acquired. It was fashioned by rebellion against the dogmatic and austere civilization that bred him. Beneath the bland surface of his life, there is another story that begins with Scotland in the early decades of the eighteenth century, where Calvinism still ruled with much of its early strength but little of the grandeur. It produced a tension that shaped Hume’s genius, and determined his development from a son of the Kirk to an outrageous infidel philosopher and finally to a worldly essayist and historian. Although puritanism survived in England as well, and inspired Hume’s heirs, there it took on subtler, sophisticated shapes. In Scotland puritanism had its last moment of simplicity, and the emotions it fed on and generated, obscured later by intellectual wrappings, could still be seen plainly.
The Reformation had not, as in England, reduced religion to a political and individual concern. Instead, it replaced Catholicism with another complete interpretation of all the facts of existence. The Calvinism that took over in Scotland (everywhere but the Highlands) removed from Christianity all pagan vestiges. It not only forbade outward emblems, ceremonies, and images, and emphasized the justice and infinite, awful majesty of God, rather than love or hope of salvation; it aspired to read the Divine Will, and in place of the contemptuous indifference that had characterized Scotland under Romanism, it brought an unqualified dogmatism. The Old Church was swept away rather than reformed and there was little left to temper the zeal of the Reformation.
The events of the following centuries confirmed the most extreme tendencies. Under Cromwell, all but rigid Covenanters were excluded from power, and Scotland was placed thoroughly under the heel of the Church. When the Episcopal clergy returned during the Restoration and in turn dismissed the Presbyterians, they effectively destroyed any hope for a moderate Presbyterianism. In exile, the older men acquired what Bishop Burnet called “a tangled scrupulosity,” a habit of enlarging minor differences into great issues, in short, a fanaticism that pursued victory at all costs. The younger men had little opportunity to become learned and knew only that the Lord’s Word was worth more than all the pagan learning. They were “rude in mind and manners, grimly religious and bigotted in spirit.”1 As a result, the Presbyterians, restored to power upon the landing of William of Orange, were distinguished chiefly by their zeal in purging the Episcopal clergy. They were proud of their vulgarity and ignorance, opposed to philosophy, to the classics, to all learning, addicted to a puritanism that, having excluded the most powerful intellectual elements, was left with little more than its harshness.
A decline in their influence began as a result of the union with England in 1707. The union re-opened Scotland to the outside world and stimulated the growth of another spirit, along with industrial and commercial changes that were to transform it from a poor, barren country into one of the more enterprising and prosperous industrial nations of the world. In the Church, the group of Moderates who came to dominate it in the middle decades of the century began gathering strength. But during the youth and early manhood of David Hume, the prevailing spirit in Scotland was still that of the Covenanters. Their spiritual austerity found a natural environment in the material conditions of the country, which still bore the marks of years of turbulence. Trade was stagnant, houses deserted, agriculture poor. There was nothing left of those earlier days when Scotland was much closer to France than England, when the lairds far outshone the rude English barons. Instead, even rich lairds no longer enjoyed any splendour. They were strangers to luxuries like delicate furnishings, windows that opened, desserts, or fine clothes, and were rarely at all learned or refined. There was nothing anywhere to brighten the atmosphere of gloom and hopelessness in which the grimmest sort of religion flourished.
Paganism survived only in the form of superstitious fears, in the belief in charmers and sorcerers who thrived in remote places, and, above all, in the fear of Satan. He was never absent, and the acknowledged source of all carnal thoughts. A mysterious sound, an unexpected ailment, a spasm of doubt were proof of Satan’s power, and civil and ecclesiastical authorities united to exorcise him by hunting witches with organized cruelty. Nor was there less to fear from God, whom pious Scotsmen regarded as an implacable despot to be served with unremitting devotion in a vain effort to escape His wrath. For the doctrine of election, which they held in all its severity, taught that Christ died only for the elect and left all the rest of mankind with no remedy against the fury of God. On earth, one could hope only for a commonwealth ruled by saints according to laws derived from studying the Bible.
The few humane and polite Moderate ministers had little following. Instead, the people flocked to hear the more terrifying preachers, especially the “left-wing,” ultra-Evangelicals, who gave them crude but dramatic discourses on how they would spend eternity in the company of grisly devils, howling and roaring in everlasting torment. These preachers further endeared themselves to their audience by pursuing a number of worthy objects: the persecution of Episcopalians, the proscription of Roman Catholics, the extermination of witches, the re-establishment of a theocracy. And they were indefatigable inquisitors into higher matters. Nothing was too mysterious for them, be it the secret designs of the Deity before creation or the fate of man for all eternity. The most popular and influential preacher, Thomas Boston, sold his published sermons by the thousands to peasants, shepherds, pedlars, and lairds. His message was ever full of hell-fire and wrath:
The Damned … must depart from God into everlasting Fire. I am not in a mind to dispute, what Kind of Fire it is. … Whether a material fire or not? Experience will more than satisfy the Curiosity of those, who are disposed rather to dispute about it, than to seek how to escape it. … Hell-fire will not only pierce into the Bodies, but directly into the Souls of the Damn’d. … How vehement must that Fire be that pierceth directly into the Soul, and makes an everlasting Burning in the Spirit, the most lively and tender Part of a Man, wherein Wounds or Pains are most intolerable. … When one is cast into a burning fiery Furnace, the Fire makes its way into the very Bowels, and leaves no Member untouch’d.1
Although he exhorted sinners to reform, Boston gave them little hope of success, and concentrated rather on their natural sinfulness. Professor Blackwell explained that it was an act of grace and benevolence for God to have made a covenant with Adam whereby he put all mankind’s stock, so to speak, into one ship.2 Everyone agreed that when Adam fell, man became a rank, stinking, corrupt creature; his physical beauty in the state of innocence was transformed into a monstrous body, so hideous and vile that it had to be kept under cover.
It was shown again and again that only faith, not morality, mattered. Besides, any hint that there might be natural virtue or light in a human soul was greeted with a charge of heresy. The total corruption of every man, woman, and child was beyond question; even a new-born infant was but a “lump of wrath, a child of hell.” To the preachers it was obvious that the heart of man could harbour no good thought or desire, for the Creator would never let his image dwell so near the effigies of the devil. “Hear O Sinner, what is thy case,” Boston commanded, and explained lucidly:
Innumerable Sins compass thee about; Mountains of Guilt are lying upon thee; Floods of Impurities overwhelm thee. Living Lusts, of all Sorts roll up and down in the dead Sea of thy Soul; where no Good can breathe because of the Corruption there. … The Thoughts and imaginations of thy Heart are only evil. … O sad Reckoning! As many Thoughts, Words, Actions, as many Sins. …1
The duty of ministers was to convince the people that “unregenerate morality can never please God, and in this state of wrath and curse is loathed by Him.” It was blasphemy to preach that performing the ordinary duties made man less noxious to God, for while morality was desirable in its place, it was “soul ruining,” and led to perdition when it taught men to depend on their own merits. William Land, minister of Crimond about the beginning of the eighteenth century, was deposed for saying in a Synod sermon that virtue was more natural to the human race than vice.2 Later in the century, the seceder Adam Gib could still protest that preaching moral duties called men to what “was absolutely impracticable and leading to eternal perdition.”3 Even in 1837, the new Principal of Edinburgh College was subjected to a prosecution in the Edinburgh Presbytery, on the charge of failing to preach the doctrine of original sin in its full rigour, denying the
