When Christians set aside their former lives for their faith, Gibbon argued that the tendency of Christian converts to "renounce their family" and country, (and their frequent predictions of impending disasters), instilled a feeling of apprehension in their pagan neighbors. Edward Gibbon wrote:By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred.