"a kind of propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal transaction"

     "[Mr Bulstrode] had long poured out utterances of repentance.  But to-day a repentance had come which was of a bitterer flavour, and a threatening Providence urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal transaction.  The divine tribunal had changed its aspect for him; self-prostration was no longer enough, and he must bring restitution in his hand."

      George Eliot, Middlemarch, Bk. 6, chap. 61 (ed. W. J. Harvey (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), 668).