¹ Thomas Ahnert, The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment 1690–1805 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014).

² James A Harris defends the common view of Hume's relation to the religion of his time in ‘Hume's Use of the Rhetoric of Calvinism’, Impressions of Hume ed. Marina Frasca-Spada and P. J. E. Kail (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). In his magisterial study Hume: an Intellectual Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), Harris modifies his view a little, but observes in a footnote that if Ahnert is right, a major revision is required.

³ Hume: an Intellectual Biography, 230.

⁴ Alvin Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief (Grand Rapids Michigan and Cambridge UK: Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015), 68.

⁵ Annette C Baier Death and Character: Further reflections on Hume, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008), 96.

⁶ David Hume, ‘Of Superstition and Enthusiasm’, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary (Oxford University Press, 1963), Essay, page 75

⁷ Andre Willis, Toward a Humean True Religion (University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 188–9

⁸ David Hume, Natural History of Religion, ed. J C A Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 1993),  (hereafter NHR), 135

⁹ NHR, 166

¹⁰ David Hume to Andrew Stuart of Torrance, reprinted in  Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain ed. Ruth Savage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 257

¹¹ NHR, 139

¹² Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 39

¹³ Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, (Oxford: Glasgow Edition, Oxford University Press, 1976), II/II V i.g.8 (hereafter WN)

¹⁴ David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 75 emphasis original.

¹⁵ NHR, 184

¹⁶ On this see Garrett, Don, ‘What's True about Hume's ‘True Religion’, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 10.2 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) Book II, Part III, sect.3

¹⁸ David Hume, The History of England in 6 Volumes (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983) Vol. 4, 119–20

¹⁹ Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Oxford: Glasgow Edition, Oxford University Press, 1976) III.5.4, hereafter TMS.

²⁰ WN II/II.V.i.g

²¹ TMS V.1

²² TMS III.V.2

²³ Heydt, Colin, ‘The Problem of Natural Religion in Smith's Moral Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas (forthcoming)Google Scholar

²⁴ TMS III.II.9, emphasis added

²⁵ TMS II.II.12

²⁶ WN V.i.g.38

²⁷ Ibid. V.i.g.41

²⁸ TMS VI.III.25

²⁹ TMS II.III.4

³⁰ TMS III.II.9

³¹ TMS II.V.13

³² ibid.

³³ Earlier versions of this paper were given as lectures at the International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan, and at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. I am grateful for the opportunity that these invitations gave me to think further about a concept – ‘true religion’ – that I employed in setting the context for my exploration of Wittgenstein and Natural Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).