 These latter points about authority are central to Williams’ critique of contemporary moral philosophy. Like Anscombe before him, Williams argues that the analysts’ tight focus on such words as “ought”, “right”, and “good” has come, in moral theory, to give those words (when used in their alleged “special moral sense”) an air of authority which they could only earn against a moral and religious backdrop—roughly, the Christian world-view—that is nowadays largely missing. What Williams takes to be the correct verdict on modern moral theory is therefore rather like Nietzsche’s on George  Eliot:[9]  the idea that morality can and will go on just as before in the absence of religious belief is simply an illusion that reflects a lack of “historical sense”. As  Anscombe[10]  puts it (1958: 30), “it is not possible to have a [coherent law conception of ethics] unless you believe in God as a law-giver… It is as if the notion ‘criminal’ were to remain when criminal law and criminal courts had been abolished and forgotten.” And as Williams puts it (1985: 38), the “various features of the moral judgement system support each other, and collectively they are modelled on the prerogatives of a Pelagian God.”