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In Part X of the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Philo, the skeptic, joins forces with Demea, the defender of orthodox Christianity, to paint a harrowing picture of the wickedness and misery of human life. In this article I show that Hume’s source for many of the arguments of this section is a three-cornered debate between Bayle, Leibniz, and William King concerning the predominance of natural evil in human life. Moreover, I argue that Philo purposefully and maliciously exaggerates the misery of life to underscore the similarity between the orthodox Christian position and that of religious skeptics such as Bayle.