David Hume - Mark G. Spencer

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succeeded in his Edinburgh chair early in 1737 by Patrick Cuming, the ecclesiastical manager for the Argathelian political faction led by the Earl of Ilay and his brother, the second Duke of Argyll, whom Ilay succeeded in 1743. This was not a post for which Cuming had any special training or obvious interest beyond a general curiosity about historical matters. He shared that with Lord Ilay, who appointed him. Cuming’s Latin lectures ran in a six-year cycle with one given publicly each week for four months.28 His text was J. A. Turretin’s Compendium Historiae Ecclesiasticae, written in the seventeenth century but many times revised and brought up to date for later periods. It was widely used in Scotland and in Holland, where Cuming is thought to have studied.

      Cuming’s course assumed the veracity and authority of the Bible and the truth of revealed religion. It saw the works of Moses as the oldest and best histories. The professor spent a good deal of time on evidences of the authenticity of the Mosaic revelations and of those given to prophets and to the inspired Hebrew historians. He refuted those who believed the world was eternal or that the Chinese records were older than those contained in the scriptures. He was carrying on a debate with seventeenth-century libertines such as Isaac de La Peyrère and English deists like Charles Blount, who knew of the views of Spinoza.

      Cuming sought to show that the Calvinist Presbyterian system was the one warranted by the Bible. Like his colleague who taught universal civil history and the Roman antiquities, Charles Mackie, Cuming began with the Creation and traced the uneven declines and progresses of mankind. History was the unfolding of God’s plan. The course of history was irregular and cyclical. It spiraled down after the fall of Adam and later as the revelations of God were forgotten and the meaning of the death of Christ was perverted by a corrupt church. With the “10th age” (roughly 1000 and beyond ) history became progressive; men tended now to be better even if not all are to be saved. Until c. 1300 history was primarily the story of human error, but thereafter the world seemed to be progressing toward truth and becoming more as God would have it. Progress seems to be the intention of God and the unintended results of human actions taken for various reasons usually unrelated to each other.

      While he called his subject “ecclesiastical history,” Cuming did not sharply differentiate secular from sacred history. He embedded ecclesiastical history in a universal history. He sketched the development of the arts and sciences that originated in Noah’s time. Tubal Cain was the Vulcan of the Hebrews. The professor also found a place for the Trojan War, which he thought occurred in the time of King Saul. David was thus a near contemporary of Homer—but earlier. The first great poets were Hebrews. Cuming carefully pointed out parallel developments in the Hebrew and gentile worlds and gave some of the chronologies of the pagan nations. By “the 10th age,” ecclesiastical and civil history mingled easily in his English summary of his lecture on it:

      We are now arrived at the 10th age which is generally acknowledged to be the most ignorant but it is from the history of those darker ages that some of the original of many superstitions which are defended in the Church of Rome And the Seeds of great revolutions which happened afterwards are to be traced. . . . The court of Rome was governed by Whores and some of their Sons were made Popes . . . the tenth centurie because of almost universal ignorance is called by the Church of Rome it Self Seculum obscurium Most of the Popes of Rome in this century were rather Monsters of wickedness than men; affairs of the Court of Rome were managed by the lewdest The most cruel and abandoned Women. Second marriages were declared to be unlawful without a dispensations by this means the Treasures of the Church of Rome were greatly increased. The Christian Religion was received by the Normans, Poland too became Christian as did Russia Denmark & Sweden But the Religion of those times was made to consist chiefly in Fasts and Festivals pilgrimages Worship of Images the Virgin Mary Angles and Saints in a Veneration relicts the bones and ashes of the Saints and Superstitious practices Bells were consecrated and baptized by Pope John 13 Nothing was more frequent in this age than determining differences whether civil or Ecclesiastical by the tryal Ordeal that is passing bars of Iron blindfold, if they passed with out wacking [blistering] them they were declared Innocent if wacked guilty and Such like Methods The Monastic Life was in High reputation And Several New orders were instituted.29

      But, with the “10th age,” events leading to the Reformation providentially appear, and history’s irregular downward spiral took an upturn.30 Whatever coherence Cuming’s course has was supplied by the faith that there is a providence that will bring history to a close as the light that began to shine in the Reformation continues to spread and to dispel darkness.

      All that was a somewhat amazing pastiche. Archaic elements jostle with ideas that came from more modern sources such as the works of Friedrich Spanheim, Jean Mabillon, John Clerk, Henry Dodwell Sr., Humphrey Prideaux, and other érudits. Cuming seemed as much concerned with the course of Western civilization as with strictly religious topics. His explanations were couched in terms of the actions of individuals motivated by their passions. In his classes, the story of the people of God has been somewhat displaced by the story of the errors of the men, not their sins. Pious people were noticed. National characteristics have a role to play, but particular providences, such as Wodrow or his friend Cotton Mather reveled in, were not much noticed. This was not a wholly modern course and was probably not revised after the lectures were first written in the late 1730s or early 1740s. They would have looked antique by the time Cuming retired in 1762. Nevertheless, the story was broader and more secular in tone than the lectures that survive from his brighter predecessor, William Dunlop.31

      Cuming had competition in the teaching of history at Edinburgh from Charles Mackiethe, professor of universal civil history and Roman antiquities who held this chair from 1719 until his retirement in the 1750s. Mackie was a polite man who had been a traveling tutor. He became a member of the Rankenian Club (c. 1720) and of a Whig club that hoped to re-edit George Buchanan’s History of Scotland (1582).32 Later, he was a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh (c. 1737). An intellectual interested in what was current among scholars, including historians, he wrote a report on the first appearance of syphilis in Scotland (1496) and an account of a house struck by lightning. Both were noticed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.33 His book purchases show us a man who read widely and wanted to own works such as Bayle’s Dictionaire Philosophique et Critique (1697). He drew on that and on Thomas Stanley’s History of Philosophy (1655–72) for some of the intellectual history he included in his courses.

      Mackie taught two courses.34 His universal history course (which might be called “Western Civilization”) ran over two years. The other was a yearly course on Rome designed to make the study of Roman law easier. The first began with Creation, but it turned into a mostly political history, which went up to the Reformation and included bits of Scottish history too. Mackie did not give undue attention to religion and often treated it as another aspect of society to be discussed in a secular fashion. He wanted his boys to know who the principal Fathers of the Church were and why they were famous, but he treated them much as he did their pagan rulers.

      Politics dominated the affairs of nations and helped to explain nonpolitical events. Mackie was also interested in politics at the international level and wanted his students to read parts of Thomas Rymer’s mostly posthumous Foedera (1704–35), a great collection of charters and treaties. Those tended to see churches as social factors among others. All churches in this world are, to some extent, merely political institutions reflecting the national character of the people who attend them.

      Mackie’s historical world was full of nations with distinctive national characters. After it appeared in the 1730s, he recommended Charles Rollin’s Ancient History to his students, who found there sketches of the characters of ancient peoples, which were used to explain their histories. Rollin’s work saw the character of peoples reflected in all their institutions. National character in Rollin’s works, or in Mackie’s lectures, did not change much over time, but their treatment of it was one that leads to Montesquieu and Hume. They would see manners and institutions interacting in social wholes of a dynamic sort. That message was implicit in much that he taught.

      The Franks described by Gregory of Tours, on whose works Mackie relied, could not possibly be a genteel people. They acted on passions they had not learned to control. Mackie

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