In ages of fervent devotion, men sometimes abandon their religion, but they only shake it off in order to adopt another.

Their faith changes the objects to which it is directed, but it suffers no decline.

The old religion then excites enthusiastic attachment or bitter enmity in either party; some leave it with anger, others cling to it with increased devotedness, and although persuasions differ, irreligion is unknown.

Such, however, is not the case when a religious belief is secretly undermined by doctrines which may be termed negative, since they deny the truth of one religion without affirming that of any other.

Progidious revolutions then take place in the human mind, without the apparent co-operation of the passions of man, and almost without his knowledge.