In the decades following the Enlightenment, it must have been particularly disturbing to the Christian intellectual to be told that faith itself is an irresponsible act. The assumption lying behind this accusation was, of course, that the genuine lover of truth is a person who does not entertain any proposition with a greater degree of assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Since Christian belief, by definition, is the entertaining of propositions incommensurate with the evidence, the Christian cannot also be regarded as a lover of truth. Moreoever, if love for the truth be a virtue-and most Christians would have said that it is-then faith must be a vice. In short, it is immoral to be a Christian. John Locke, who formulated so elegantly the assumption upon which this accusation rests,1 did not himself draw the unkind conclusion about Christian believers since he thought that Christian belief could be rationally justified. It was only later, when it became a widely shared assumption that religious belief was unjustifiable, that Locke's criteria could be polemically turned against the Christian. One of the most powerful illustrations of this polemical use is to be found in W. K. Clifford's well-known essay "The Ethics of Belief."2 Clifford argues that civilization itself depends upon the habit of forming only justified beliefs. Credulity, the readiness to hold unjustified beliefs, threatens the very foundations of society. Every belief, no matter how trivial, is significant because it prepares the mind to receive more like it. No one's beliefs are merely private matters because our modes of thought and belief are common property, "an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handed on to the next one. .. ."3 Consequently, it is the bounden duty of every person in society, no matter how humble the station, to guard the purity of his/her beliefs.