Note 137 — Chapter XVI · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Reading edition
Macaulay, History, ch. xxii; student’s ed. ii, 620–21; Burton, History of Scotland, viii, 76–77. Aikenhead seems to have been a boy of unusual if unbalanced capacity, even by the bullying account of Macaulay, who missed no opportunity to cover himself by stoning heretics. See the boy’s arguments on the bases of ethics, set forth in his “dying speech,” as cited by Halyburton, Natural Religion Insufficient, 1714, pp. 119–23, 131, and the version in the State Trials, xiii, 930–34. ↑