A/LREADY the old orthodoxy was being troubled.Mr.
David Dudgeon published, in 1732, a work entitled "The Moral World." We have no record of the early history of this man, and we do not know whether he received a college education.
When he comes under our notice, he is tenant of a large farm called Lennel Hill, in the parish of Coldstream.In the work referred to he maintains, with clearness and ability, a doctrine like that of Anthony Collins, whom he had read.He asserts " that there is no evil in the moral world but what necessarily ariseth from the nature of imperfect creatures, who always pursue their good, but cannot but be liable to error or mistake," and that evil or sin is inseparable in some degree from all created beings, and most consistent with the designs of a perfect Creator." On account of the errors in this work, he was summoned before the Presbytery, where two charges are brought against him: 1st, That he denies and destroys all distinction and difference between moral good and evil, or else makes God the author of evil, and refers all evil to the imperfection of creatures; 2d, That he denies the punishment of another life, or that God punishes men for sin in this life, -- yea, that man is accountable.He appears before the court, and holds it to be contrary to Scripture that man has free-will in the Arminian sense, but holds that man is accountable and punishable for practising contrary to the divine precepts of our Saviour, the practice of which tends to make all men happy.The case goes up from presbytery to synod, and from synod to General Assembly, which remits it to the Commission of Assembly in 1733, again in 1734, again in 1735, and again in 1736, with no evidence that the commission ever ventured {112} to take it up. In 1734, he published a vindication of the "Moral World," in reply to a pamphlet against him, said to be written by Andrew Baxter; and therein he maintains that when a rogue is hanged he is set free to enter a state where he may be reformed.His most important work is " Philosophical Letters concerning the Being and Attributes of God," first printed in 1737.These letters were written, in the midst of pressing agricultural cares.to the Rev.Mr.Jackson, author of a work written in the spirit of Clarke, " The Existence and Unity of God." In these letters, Dudgeon reaches a species of refined Spinozism, mingled with Berkeleyanism.He denies the distinction of substances into spiritual and material, maintains that there is no substance distinct from God, and that "all our knowledge but of God is about ideas they exist only in the mind, and their essence and modes consist only in their being perceived." In 1739, he published a " Catechism founded upon Experience and Reason, collected by a Father for the use of his Children " and, in an introductory letter, lie wishes that natural religion alone was embraced by all men, and states that, though he believes there was an extraordinary man sent into our world seventeen hundred years ago to instruct mankind, yet he doubts whether he " ever commanded any of those things to be written concerning him which we have." The same year, he published " A View of the Necessitarian or Best Scheme, freed from the Objections of M.Crousaz, in his Examination of Pope's `Essay on Man.'"Dudgeon died at Upsettlington, on the borders of England, January, 1743, at the age of thirty-seven.His works were published in a combined form in 1765, in a volume without a printer's name attached, showing, that there was not as yet thorough freedom of thought in Scotland.His writings had for a time a name in the district (the "Catechism " reached a third edition), but afterwards passed away completely from public notice.The late Principal Lee was most anxious to know more of his history, and in particular whether he could have influenced David Hume in personal intercourse or by his writings.As they lived in the same district, Hume must have heard of the case, which appeared when Hume was cogitating his own system.There are points in which Dudgeon anticipated Hume.Thus, Dudgeon maintains that all knowledge is about ideas, the essence of which is that they are perceived.He says that the words "just, unjust, desert &c., are necessarily relative to society; " and that if we allow that there is not justice in the government of this world, we cannot argue that there is justice in the world to come.Dudgeon, too, is a stern necessarian.But in all these points Dudgeon had himself been anticipated by others.In other respects the two widely differ.Dudgeon assumes throughout a much higher moral tone than Hume ever did.Dudgeon had evidently abandoned a belief in Christianity, but he stood up resolutely for a rational demonstration of the existence of God as the cause of the ideas which come under our experience; and he has a whole system of natural religion: whereas Hume undermines all religion, natural as well as revealed.{113} Dudgeon had superior philosophic abilities; and in other circumstances might have had a chance of becoming the head of a new philosophic Heresy.But there was a young man in his own neighborhood being trained to supersede and eclipse him in his own line, and to go beyond deism to atheism.It is thus that error advances till it corrects itself.