ower than
at that very time. The attempt to rear a Paris on English soil was a
complete success. The young were delighted with the result; the aged had
been too ill-taught in early life to raise the voice of remonstrance.
With the exception of the Puritan opposition, the gratification was
universal; and that took place in religion and literature which, had it
occurred in warfare, would have kindled a flame of national indignation
in every breast: England fell powerless, contented, and doomed into the
arms of France.

The attacks of Hume and Gibbon on the divine origin of Christianity take
rank with the mischievous influences imparted by the elder school of
Deists, and by French taste and immorality.

Hume was a philosopher who drew his inspiration directly from his own
times. Attaching himself to the Encyclopaedists, he played the wit in the
_salons_ of Paris. He became fraternally intimate with Rousseau, and
brought that social dreamer back with him to England as a mark of high
appreciation of his talents. He was a metaphysician by nature, but he
erred in speculating with theology. That was the mistake of his life. He
fell into Bolingbroke's error of excessive egotism. Standing before the
superstructure of theology, he carefully surveyed every part of it, and
deemed no theme too lofty for his reasonings, and no mystery beyond the
reach of his illuminating torch. He lamented the absence of progress in
the understanding of that evidence which assures us of any real
existence and matter of fact. But this difficulty did not impede him
from an attempted solution. He thought himself performing a great
service when he addressed himself to the "destruction of that implicit
faith and credulity which is the bane of all reasoning and free
inquiry."[136] He refused to acknowledge a Supreme Being, in the
following words: "While we argue from the course of nature, and infer a
particular intelligent cause, which at first bestowed and still
preserves order in the universe, we embrace a principle which is both
uncertain and useless, because the subject lies entirely beyond the
reach of human experience."[137]

The miraculous evidences of Christianity were also opposed by Hume. His
_Essay on Miracles_ (1747), consists of two parts; the former of which
is an attempt to prove that no evidence would be a sufficient ground for
believing the truth and existence of miracles. Experience is our only
guide in reasoning on matters of fact; but