Abstract
Hume’s discussions of religion and the supposed metaphysical truths underlying religious beliefs appeared in print at a time when public utterances or published writings denying the truth of Christianity were liable to legal prosecution in Britain and elsewhere in Europe as blasphemy. Moreover, the penalties that could be inflicted on an author or publisher remained severe even though the power of the self-proclaimed religion of love to engage in the judicial murder of its critics had, at least in Britain, atrophied to the point of permanent disuse.
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Notes
- 1.
In Scotland the death penalty remained a legally sanctioned punishment for blasphemy throughout the eighteenth century even though no one was actually executed for this offence after 1697. It was formally abolished only in 1813. See Walter 1990, 32–3, 45.
- 2.
In a letter to the Marquise de Barbentane, Hume makes the following observations: ‘It is strange, that such cruelty should be found among a people so celebrated for humanity, and so much bigotry amid so much knowledge and philosophy. I am pleased to hear, that the indignation was as general in Paris as it is in all foreign countries’ (1932, II, 85).
- 3.
Some idea of the level of malice behind the stipulation of sums of money as large as these can be gauged from the fact that when Hume was appointed in 1752 as library-keeper to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, his salary amounted, at best, to a little over 50 pounds a year (see Hume 1932, I, 164).
- 4.
In the course of defending herself, Matilda Roalfe said that the ‘question was not whether Christianity was true or false, but whether Atheists had an equal right with Christians to publish their opinions’. She also declared that she ‘did not regret what she had done, nor did she believe that she should’ (Walter 1990, 46).
- 5.
Paine regarded atheism as an absurd and pernicious position. But he also held that Christianity was as bad as atheism though unfortunately more widely espoused: ‘As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism—a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness’ (1794, 36).
- 6.
The prosecution was instigated by a vigilante organization that called itself The Society to Enforce His Majesty’s Proclamation for the Suppression of Vice. One of its most zealous vice-presidents was William Wilberforce, the campaigner against slavery. It is worth noting, accordingly, that despite his supposed Christian sympathy for the oppressed, he was an enthusiastic persecutor of people who did not share his own religious beliefs (Bonner 1934, 39–40).
- 7.
Palmer’s book is of considerable interest as the product of a radical freethinker born and raised in America prior to the War of Independence. It also constitutes a very early attempt to argue not just that Christianity has evolved in a morally corrupt direction but also that the original teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are themselves morally disreputable and unworthy of being espoused by any genuinely good person. According to Palmer (1802, 79), ‘The maxims of the New Testament are a perversion of all correct principles in a code of moral virtue’.
- 8.
D’Holbach and Hume became friends in the course of Hume’s time in Paris as Embassy Secretary (see Hume 1932, I, 496; II, 205 & 275). D’Holbach’s System of Nature was first published in French in 1770, and as it was an explicit defence of atheism, and probably the first such defence to be published anywhere in Europe, it was wisely put before the public under the name of Jean Baptiste de Mirabaud.
- 9.
Given the deist nature of these two books, it is perhaps ironic that during their imprisonment Carlile and some of his closest supporters had abandoned deism in order to espouse atheism or aggressive agnosticism. In 1826 Carlile summed up his new position as follows: ‘we have ventured to ask–what is God? We find no one to answer the question with an intelligible sentence, and finding no one to answer the question, having no answer of our own, we have found that an honest inquirer after truth can and should proceed without the use of the word god’ (see Royle 1974, 42)
- 10.
In Edinburgh Hume and many of his friends were members of the Poker Club, a dining and discussion society originally set up to promote the reinstatement of a Scottish militia. See Mossner 1980, 272–3, 284–5.
- 11.
See also Philo’s claim: ‘And when we have to do with a man, who makes a great profession of religion and devotion, has this any other effect upon several, who pass for prudent, than to put them on their guard, lest they be cheated and deceived by him?’ (1779, 12.221).
- 12.
Writing to Hugh Blair from Paris in 1763, Hume encouraged his friends in Edinburgh to extend their best hospitality to the Earl Marischal on his return to Scotland, and included the following fulsome praise of his character: ‘Do you imagine, that you ever saw so excellent a Man? Or that you have any Chance for seeing his equal, if he were gone?’ (1932, I, 421).
- 13.
Religion was not the only thing about which they disagreed: ‘Mr Hume does not like Shakespeare. Would you have thought it possible that a Man of Genius shou’d not be able to discover the Beauties of that admirable writer? We are all against him’ (Coke 1889–1896, II, 314).
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Bailey, A., O’Brien, D. (2014). Blasphemy, Dissimulation, and Humean Prudence. In: Hume's Critique of Religion: 'Sick Men's Dreams'. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 72. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6615-0_2
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