Remember Pascal's "DIEU d'Abraham, DIEU d'Isaac, DIEU de Jacob, non des philosophes et des savants." Hume said No to the former, Yes, Probably to a minimal version of the latter (though minimal is a relative term, and here means something awfully big.) The "religionists" of the quote from the History are those who, like Pascal, affirm revelation, though unlike Pascal they need not reject a natural theology. If Hume suspected their sincerity, don't we commonly suspect the holders of convictions we find unintelligible or plainly false of insincerity or bad faith? So Bacon finds "atheism ... rather in the lip than in the heart of man": "The Scripture [Psalm 14:1 ] saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so as he rather saith it by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it..." ("On Atheism", Essays). You just can't believe that, Bacon thinks, because I can't -- but you do. Is it more than one step up from telling your interlocutor what he says, to tell him what he must be or can't be thinking, regardless of what he says? Perhaps Hume is trying to give "religionists" the benefit of the doubt: deep down, they would have to acknowledge agreement with me, if only they would leave off fooling themselves. But if we disagree, we will do better to presume we are participating in yet another honest difference, no less honest even should it be intractable. I will take you at your word that you are an atheist, Hume at his that he believed religious conviction was often more affected than real -- or should we think those beliefs affected, out of self-delusion?

Fair comments. But I do sense, as much as one can sense across two and a half centuries, that this was a difficult subject for David H. And I don't think it is unwarranted to read the passage I quote, and it goes on for a while, as possibly refering to a struggle he had, or chose not to have, with himself. Yes, it is good to take people at their word. But Hume wrote his great works on religion at a time when no one in Europe had ever avowed atheism in print. One watched one's words, even one's thoughts, with a care very different from that you or I might apply on such subjects.