310 Report of Meetings for 1891. By Dr J. Hardy. 



distinction and difference between moral good and evil, and refers all evil 

 to the imperfection of creatures." 2nd. " That he denies the punishment 

 of another life, or that God punishes men for sin in this life." He 

 appeared before the Court, and with ability sought to establish that it is 

 contrary to Scripture to hold that man has free will, in the Arminian 

 sense, but held " that he is accountable and punishable for practising con- 

 trary to the divine precepts of our Saviour, the practice of which tends to 

 make all men happy." The case goes up from Presbytery to Synod, from 

 Synod to Assembly, from Assembly to Commission. It was remitted from 

 the Assembly to the Commission in 1733, and goes between these Courts 

 until 1736, with no evidence that the Commission ever ventured to take it 

 up. 



In 1734 he published a vindication of the " Moral World," in reply to a 

 pamphlet against him, said to be written by Andrew Baxter, who was a 

 tutor in the Duns Castle family. Dudgeon mentioned in his reply " that 

 when a rogue is hanged, he is set free to enter a state where he may be 

 reformed." His most important work is " Philosophical Letters concern- 

 ing the Being and Attributes of God," first published in 1737. This work 

 reaches a species of refined Spinozism, mingled with Berkeleyanism. He 

 denies the distinction of substance into spiritual and material, maintains 

 that there is no substance distinct from God, and that all our knowledge, 

 but of God, is about ideas ; they exist only in the mind, and their essence 

 and modes consist only in their being perceived. In 1739 he published a 

 " Catechism founded upon Experience and Eeason, collected by a Father 

 for the use of his Children," and in an "Introductory Letter," he wishes 

 that natural religion alone was embraced by all men, and states that 

 though he believes there was an extraordinary man sent into our world 

 seventeen hundred years ago, to instruct mankind, yet he doubts whether 

 he " ever commanded any of those things to be written concerning him 

 which we have." In the same year he published " A View of the 

 Necessitarian or Best Scheme, freed from the objections of M. Crousaz, in 

 bis examination of Pope's Essay on Man." David Hume was the co- 

 temporary of David Dudgeon : perhaps an interesting paper might be 

 written, as to how far Hume was anticipated by Dudgeon. Hume was in 

 the 32nd year of his age when Dudgeon died. Hume was born in Edin- 

 burgh 26th April 1711, o.s., so that this statement gives Dudgeon's demise 

 as being in 1743. Andrew Baxter, born in Old Aberdeen in 1686 or 1687, 

 died at Old Haddington, near Whittingham, in 1750. 



[For some of this account, Mr Williamson is, he tells me, indebted to 

 Dr McCosh's " Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical, 

 from Hutchinson to Hamilton," London, 1875.] 



Appendix C. — The chief Pictures in LadyTcirk House. 



The principal Pictures in Ladykirk House are — 

 Madonna and Child — Carlo Dolci, 1647. 



St. Cecilia, etc. Copy by Guido from Raphael, as mentioned in Malvisia's 

 Life of Guido, and taken from Church of St. Luigi at Rome. 



