"In the bourgeois' world, ... if some respect was shown to God, it was on condition that he in turn would respect the …"

"Gradually disbelief became respectable. It acquired a moral character. By the mere fact that it was an integral part …"

"The Church would have liked to turn to each of those thousand unbelievers separately, to show him that he was wrong, …"

"Was he a sinner? Possibly. But could his class, the bourgeoisie, be condemned as a whole? The Church did not realize …"

"The bourgeois ... considered the philosophes to be his true guides, which did not prevent him from taking good care n…"

"The Church, sensing that the middle class was slipping out of its grasp, certainly tried to create patterns of living…"

"We might say that before the French demanded a charter from their sovereign, French Catholics had demanded one of the…"

"The worldly-minded ... were unable to see why God should not give men their due if men, on their part, fulfilled thei…"

"The new man, wishing to enjoy his independence, needed a God with limited powers, a God whose authority was regulated…"

"Such, then, was the God of the worldly-minded, who would be grateful that he had organized the things of this world s…"