This was the first real religious–political movement in England, and British conservatism emerged partly in opposition to it. The eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume, considered the leading light of the Scottish Enlightenment, was in particular critical of religious ‘enthusiasm’, as this form of Puritan politics was termed. As historian Jerry Z. Muller put it: ‘Conservatism arose in good part out of the need to defend existing institutions from the threat posed by “enthusiasm”, that is, religious inspiration which seeks to overturn the social order. The critique of religious enthusiasm,
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