Note 86:1 — Chapter II
Reading edition
"Had I done but half as much as he [Hume] in labouring to subvert principles which ought ever to be held sacred, I know not whether the friends of truth would have granted me any indulgence, I am sure they ought not. Let me be treated with the lenity due to a good citizen no longer than I act as becomes one."—Beattie's Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, &c. p. 20.
On this Priestley says, "Certainly the obvious construction of this passage is, that Mr. Hume ought not to be treated with the indulgence and lenity due to a good citizen, but ought to be punished as a bad one. And what is this but what a Bonner and a Gardiner might have put into the preamble of an order for his execution. . . I for my part am truly pleased with such publications as those of Mr. Hume, and I do not think it requires any great sagacity or strength of mind, to see that such writings must be of great service to religion, natural and revealed. They have actually occasioned the subject to be more thoroughly canvassed, and consequently to be better understood than ever it was before, and thus vice cotis funguntur."[86:A]