Chapter 3 considers the extent to which the godly suffered from ‘atheism’ and what they meant by this, giving particular attention to the experience of Robert Boyle, Richard Baxter and John Bunyan. It is argued that such doubts were experienced privately, in contrast to the public irreligion propagated by the true ‘atheists’ who feature in the other chapters of the book, and it is tentatively suggested that such outspoken irreligion was what Christ had in mind in the gospels when He spoke of the unforgiveable ‘Sin against the Holy Ghost’.