Hume’s sarcastic fling at the clergy in a note to the first volume of his history is not original. He says,—
The ambition of the clergy can often be satisfied only by promoting ignorance, and superstition, and implicit faith, and pious frauds; and having got what Archimedes only wanted,—another world on which he could fix his engine,—no wonder they move this world at their pleasure.
In Dryden’s Don Sebastian, Dorax thus addresses the Mufti:—
Content you with monopolizing Heaven,
And let this little hanging ball alone;
For, give you but a foot of conscience there,
And you, like Archimedes, toss the globe.
Dryden says of the Earl of Shaftesbury,—
David for him his tuneful harp had strung,