vin THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 181 



It is obvious that, if Hume had been pushed, 

 he must have admitted that his opinion concerning 

 the existence of a God, and of a certain remote 

 resemblance of his intellectual nature to that of 

 man, was an hypothesis which might possess more 

 or less probability, but, on his own principles, 

 was incapable of any approach to demonstration. 

 And to all attempts to make any practical use 

 of his theism; or to prove the existence of the 

 attributes of infinite wisdom, benevolence, justice, 

 and the like, which are usually ascribed to the 

 Deity, by reason, he opposes a searching critical 

 negation.* 



The object of the speech of the imaginary 

 Epicurean in the eleventh section of the " In- 

 quiry," entitled " Of a Particular Providence and 

 of a Future State," is to invert the argument of 

 Bishop Butler's " Analogy." . 



That famous defence of theology against the 

 a priori scepticism of Freethinkers of the 

 eighteenth century, who based their arguments 

 on the inconsistency of the revealed scheme of 

 salvation with the attributes of the Deity, consists, 

 essentially, in conclusively proving that, from a 

 moral point of view, Nature is at least as repre- 

 hensible as orthodoxy. If you tell me, says 

 Butler, in effect, that any part of revealed 



* Hume's letter to Mure of Caldwell, containing a criti- 

 cism of Leechman's sermon (Burton, I. p. 163), bears strong- 

 ly on this point. 



