“The establishment of a new religion, whose ministers superceded the exercise of reason,” Gibbon wrote, supplanted Athenian wisdom and, “resolved every question by an article of faith, and condemned the infidel or skeptic to eternal flames."

To a correspondent in 1939, Woolf found herself “reflecting upon my lack of what you possess — faith;” and asking, “how much more pervious to preaching your faith makes you than my lack?”