"The Ages of Faith, which are praised by our neo-scholastics, were the time when the clergy had things all their own way. Daily life was full of miracles wrought by saints and wizardry perpetrated by devils and necromancers. Many thousands of witches were burnt at the stake. Men's sins were punished by pestilence and famine, by earthquake, flood, and fire. And yet, strange to say, they were even more sinful than they are now-a-days." Bertrand Russell, "A Debate on the Existence of God" (1948) in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 208.