I.

Begin, Dear Sir, with a few obfer- LET. vations on the Apology for the Life and Writings of David Hume, Efq. drawn up foon after that work came out, but reserved in expectation of Mr. H's pofthumous tracts.

With difficulty I am able to perfuade my friends, that this author and myself have not written in concert; for his Apology and my Letter fit each other like two tallies*. In his Dedication, he expreffes his ap

*The Apology was written before the publication of the Letter, though fent into the world after it.

prehen

1.

LET. prehenfion, that "the CHRISTIAN "clamour would be raised afresh." A clamour is accordingly raised by "one of the people called CHRISTI"ANS." Elsewhere he intimates his expectation that Mr. H-'s "affecti❝onate Dr. Smith" would come in for his fhare. A letter is accordingly written to that very Doctor.

You fee, Dear Sir, how I have done my best to fulfil his predictions. Let us now enquire whether he may not have returned the favour, and been equally kind to me.

In my Advertisement I ventured to fuppofe, that, by a late publication, the admirers of Mr. H. imagined religion to have received it's coup de grace, and that the aftonished public was utterly at a lofs to conceive, "what they, who believed in God, "could

I.

"could poffibly have to fay for them- LET. "felves." To convert my fuppofition into matter of fact, he opens his Apology with a kind of funeral oration, most folemnly pronounced over Christianity as a breathless corpse, about to be for ever interred in the grave of Mr. H.

"David Hume is dead! Never "were the pillars of Orthodoxy fo defperately fhaken, as they are now by that event!" And at P. 9. he fpeaks of "the particular circum"stances of this event" as "increaf

ing the aggregate of our confterna"tion !"

Here, the diftempered imagination of the Apologist fees Mr. H. like another Samfon, bowing himself with all his might between the pillars, and flaying more at his death, than all

that

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LET. that he flew in his life. He fees the believing world aghaft, the church tottering from it's foundations, and Chriftians affembling in an upper chamber, with the doors shut, for fear of the philofophers. What may be the ftate of religion upon earth, before the end fhall come, we cannot tell. We have reason to think it will be very bad. But let us hope, notwithstanding all which has happened in Scotland, that the Gospel will last our time.

Thus again-I fcrupled not to affert, that the end proposed in giving an account of Mr. H's life and death was, to recommend his fceptical and atheistical notions. Dr. Smith indeed was wary and modeft. He gave us a detail of circumftances, and then only added, that," as to his philose

phy,