Still we know that he practically adopted, in the end, at
least the negative portion of these views, and the question is, When
did he do so? His visit to Paris, and the company that he frequented
there, might suggest that as a probable date of his change of
opinions. But the entry just referred to was subsequent by several
months to that visit, and we may with confidence assume that no
freethinker of the eighteenth century would pronounce the austerities
of a Communion Sunday in a Calvinist town an edifying spectacle. It is
probable that his relinquishing of dogmatic faith was gradual, and for
a time unconscious. It was an age of tepid belief, except among the
Nonjurors and Methodists; and with neither of these groups could he
have had the least sympathy. His acquaintance with Hume, and his
partiality for the writings of Bayle, are more probable sources of a
change of sentiment which was in a way predestined by natural bias and
cast of mind. Any occasion would serve to precipitate the result. In
any case, this result had been attained some years before the
publication of the first volume of the _Decline and Fall_, in 1776.
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