as
they advance together, she is at every turn perverted to serve the
purposes of superstition. For besides the unavoidable incoherences,
which must be reconciled and adjusted, one may safely affirm, that
all popular theology, especially the scholastic, has a kind of
appetite for absurdity and contradiction. If that theology went not
beyond reason and common sense, her doctrines would appear too easy
and familiar. Amazement must of necessity be raised: Mystery
affected: Darkness and obscurity sought after: And a foundation of
merit afforded to the devout votaries, who desire an opportunity
of subduing their rebellious reason by the belief of the most
unintelligible sophisms.

"Ecclesiastical history sufficiently confirms these reflections.
When a controversy is started, some people always pretend with
certainty to foretell the issue. Whichever opinion, say they, is
most contrary to plain reason is sure to prevail; even when the
general interest of the system requires not that decision. Though
the reproach of heresy may, for some time, be bandied about among
the disputants, it always rests at last on the side of reason. Any
one, it is pretended, that has but learning enough of this kind to
know the definition of _Arian_, _Pelagian_, _Erastian_, _Socinian_,
_Sabellian_, _Eutychian_, _Nestorian_, _Monothelite_, &c., not to
mention _Protestant_, whose fate is yet uncertain, will be
convinced of the truth of this observation. It is thus a system
becomes absurd in the end, merely from its being reasonable and
philosophical in the beginning.

"To oppose the torrent of scholastic religion by such feeble maxims
as these, that _it is impossible for the same thing to be and not
to be_, that _the whole is greater than a part_, that _two and
three make five_, is pretending to stop the ocean with a bulrush.
Will you set up profane reason against sacred mystery? No
punishment is great enough for your impiety. And the same fires
which were kindled for heretics will serve also for the destruction
of philosophers."--(IV. pp. 481-3.)

Holding these opinions respecting the recognised systems of theology and
their professors, Hume, nevertheless, seems to have had a theology of
his own; that is to say, he seems to have thought (though, as will
appear, it is needful for an expo