[130] Essay on “Tendencies of Religious Thought in England: 1688–1750,” in Essays and Reviews, 9th ed. p. 304. [↑]
[131] 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. [↑]
[132] In his Case of Reason; or, Natural Religion Fully and Fairly Stated, in answer to Tindal (1732). See the argument set forth by Sir Leslie Stephen, i, 158–63. It is noteworthy, however, that in his Spirit of Prayer (1750), pt. ii, dial. i, Law expressly argues that “No other religion can be right but that which has its foundation in Nature. For the God of Nature can require nothing of his creatures but what the state of their nature calls them to.” Like Baxter, Berkeley, Butler, and so many other orthodox polemists, Law uses the argument from ignorance when it suits him, and ignores or rejects it when used by others. [↑]
[133] The general reader should take note that in A. Murray’s issue of Hume’s Essays (afterwards published by Ward, Lock, and Co.), which omits altogether the essays on Miracles and a Future State, the Natural History of Religion is much mutilated, though the book professes to be a verbatim reprint. [↑]
[134] Even before his death he was suspected of that view. When his coffin was being carried from his house for interment, one of “the refuse of the rabble” is said to have remarked, “Ah, he was an atheist.” “No matter,” replied another, “he was an honest man” (Curious Particulars, etc., respecting Chesterfield and Hume, 1788, p. 15). [↑]
[135] See Burton, Hist. of Scotland, viii, 549–50, as to the case of Pitcairne. [↑]
[136] Howell’s State Trials, xiii (1812), coll. 917–38. [↑]
[137] Macaulay, History, ch. xxii; student’s ed. ii, 620–21; Burton, History of Scotland, viii, 76–77. Aikenhead seems to have been a boy of unusual if unbalanced capacity, even by the bullying account of Macaulay, who missed no opportunity to cover himself by stoning heretics. See the boy’s arguments on the bases of ethics, set forth in his “dying speech,” as cited by Halyburton, Natural Religion Insufficient, 1714, pp. 119–23, 131, and the version in the State Trials, xiii, 930–34. [↑]
[138] Macaulay ascribes the savagery of the prosecution to the Lord Advocate, Sir James Stewart, “as cruel as he was base”; but a letter printed in the State Trials, from a member of the Privy Council, says the sentence would have been commuted if “the ministers would intercede.” They, however, “spoke and preached for cutting him off.” Trials, xiii, 930; Burton, viii, 77. [↑]
[139] Letter to Sir Francis Masham, printed in the State Trials, xiii, 928–29—evidently written by Locke, who seems to have preserved all the papers printed by Howell. [↑]