240 HUME. 



fire of a learned and inquiring philosophy, and pro- 

 ceeded from his reason, not, like the dogmatical zeal of 

 Johnson, inspired by fierce passions, matured by hypo- 

 chondriacal temperament, stimulated by nervous fears. 

 The one could give a reason for the faith that was in 

 him the other believed upon trust ; the one believed 

 because he could argue the other because he was 

 afraid ; the one grounded his religion upon his learn- 

 ing the other upon his wishes and his temper. The 

 intolerant layman seemed to betray in his demeanour 

 his soreness, in his horror of discussion a lurking sus- 

 picion that all was not sound in the groundwork of his 

 system. The tolerant and philosophic divine showed 

 a manly confidence in the solidity of the altar at 

 which he ministered. While Johnson was enraged at 

 the foundations of his ill-understood, unexamined belief 

 being scrutinized for fear they should be shaken, Robert- 

 son, who well comprehended on what his faith rested, 

 defied the utmost inquiry and most active efforts of his 

 adversaries, well assured that out of the conflict, how- 

 ever fiercely sustained, the system to which he was at- 

 tached, because he understood it, must come with new 

 claims to universal acceptation. 



