However, He (WS) Got Two Particles Severely Wrong

I could subscribe to all of this post, except two particles in the first sentence:

Pen and Pension : A Pair of Famous Quacks
Posted on November 30, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/30/a-pair-of-famous-quacks/

Here is the first sentence as written (minus the red font and the small caps replacing minuscules):

Despite The Enlightenment, the eighteenth century was still an age of credulity and superstition.

And here it is once again, underlining the two particles (a preposition and a temporal adverb) which he got wrong:

Despite The Enlightenment, the eighteenth century was still an age of credulity and superstition.

It is truer to say, as I think a German cardinal said just after WW-II, that when people cease to believe in God, they don't become incredulous, they become credulous about everything and anything.

Or perhaps it was Chesterton, in a Father Brown story.

Because of the Enlightenment, the 18th Century was increasingly an age of superstition.

Paradoxical? A bit. The Englightenment set out to weed out superstitions, didn't it? Yes, but in doing so, it set out looking for it in the wrong places.

In the name of religious and scientific freedom, more leeway was created which quacks could exploit. And while it was stamped as superstitious credulity to suggest that fasting as per the Catholic Church rules or praying the Rosary could be good for your health, people were swallowing the stuff, sorry snuff, of men no better than Cagliostro and Katterfelto.

And outside medicine, a curiosity about men like these was encouraged, like scientific curiosity.

I suggest William Savage gets a bit real about his historic credentials (mine are outside the strict subject and pre-graduate and aside the Academia studies).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Mairie du III
St Andrew Apostle
30.XI.2016