บ ESSAYS AND TREATISES ON MORAL, POLITICAL, RELIGIOUS AND By EMANUEL KANT, M. R. A. S. B. AND PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR, HUME's scepticism seems to be the favourite and inexhaustible topic, on which our modern champions of orthodoxy still insist, and the only fortress, against which they point their ecclesiastical cannon; which fortress, however, has always proved impregnable to them. No doubt can be entertained but they have in view to insinuate themselves into the good graces and to obtain the patronage of potent bigots who have vacant benefices in their disposal: they would, as sir Francis Seymour said, willingly exchange a good conscience for a bishopric. But these modern inquisitors and ghostly practitioners, more attentive to the cant of their profession, than observant of the spirit of Christianity, and not seeming to possess more abilities to use fair reasoning, than their patrons capacity, perhaps, to understand it, betake themselves but to invective, personal attacks, * foul Would a certain author of A Sermon on Suicide, who makes this uncharitable and unchristianlike observation, Of all men that ever lived Mr. Hume is the only one, of whom I never heard a single good and benevolent action,' take the trouble to read a letter, prefixed to Hume's History |