The Olympics thus broke a long succession of crises that have sapped faith in the country's institutions and abilities: MPs' expenses, phone hacking, banking scandals and so on.
Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology had sapped his faith in the divine plenitude of Creation.
Lima sapped his faith in any institution outside of his family, he told me, and made life feel unpredictable.
Games euphoria is ebbing, the media is reverting to its customary diet of stories that sap your faith in humanity, sponsors and suppliers are counting their winnings; and – Paralympics notwithstanding – thousands of athletes, volunteers and Londoners are contemplating the remainder of 2012 with a gathering sense of anti-climax.
What if weariness does not sap our faith but strengthens it?
Here in Shinkamigoto, many say growing wealth has sapped the people's faith.
It "saps the very foundations of the Catholic faith" the bishop said.
Souness did not allow his faith in Titus Bramble to be sapped by the centre-half's miserable display in Thursday's Uefa Cup tie.
From what I can tell, Sean is a conservative Christian, and I feel like he might want to raise his kids in his faith, etc. Alrighty, enough with the sap, let's go on another unnecessarily aggressive date.
When the founding zealot of revolutionary Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued his Rushdie death warrant in 1989, the imam was not defending the faith; he was trying to regenerate enthusiasm for his regime, sapped by eight years of unsuccessful war with Iraq.
