in spite

February, 1766

Boswell - (Hume) said "no honest man could be a Deist, for no man could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity"

Dr. Johnson - No Sir; Hume owned to a clergyman in the bishoprick of Durham that he had never read the New Testament with attention.

Tuesday, 16th September 1977

(Boswell) - I mentioned to Dr Johnson that David Hume´s persisting in his infidelity, when he was dying, shocked me most.

Dr. Johnson - Why should it shock you, Sir? Hume owned that he had never read the New Testament with attention. Here then was a man who had been at no pain to inquire into the truth of religion, and had continually turned his mind the other way (...)

(Boswell) - I said, I had reason to believe that the thought of annihilation gave Hume no pain.

Dr. Johnson - It was not so, Sir. He had a vanity in being thought easy. It is more probable that he should assume an appearance of ease, than that so an improbable a thing should be, as a man not afraid of going (as, in spite of his delusive theory, he cannot be sure but he may go) into the unknown state, and not being uneasy at leaving all he knew. And you are to consider, that upon his own principle of annihilation, he had no motive to speak the truth.

(James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791; Boswell visitou Hume pouco antes da sua morte em 1776)