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Untitled Essay, Prospect: or, View of the Moral World, vol. 4 (26 January 1805), pp. 30–1.
David Hume
Prospect was an anti-Christian weekly, published in New York from 1803 to 1805 and edited by Elihu Palmer (1764–1806). One of the American Enlightenment’s most infamous deists, Palmer was described by G. Adolf Koch as a “militant deist” (DAB, vol. 7, part 2, pp. 177–179, quotation on 177). While Palmer was widely known in the eighteenth century, he has been largely overlooked by modern historians. (There is no entry on him in Oxford’s American National Biography, for instance.) This untitled article, signed simply as “HUME,” was an excerpt of material focused on religion from Hume’s “Of Parties in General,” an essay that was first published in 1741. (For a reprint of the entire essay as it appeared in 1777, see Essays, pp. 54–63. The excerpt begins with the text found at pp. 60–62, incorporates part of footnote 9, on pp. 61–62, and then concludes with some of the text at p. 59.) On Palmer, see Kerry Walters’s entry on him in EAE, vol. 2, pp. 782–4, and, also in EAE, Peter S. Fosl’s entry on “Scepticism,” vol. 2, pp. 937–9.
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Two men travelling on the highway, the one east, the other west, can easily pass each other, if the way be broad enough. But two men, reasoning upon opposite principles of religion, cannot so easily pass without shocking; though one should think that the way were also, in that case, sufficiently broad, and that each might proceed without interruption in his own course. But such is the nature of the human mind, that it always takes hold of every mind that approaches it; and as it is wonderfully fortified and corroborated by an unanimity of sentiments, so it is shocked and disturbed by any contrariety. Hence the eagerness which most people discover in a dispute; and hence their impatience of opposition, even in the most speculative and indifferent opinions.
This principle, however frivolous it may appear, seems to have been the origin of all religious wars and divisions. But as this principle is universal in human nature, its effects would not have been confined to one age, and to one sect of religion, did it not there concur with other more accidental causes, which raise it to such a height as to produce the greatest misery and devastation. Most religions of the ancient world arose in the unknown ages of the government, when men were as yet barbarous and uninstructed, and the prince, as well as peasant, was disposed to receive with implicit faith, every pious tale of fiction, which was offered him. The magistrate embraced the religion of the people, and entering cordially into the care of sacred matters, naturally acquired an authority in them, and united the ecclesiastical with the civil power. But the Christian religion arising, while principles directly opposite to it were firmly established in the polite part of the world, who despised the nation who broached this novelty; no wonder that, in such circumstances, it was but little countenanced by the civil magistrate, and that the priesthood were allowed to engross all the authority in the new sect. So bad a use did they make of this power, even in those early times, that the persecutions of Christianity may, perhaps, in part, be ascribed to the violence instilled by them into their followers; though it must not be dissembled that there were laws against external superstition among the Romans, as ancient as the time of the twelve tables; and the Jews as well as Christians were sometimes punished by them; though, in general, these laws were not rigorously executed. Immediately after the conquest of Gaul, they forbad all but the natives to be initiated into the religion of the Druids; and this was a kind of persecution. In about a century after this conquest, the Emperor Claudius, quite abolished that superstition by penal laws; which would have been a very grievous persecution, if the imitation of the Roman manners had not, before hand, weaned the Gauls from their ancient prejudices. (Suetonius in vita Claudii.) Pliny ascribes the abolition of Druid superstitions to Tiberius, probably because that Emperor had taken some steps towards restraining them. This is an instance of the usual caution and moderation of the Romans in such cases; and very different from their violent and sanguinary method of treating the Christians. Hence we may entertain a suspicion, those furious persecutions of Christianity were in some measure owing to the imprudent zeal and bigotry of the first propagators of that sect; and ecclesiastical history affords us many reasons to confirm this suspicion. After Christianity became the established religion, the principles of priestly government continued; and engendered a spirit of persecution, which has ever since been the poison of human society, and the source of the most inveterate factions in every government. There is another cause (besides the authority of the priests, and the separation of the ecclesiastical and civil powers) which has contributed to render Christendom the scene of religious wars and divisions. Religions, that arise in ages totally ignorant and barbarous, consist mostly of traditionary [sic] tales and fictions, which may be very different in every sect, without being contrary to each other; and even when they are contrary, every one adheres to the tradition of his own sect, without much reasoning and disputation. But as philosophy was widely spread over the world at the time when Christianity arose, the teachers of the new sect were obliged to form a system of speculative opinions; to divide with some accuracy their articles of faith; and to explain, comment, confute, and defend, with all the subtlety of argument and science. Hence naturally arose keenness in dispute, when the Christian religion came to be split into new divisions and heresies. And this keenness assisted the priests in their policy, of begetting a mutual hatred and antipathy among their deluded followers. Sects of philosophy, in the ancient world, were more zealous than parties of religion; but in modern times, parties of religion are more furious and enraged than the most cruel factions that ever arose from interest and ambition. The civil wars which arose some years ago in Morocco between the blacks and whites, merely on account of their complexion, are founded on a pleasant difference. We laugh at them; but were things rightly examined, we afford much more occasion of ridicule to the Moors. For what are all of the wars of religion which have prevailed in this polite and knowing part of the world? They are certainly more absurd than the Moorish civil wars. The difference of complexion is a sensible and real difference: But the difference about an article of faith, which is utterly absurd and unintelligible, is not a difference in sentiment, but a difference in a few phrases and expressions, which one party accepts of without understanding them, and the other refuses in the same manner.
HUME.