The burgeoning atheism of the French Revolution reawakened in him religious feelings that had lain dormant since King’s College days. “The very existence of a Deity has been questioned and in some instances denied,” he wrote in alarm about French attacks on Christianity. “The duty of piety has been ridiculed, the perishable nature of man asserted, and his hopes bounded to the short span of his earthly state. Death has been proclaimed an eternal sleep.”
