180 HUME 



VIII 



Deity, by reason, he opposes a searching critical 

 negation. 1 



The object of the speech of the imaginary 

 Epicurean in the eleventh section of the "Inquiry," 

 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 

 religion must be false because it is inconsistent 

 with the divine attributes of justice and mercy ; 

 I beg leave to point out to you, that there are 

 undeniable natural facts which are fully open to 

 the same objection. Since you admit that nature 

 is the work of God, you are forced to allow that 

 such facts are consistent with his attributes. 

 Therefore, you must also admit, that the parallel 

 facts in the scheme of orthodoxy are also con- 

 sistent with them, and all your arguments to the 

 contrary fall to the ground. Q.E.D. In fact, the 



1 Hume's letter to Mure of Caldwell, containing a criticism 

 of Leechman's sermon (Burton, I. p. 163), bears strongly on 

 this point. 



