seventeenth centuries was not deterministic and did not exclude all divine causes; the tendencies that led to an emphasis on pure mechanism “were as much political and theological as philosophical,”[74] reflecting especially the polemic between Protestant and Catholic theologians with their respective political constituencies.[75] Empiricism itself is neutral regarding God’s existence and activity, and had been used by those who supported traditional belief in miracles as well as by those who opposed it. It is thus not the basic empirical approach per se but Hume’s a priori exclusion of God as
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