"A Letter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

Were Authorities proper to be employed in any Philosophical
Reasoning, I could cite you that of Socrates the wisest and
{21} most religious of the Greek Philosophers, as well as
Cicero among the Romans, who both of them carried their
Philosophical Doubts to the highest Degree of Scepticism. All
the antient Fathers, as well as our first Reformers, are
copious in representing the Weakness and Uncertainty of mere
human Reason. And Monsieur Huet the learned Bishop of
Avaranches (so celebrated for his Demonstration Evangelique
which contains all the great Proofs of the Christian Religion)
wrote also a Book on this very Topick, wherein he endeavours
to revive all the Doctrines of the antient Skepticks or
Pyrrhonians.

In Reality, whence come all the various Tribes of Hereticks,
the Arians, Socinians and Deists, but from too great a
Confidence in mere human Reason, which they regard as the
Standard of every Thing, and which they will not submit to the
superior Light of Revelation? And can one do a more essential
Service to Piety, than by showing them that this boasted
Reason of theirs, so far from accounting for the great
Mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, is not able fully to
satisfy itself with regard to its own Operations, and must in
some Measure fall into a Kind of implicite Faith, even in the
most obvious and familiar Principles?

II. The Author is charged with Opinions {22} leading to
downright Atheism, chiefly by denying this Principle, That
whatever begins to exist must have a Cause of Existence. To
give you a Notion of the Extravagance of this Charge, I must
enter into a little Detail. It is common for Philosophers to
distinguish the Kinds of Evidence into intuitive,
demonstrative, sensible, and moral; by which they intend only
to mark a Difference betwixt them, not to denote a Superiority
of one above another. Moral Certainty may reach as high a
Degree of Assurance as Mathematical; and our Senses are surely
to be comprised amongst the clearest and most convincing of
all Evidences. Now, it being the Author's Purpose, in the
Pages cited in the Specimen, to examine the Grounds of that
Proposition; he used the Freedom of disputing the common
Opinion, that it was founded on demonstrative or intuitive
Certainty; but asserts, that it is supported by moral Evidence,
and is followed by a Conviction of the same Kind with these
Truths, That all Men must die, and that the Sun will rise
To-morrow. Is this any Thing like denying the Truth of that
Proposition, which indeed a Man must have lost all common
Sense to doubt of?

But, granting that he had denied it, how is this a Principle