"The significance of Rousseau's philosophy of religion for cultural history can be describe in a single phrase: he eliminated from the foundation of religion the doctrine of fides implicita*. No one can believe for another and with the help of another; in religion everyone must stand on his own. ... Neither Calvinism not Lutheranism had ever radically overcome the doctrine of the fides implicita; they had only shifted its center by replacing faith in tradition with faith in the Word of the Bible. But for Rousseau there existed no kind of inspiration outside the sphere of personal experience."
-- The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ernst Cassirer, 1954 [1932], p. 117-8, cited in Modern Christian Thought, Vol. 1: The Enlightenment and the Nineteenth Century, James Livingston, 2nd ed., 1997, p. 45.
*Fides implicita refers to the assent to the truths taught by the Church even though one has no knowledge of what these teachings are about or the evidence of their truth.
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