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By Hume's time, [[Aristotle]]'s (384 BC-322 BC) teleological account of causation had been rejected in favour of the '''corpuscular mechanistic''' view of causation. Derived from ancient atomism, it held that material bodies are made of invisibly small particles, called corpuscles. The only form of causation is mechanical, by direct physical contact of bodies or their constituent corpuscles. [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] Natural philosophers continued to accept Aristotle's distinction between scientific knowledge and belief. Scientific knowledge was taken to be knowledge of causes and consisted of '''demonstrations'''; proving the necessary connection between cause and effect. Locke supported this view of knowledge and made the popular notion of a hypothetical hidden corpuscular microstructure and the associated notion of a metaphysically necessary connection between cause and effect central to his system. He nonetheless viewed demonstrative knowledge as seldom attainable because of the unobservability of corpuscles. [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]][[CiteRef::Kochiras (2014)]]
Although many early eighteenth century thinkers regarded Newton's theories and Locke's empiricism to constitute a unified system, there was a distinct tension between them, which Hume recognized. Newton had been unable to explain his gravitational force in terms of a corpuscular mechanism. He saw his inductive method as an alternative to the demands of a corpuscularism that stood in the way of the acceptance of a mathematically lawful gravitational force on its own terms. Hume's Newton inspired skepticism of speculative metaphysical hypotheses led him to reject corpuscularism, and his enthusiastic championing of Newton's inductive method led him to challenge Locke's concept of causation, and Aristotle's taxonomy of knowledge and opinion in favour of a new epistemic taxonomy and new concept of causation. [[CiteRef::Hume (1975)]][[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)]]
By the time he started work on ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' at the age of 23, Hume had become skeptical of religious belief. [[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)]] The term '''atheism''' was coined by Sir John Cheke almost two hundred years earlier in 1540, to refer to a lack of belief in divine providence. The term assumed its modern meaning of disbelief in the existence of God, as divine non-existence emerged as a disquieting possibility in the seventeenth century. [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]] In early modern Christian Europe, theological knowledge was deemed to derive from two sources. '''Natural religion''' attempted to demonstrate God's existence and nature through reason, logic, and observation of the natural world. '''Revealed religion''' was based on the premise that the text of the Bible was divinely inspired and thus a source of reliable theological knowledge. [[CiteRef::Fieser (2016)]]
