The sober citizen, whose journal is so useful a guide to domestic events in France from the Regency to the Peace of 1763, tells us the effect of this hideous revival upon public sentiment.

People began to see, he says, what they were to think of the miracles of antiquity.

The more they went into these matters, whether miracles or prophecies, the more obscurity they discovered in the one, the more doubt about the other.

Who could tell that they had not been accredited and established in remote times with as little foundation as what was then passing under men's very eyes?
Just in the same way, the violent and prolonged debates, the intrigue, the tergiversation, which attended the acceptance of the famous Bull Unigenitus, taught shrewd observers how it is that religions establish themselves.

They also taught how little respect is due in our minds and consciences to the great points which the universal church claims to have decided.[31] These are the circumstances which explain the rude and vigorous scepticism of Diderot's first performances.