s
to err thus!" The influence of Montesquieu is found in the following
early economic interpretation in the _Philosophic Dictionary_:

There are some nations whose religion is the result of
neither climate nor government. What cause detached
North Germany, Denmark, most of Switzerland, Holland,
England, Scotland, and Ireland [sic] from the Roman
communion? Poverty. Indulgences . . . were sold too
dear. The prelates and monks absorbed the whole
revenue of a province. People adopted a cheaper religion.

[Sidenote: Scotch historians]

Of the two Scotch historians that were the most faithful students of
Voltaire, one, David Hume, imbibed {709} perfectly his skepticism and
scorn for Christianity; the other, William Robertson, [Sidenote:
Robertson] everything but that. Presbyterian clergyman as was the
latter, he found that the "happy reformation of religion" had produced "a
revolution in the sentiments of mankind the greatest as well as the most
beneficial that has happened since the publication of Christianity."
Such an operation, in his opinion, "historians the least prone to
superstition and credulity ascribe to divine Providence." But this
Providence worked by natural causes, specially prepared, among which he
enumerates: the long schism of the fourteenth century, the pontificates
of Alexander VI and Julius II, the immorality and wealth of the clergy
together with their immunities and oppressive taxes, the invention of
printing, the revival of learning, and, last but not least, the fact
that, in the writer's judgment, the doctrines of the papists were
repugnant to Scripture. With breadth, power of synthesis, and real
judiciousness, he traced the course of the Reformation. He blamed Luther
for his violence, but praised him--and here speaks the middle-class
advocate of law and order--for his firm stand against the peasants in
their revolt.

[Sidenote: Hume]

Inferior to Robertson in the use of sources as well as in the scope of
his treatment, Hume was his superior in having completely escaped the
spell of the supernatural. His analysis of the nature of ecclesiastical
establishments, with which he begins his account of the English
Reformation, is acute if bitter. He shows why it is that, in his view,
priests always find it their interest to practice on the credulity and
passions of the populace, and to mix error, superstition and delusion
even with the deposit of truth. It was therefore i