guide it.
It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of duty, to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions and feelings respecting religion: and he impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me ?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God ?" He, at the same time, took care that I should be acquainted with what had been thought by mankind on these impenetrable problems.

I have mentioned at how early an age he made me a reader of ecclesiastical history; and he taught me to take the strongest interest in the Reformation, as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought.
I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it: I grew up in a negative state with regard to it.

I looked upon the modern exactly as I did upon the ancient religion, as something which in no way concerned me.

It did not seem to me more strange that English people should believe what I did not, than that the men I read of in Herodotus should have done so.