153 Dr. James Orr, David Hume and his Influence, etc., 1903. pp. 36–37. ↑
154 Also for a time a theological professor in Edinburgh University. ↑
155 The Thoughts Concerning Religion, Natural and Revealed, appeared in 1735; the Letter to a Bishop in 1732; and the Reflections on the Sources of Incredulity (left unfinished) posthumously about 1750. Forbes in his youth had been famed as one of the hardest drinkers of his day. ↑
156 Reflections on Incredulity, in Works, undated, ii, 141–42. Yet the works of Forbes were translated for orthodox purposes into German, and later into French by Père Houbigant (1769), who preserves the passage on freethinkers’ morals, though curtailing the Reflections as a whole. ↑
157 As to which see A Sober Enquiry into the Grounds of the Present Differences in the Church of Scotland, 1723. ↑
158 Cockburn’s Life of Jeffrey, ed. 1872, p. 10. ↑
159 See the Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. A. Carlyle, 1860, pp. 492–93. Millar’s Historical View of the English Government (censured by Hallam) was once much esteemed; and his Origin of Ranks is still worth the attention of sociologists. ↑
160 Ritchie’s Life of Hume, 1807, pp. 52–81; Tytler’s Life of Lord Kames, 2nd ed. 1814, i, ch. v; Burton’s Life of Hume, i, 425–30. ↑
161 Ritchie, as cited, p. 57. ↑
162 McCulloch, Life of Smith prefixed to ed. of Wealth of Nations, ed. 1839, p. ii. ↑
163 Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, 1888, i, 462–63. Mr. Rae doubts the story, Life of Adam Smith, 1895, p. 60. ↑
166 Theory of Moral Sentiments, pt. iii, ch. ii, end. ↑
167 Cp. Rae, pp. 427–30. Mr. Rae thinks the deletion stood for no change of opinion, and cites Smith’s own private explanation (Sinclair’s Life of Sir John Sinclair, i, 40) that he thought the passage “unnecessary and misplaced.” But this expression must be read in the light of Smith’s general reticence concerning established dogmas. Certainly he adhered to his argument—which does not claim to be a demonstration—for the doctrine of a future state. ↑
168 Bk. v, ch. i, pt. iii, art. 3. ↑
169 Smith’s admiration for Voltaire might alone indicate his mental attitude. As to that see F. W. Hirst, Adam Smith (Eng. Men of Letters ser.), pp. 127–28. But the assertion of Skarzinski, that Smith, after being an Idealist under the influence of Hume, “returned a materialist” from his intercourse with Voltaire and other French freethinkers, is an exhibition of learned ignorance. See Hirst, p. 181. ↑
170 An Explanation and Defence of the Principles of Protestant Dissent, by the Rev. Dr. W. Hamilton Drummond, 1842, pp. 5–6. 47; Skeats, Hist. of the Free Churches of England, ed. Miall, pp. 238–39; Wallace, Anti-Trinitarian Biography, iii, art. 360. ↑
171 Cp. Drummond, as cited, pp. 29–30; History, Opinions, etc., of the English Presbyterians, 1834, p. 29. ↑
172 W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson, p. 31. ↑
174 Scott, pp. 28–29, 35–36. The suggestion is not quite convincing. Synge, after becoming Archbishop of Tuam, continued to publish his propagandist tracts, among them An Essay towards making the Knowledge of Religion Easy to the Meanest Capacity (6th ed. 1734), which is quite orthodox, and which argues (p. 3) that the doctrine of the Trinity is to be believed, and not pried into, “because it is above our understanding to comprehend.” All the while there was being sold also his early treatise, “A Gentleman’s Religion: in Three Parts ... with an Appendix, wherein it is proved that nothing contrary to our Reason can possibly be the object of our belief, but that it is no just exception against some of the doctrines of Christianity that they are above our reason.” ↑
176 All that is told of this prelate by Lecky (Hist. of Ireland in the 18th Cent. 1892. i, 207) is that at Killala he patronized horse-races. He was industrious on more episcopal lines. He wrote an Introduction to the History of the Jews; a Vindication of Biblical Chronology; two treatises on prophecy; an anti-Athanasian Essay on Spirit (1751), which aroused much controversy; A Vindication of the Histories of the Old and New Testament, in answer to Bolingbroke (2 vols. 1752–1754; 2nd ed. 1757; rep. with the Essay on Spirit, Dublin, 1759), which led to his being prosecuted; and other works. The offence given by the Vindication lay in his denunciation of the Athanasian creed, and of the bigotry of those who supported it. See pt. iii, letters i and ii. The Essay on Spirit is no less heterodox. In other respects, however, Clayton is ultra-orthodox. ↑
177 Dr. G. W. Alberti, Briefe betreffende den Zustand der Religion in Gross-Brittannien, Hannover, 1752, p. 440. ↑
179 Put by Huarte in 1575. Above, i, 472. ↑
181 Inquiry, pref. pp. x, xxii. ↑
182 A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Conyers Middleton, occasioned by his late “Free Inquiry,” 1749, pp. 3–4. ↑
183 A Free Answer to Dr. Middleton’s “Free Inquiry,” by William Dodwell [son of the elder and brother of the younger Henry], Rector of Shottesbrook, 1749, pp. 14–15. ↑
185 Works, 2nd ed. 1755, ii, 348. ↑
186 Cp. essay on Mandeville, in the author’s Pioneer Humanists, 1907. ↑
187 As against the objections of Mr. Lang, see the author’s paper in Studies in Religious Fallacy. ↑
188 Cp. the summary of Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, pp. 177–78, which is founded on that of Pusey’s early Historical Enquiry concerning German Rationalism, pp. 124–26. ↑
189 Rep. same year at Dublin: 2nd ed. 1750. The first ed. was ascribed to D’Argens—an error caused though not justified by the publisher’s notice. ↑
190 The point is further discussed in Dynamics of Religion, pp. 175–76. ↑
191 Cp. G. B. Hertz, The Old Colonial System, 1905, pp. 4, 22, 93, 157. ↑
192 Letter xxxi, in Mason’s Memoir. ↑
193 Hill Burton’s Life of Hume, ii, 433, 434, 484–85, 487. ↑
194 Compare the verdicts of Gibbon in his Autobiography, and of Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. v, ch. i, art. 2; and see the memoir of Smith in 1831 ed. and McCulloch’s ed., and Rae’s Life of Adam Smith, p. 24. It appears that about 1764 many English people sent their sons to Edinburgh University on account of the better education there. Letter of Blair, in Burton’s Life of Hume, ii, 229. ↑
196 Present State of Polite Learning, 1765, ch. vi. His story of how the father of St. Foix cured the youth of the desire to rationalize his creed is not suggestive of conviction. The father pointed to a crucifix, saying, “Behold the fate of a reformer.” The story has been often plagiarized since—e.g., in Galt’s Annals of the Parish. ↑
197 Abbey and Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, 1878, ii, 37. ↑
198 Dieu et les Hommes, ch. xxxix. ↑
199 Cp. Bishop Law, Considerations on the Theory of Religion, 6th ed. 1774, p. 65, note, and the Analysis of Bolingbroke’s writings (1755) there cited. Mr. Sichel’s reply to Sir L. Stephen’s criticism may or may not be successful; but he does not deal with Bishop Law’s. ↑
200 Mémoires de Diderot, ed. 1841, ii, 25. ↑
201 These had begun as early as 1753 (Micromégas). ↑
202 Works, ed. 1842, i, pp. cix, 445; ii, 628, 728. Cp. the poem Kew Gardens, left in MS. ↑
203 I here take a few sentences from my paper, The Church and Education, 1903. ↑
204 Short History, p. 717. The Concise Description of the Endowed Grammar Schools, by Nicholas Carlisle, 1818, shows that schools were founded in all parts of the country by private bequest or public action during the eighteenth century. ↑
205 Collis, in Transactions of the Social Science Association, 1857, p. 126. According to Collis, 48 had been founded by James I, 28 under Charles I, 16 under the Commonwealth, 36 under Charles II, 4 under James II, 7 under William and Mary, 11 under Anne, 17 under George I, and 7 under George II. He does not indicate their size. ↑
207 Gibbins, Industrial History of England, 1894, p. 151. ↑
208 Hist. of England under George III, ed. 1865, ii, 83. ↑
209 The document is given in Ritchie’s Life of Hume, 1807, pp. 53–55. ↑
210 A reply, The World proved to be not eternal nor mechanical, appeared in 1790. ↑
211 The Doctrines of a Trinity and the Incarnation of God was published anonymously. ↑
212 See the Biographical Introduction to the Unitarian reprint of Watts’s Solemn Address, 1840, which gives the letters of Lardner. And cp. Skeats, Hist. of the English Free Churches, ed. Miall, p. 240. ↑
213 Life of Lardner, by Dr. Kippis, prefixed to Works, ed. 1835, i, p. xxxii. ↑
214 Memoirs of Priestley, 1806, pp. 30–32, 35, 37. The Letter on the Logos was addressed by Lardner to the first Lord Barrington, and was first published anonymously, in 1759. ↑
215 Memoirs of Priestley, p. 19. ↑
216 Pamphlet of 1778, printing the sermon, with reply to a local attack. ↑
217 MS. alteration in print. See also p. 1 of Epistle Dedicatory. ↑
218 In criticizing whom Sir Leslie Stephen barely notices his scientific work, but dwells much on his religious fallacies—a course which would make short work of the fame of Newton. ↑
219 A Church dignitary has described Evanson’s Dissonance as “the commencement of the destructive criticism of the Fourth Gospel” (Archdeacon Watkins’s Bampton Lectures, 1890, p. 174). ↑
220 Williams (d. 1816), who published 3 vols. of “Lectures on Education” and other works, has a longer claim on remembrance as the founder of the “Literary Fund.” ↑
221 The subject is discussed at length in the essay on Gibbon in the author’s Pioneer Humanists. ↑
222 Cp. Bishop Watson’s Apology for Christianity (1776) as to the vogue of unbelief at that date. (Two Apologies, ed. 1806, p. 121. Cp. pp. 179, 399.) ↑
223 The panegyric on Voltaire delivered at his death by Frederick the Great (Nov. 26, 1778) was promptly translated into English (1779). ↑
224 Reflections on the French Revolution, 1790, p. 131. ↑
225 See Hannah More’s letter of April, 1777, in her Life, abridged 16mo-ed. p. 36. An edition of Shaftesbury, apparently, appeared in 1773, and another in 1790. ↑
226 The essays of Hume, including the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779), were now circulated in repeated editions. Mr. Rae, in his valuable Life of Adam Smith, p. 311, cites a German observer, Wendeborn, as writing in 1785 that the Dialogues, though a good deal discussed in Germany, had made no sensation in England, and were at that date entirely forgotten. But a second edition had been called for in 1779, and they were added to a fresh edition of the essays in 1788. Any “forgetting” is to be set down to preoccupation with other interests. ↑
227 Letter to the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 1777, p. 3. ↑
228 Dr. Parr, Characters of C. J. Fox, i, 220; cited in Charles James Fox, a Commentary, by W. S. Landor, ed. by S. Wheeler, 1907, p. 147. Fox’s secretary and biographer, Trotter, while anxious to discredit the statement of Parr, gives such a qualified account (Memoirs of the Latter Years of C. J. Fox, 1811, pp. 470–71) of Fox’s views on immortality as to throw much doubt on the stronger testimony of B. C. Walpole (Recollections of C. J. Fox, 1806, p. 242). ↑
229 See J. L. Le B. Hammond, Charles James Fox, 1903, ch. xiii. ↑
230 See a letter in Bishop Watson’s Life, i, 402; and cp. Buckle, ch. vii, note 218. ↑
231 See his Task, bk. iii, 150–90 (1783–1784), for the prevailing religious tone. ↑
232 Princ. of Moral Philos. bk. v, ch. ix. The chapter tells of widespread freethinking. ↑
233 Ernest Krause, Erasmus Darwin, Eng. tr. 1879, p. 211. Cp. pp. 193, 194. ↑
234 Letters vii, viii, ix, xix, xxii. ↑
235 E.g., The Ordination, the Address to the Deil, A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, The Kirk’s Alarm, etc. ↑
236 See also the pieces printed between these in the Globe edition, pp. 66–68. ↑
237 The benevolent Supreme Being, he writes, “has put the immediate administration of all this into the hands of Jesus Christ—a great personage, whose relation to Him we cannot fathom, but whose relation to us is [that of] a guide and Saviour.” Letter 86 in Globe ed. Letters 189 and 197, to Mrs. Dunlop, similarly fail to meet the requirements of the orthodox correspondent. The poem Look up and See, latterly printed several times apart from Burns’s works, and extremely likely to be his, is a quite Voltairean criticism of David. If the poem be ungenuine, it is certainly by far the ablest of the unacknowledged pieces ascribed to him, alike in diction and in purport. ↑
238 Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, Jan. 1, 1789, in Robert Burns and Mrs. Dunlop, ed. by W. Wallace, 1898, p. 129. The passage is omitted from Letter 168 in the Globe ed., and presumably from other reprints. ↑
239 Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, July 9, 1790. Published for the first time in vol. cited, p. 266. ↑
240 Epistle to a Young Friend. ↑
241 Lecky, writing in 1865, and advancing on Burke, has said of the whole school, including Shaftesbury, that “the shadow of the tomb rests on all: a deep, unbroken silence, the chill of death, surrounds them. They have long ceased to wake any interest” (Rationalism in Europe, i, 116). As a matter of fact, they had been discussed by Taylor in 1853; by Pattison in 1860; and by Farrar in 1862; and they have since been discussed at length by Dr. Hunt, by Dr. Cairns, by Lange, by Gyzicki, by M. Sayous, by Sir Leslie Stephen, by Prof. Höffding, and by many others. ↑
242 Conway, introd. to Age of Reason, in his ed. of Paine’s Works, iv, 3. ↑