HUME. 255 



trayers of their Lord," and much more is added of a like kind.* 

 Now this heavy charge against some of the most pious and 

 most virtuous men who ever adorned any church, Dr. Robert- 

 son, Dr. Blair, Dr. Jardine, Dr. Drysdale, and others, seemed 

 eminently unlikely to be well founded. I have caused 

 minute search to be made ; and on fully examining all that 

 collection, the result is to give the most unqualified and 

 peremptory contradiction to this scandalous report. It is in- 

 conceivable how such a rumour should have arisen in any 

 quarter. 



A severe, and we may well be permitted to add, a singularly 

 absurd observation of Archbishop Magee is cited in the same 

 criticism.f His Grace describes Hume's heterodox writings as 

 " standing memorials of a heart as wicked and a head as weak as 

 ever pretended to the character of philosopher and moralist." 



Now I have no right to complain of the Most Reverend 

 Prelate for forming so low an estimate of Mr. Hume's under- 

 standing, and entertaining so bad an opinion of his heart ; an 

 estimate and an opinion not confined by his Grace to one class 

 of his writings, though undeserved by any. Yet it does appear 

 somewhat strange that merely because one of the most able 

 men that ever lived, and one of the most virtuous, unhappily 

 entertained religious opinions very different from those of the 

 Archbishop, therefore he must be proclaimed both a dunce and 

 a knave. It may also be permitted us to wish that the disciples 

 of the religion in which " the greatest of these things is 

 charity," and in which erring mortals are forbidden " to judge 

 lest they be judged," should emulate the candour and the 

 charity of unbelievers ; for assuredly if Mr. Hume had lived to 

 read the Archbishop's work on the < Atonement,' though he 

 might not have been converted by it, he would freely have 

 confessed the great talents and the unspotted virtue of its 

 author. 



* Quarterly Review, vol. Ixxiii. p. 556. f Id., p. 552. 



