Accusations of atheism were common, but most of the people suspected of their peers by atheism were not actually atheist. D'Holbach and Denis Diderot seem to be two of the very small number of publicly-identified atheists in Europe during this period. Thomas Hobbes was widely viewed as an atheist for his materialist interpretation of scripture—Henry Hammond, a former friend, described him in a letter as a "Christian Atheist." David Hume was accused of atheism for his writings on the "natural history of religion"; Pierre Bayle was accused of atheism for defending the possibility of an ethical atheist society in his Critical Dictionary; and Baruch Spinoza was frequently regarded as an atheist for his "pantheism." However, all three of these figures defended themselves against such accusation