The Pursuit of Certainty. Shirley Robin Letwin

and knew only that the Lord’s Word was worth more than all the pagan learning. They were “rude in mind and manners, grimly religious and bigotted in spirit.”¹ As a result, the Presbyterians, restored to power upon the landing of William of Orange, were distinguished chiefly by their zeal in purging the Episcopal clergy. They were proud of their vulgarity and ignorance, opposed to philosophy, to the classics, to all learning, addicted to a puritanism that, having excluded the most powerful intellectual elements, was left with little more than its harshness.

      A decline in their influence began as a result of the union with England in 1707. The union re-opened Scotland to the outside world and stimulated the growth of another spirit, along with industrial and commercial changes that were to transform it from a poor, barren country into one of the more enterprising and prosperous industrial nations of the world. In the Church, the group of Moderates who came to dominate it in the middle decades of the century began gathering strength. But during the youth and early manhood of David Hume, the prevailing spirit in Scotland was still that of the Covenanters. Their spiritual austerity found a natural environment in the material conditions of the country, which still bore the marks of years of turbulence. Trade was stagnant, houses deserted, agriculture poor. There was nothing left of those earlier days when Scotland was much closer to France than England, when the lairds far outshone the rude English barons. Instead, even rich lairds no longer enjoyed any splendour. They were strangers to luxuries like delicate furnishings, windows that opened, desserts, or fine clothes, and were rarely at all learned or refined. There was nothing anywhere to brighten the atmosphere of gloom and hopelessness in which the grimmest sort of religion flourished.

      Paganism survived only in the form of superstitious fears, in the belief in charmers and sorcerers who thrived in remote places, and, above all, in the fear of Satan. He was never absent, and the acknowledged source of all carnal thoughts. A mysterious sound, an unexpected ailment, a spasm of doubt were proof of Satan’s power, and civil and ecclesiastical authorities united to exorcise him by hunting witches with organized cruelty. Nor was there less to fear from God, whom pious Scotsmen regarded as an implacable despot to be served with unremitting devotion in a vain effort to escape His wrath. For the doctrine of election, which they held in all its severity, taught that Christ died only for the elect and left all the rest of mankind with no remedy against the fury of God. On earth, one could hope only for a commonwealth ruled by saints according to laws derived from studying the Bible.

      The few humane and polite Moderate ministers had little following. Instead, the people flocked to hear the more terrifying preachers, especially the “left-wing,” ultra-Evangelicals, who gave them crude but dramatic discourses on how they would spend eternity in the company of grisly devils, howling and roaring in everlasting torment. These preachers further endeared themselves to their audience by pursuing a number of worthy objects: the persecution of Episcopalians, the proscription of Roman Catholics, the extermination of witches, the re-establishment of a theocracy. And they were indefatigable inquisitors into higher matters. Nothing was too mysterious for them, be it the secret designs of the Deity before creation or the fate of man for all eternity. The most popular and influential preacher, Thomas Boston, sold his published sermons by the thousands to peasants, shepherds, pedlars, and lairds. His message was ever full of hell-fire and wrath:

      The Damned … must depart from God into everlasting Fire. I am not in a mind to dispute, what Kind of Fire it is. … Whether a material fire or not? Experience will more than satisfy the Curiosity of those, who are disposed rather to dispute about it, than to seek how to escape it. … Hell-fire will not only pierce into the Bodies, but directly into the Souls of the Damn’d. … How vehement must that Fire be that pierceth directly into the Soul, and makes an everlasting Burning in the Spirit, the most lively and tender Part of a Man, wherein Wounds or Pains are most intolerable. … When one is cast into a burning fiery Furnace, the Fire makes its way into the very Bowels, and leaves no Member untouch’d.¹

      Although he exhorted sinners to reform, Boston gave them little hope of success, and concentrated rather on their natural sinfulness. Professor Blackwell explained that it was an act of grace and benevolence for God to have made a covenant with Adam whereby he put all mankind’s stock, so to speak, into one ship.² Everyone agreed that when Adam fell, man became a rank, stinking, corrupt creature; his physical beauty in the state of innocence was transformed into a monstrous body, so hideous and vile that it had to be kept under cover.

      It was shown again and again that only faith, not morality, mattered. Besides, any hint that there might be natural virtue or light in a human soul was greeted with a charge of heresy. The total corruption of every man, woman, and child was beyond question; even a new-born infant was but a “lump of wrath, a child of hell.” To the preachers it was obvious that the heart of man could harbour no good thought or desire, for the Creator would never let his image dwell so near the effigies of the devil. “Hear O Sinner, what is thy case,” Boston commanded, and explained lucidly:

      Innumerable Sins compass thee about; Mountains of Guilt are lying upon thee; Floods of Impurities overwhelm thee. Living Lusts, of all Sorts roll up and down in the dead Sea of thy Soul; where no Good can breathe because of the Corruption there. … The Thoughts and imaginations of thy Heart are only evil. … O sad Reckoning! As many Thoughts, Words, Actions, as many Sins. …¹

      The duty of ministers was to convince the people that “unregenerate morality can never please God, and in this state of wrath and curse is loathed by Him.” It was blasphemy to preach that performing the ordinary duties made man less noxious to God, for while morality was desirable in its place, it was “soul ruining,” and led to perdition when it taught men to depend on their own merits. William Land, minister of Crimond about the beginning of the eighteenth century, was deposed for saying in a Synod sermon that virtue was more natural to the human race than vice.² Later in the century, the seceder Adam Gib could still protest that preaching moral duties called men to what “was absolutely impracticable and leading to eternal perdition.”³ Even in 1837, the new Principal of Edinburgh College was subjected to a prosecution in the Edinburgh Presbytery, on the charge of failing to preach the doctrine of original sin in its full rigour, denying the right of the civil power to punish heresy, denying that well-established doctrines should set the limits of enquiry, and showing undue charity to heathens and lapsed Christians.⁴

      Nothing was allowed to escape the universal blight and the effect on morality was hardly salutary. Discourses on the true “Scriptural and Rational way of preaching the Gospel” taught that the beasts also partook of sin and were therefore ferocious, repulsive, and carnivorous. That vegetables were just as cursed was evident from the weeds, brambles, thistles, and nettles that laid barren the ground. Lazy Scots farmers accordingly pleaded that they dared not clear the weeds for dread of interfering with the divine sentence on the soil. Some troubled sinners gave up in despair, others felt free to indulge in reckless vice, while those who felt assured of election were inspired to neglect conduct and duty. An English visitor to Scotland in the ’thirties protested: “I wish these ministers would speak oftener and more civilly than they do, of morality.” Yet even when they did speak of it, not much was accomplished—“one would think there was no sin, according to them, but fornication; or other virtues besides keeping the Sabbath.”¹

      While eternal bliss was not to be had by moral conduct, any attempt to find pleasure in life on earth was strictly censured. Gratification of the senses, in whatever form, was ruled out. “Since the Eyes of our first Parents were opened to the forbidden Fruit,” Thomas Boston instructed the pious, “Men’s Eyes have been the Gates of Destruction to their Souls.”² All amusements were equally sinful—dancing, carnal; cards, dangerous; poetry, fanciful; tales, frivolous and untrue; dicing, an impious usurpation of the lots appointed by God. The world was not merely coupled with the flesh and the devil—it was the flesh and the devil. It was an enemy’s country to be plundered, but never enjoyed, for enjoyment, like beauty, was a snare of the enemy. The good Presbyterian was always at war, or at most resting between battles, his only purpose in life being to fight against evil. He was affronted by everything—by a neighbour who was heard through the wall being amorous to his own wife, by a townsman who took the Spectator, or a friend who sent his daughter to a boarding school. He never indulged even in the pleasure of ordinary