They imposed this idol
in practice on the Church itself, in spite of the First Article, and
thereby homeopathically produced the atheist, whose denial of God was
simply a denial of the idol and a demonstration against an unbearable
and most unchristian idolatry. The idol was, as Shelley had been
expelled from Oxford for pointing out, an almighty fiend, with a petty
character and unlimited power, spiteful, cruel, jealous, vindictive,
and physically violent. The most villainous schoolmasters, the most
tyrannical parents, fell far short in their attempts to imitate it.
But it was not its social vices that brought it low. What made it
scientifically intolerable was that it was ready at a moment's notice to
upset the whole order of the universe on the most trumpery provocation,
whether by stopping the sun in the valley of Ajalon or sending an
atheist home dead on a shutter (the shutter was indispensable because
it marked the utter unpreparedness of the atheist, who, unable to save
himself by a deathbed repentance, was subsequently roasted through all
eternity in blazing brimstone).
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