The analogy of religion, natural & revealed

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Introduction

BY THE REV. RONALD BAYNE

Joseph Butler, according to Cardinal Newman "the ^ greatest name in the Anglican Church " and the author of y^ the most famous volume of English theology, was the eighth and youngest son of a prosperous Presbyterian linen-draper of Wantage, in Berkshire. Thomas Butler, the father, had retired from business and was living in the outskirts of Wantage at a house known as the Priory or the Chantrey, when Joseph was bom on i8 May, 1692. The lad began his education at the "Latin" School of Wantage, then under a master who was a clergyman of the Church of England, the Rev. Philip Barton ; but it was his father's wish to train Joseph for the Presbyterian ministry, and therefore he was taken from the Wantage Grammar School at about the age of nineteen and sent to the Nonconformist academy established by Samuel Jones, originally at Gloucester, but in 1 7 12 removed to Tewkesbury. Samuel Jones was a teacher of remarkable originality and character. He was the son of a Welsh minister, who emigrated to America ; but he was sent to England for his education, and afterwards to Leyden University. He took into his academy sixteen pupils for a five years* course of study. Among Butler's fellow-students were Thomas Seeker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury ; the distinguished Nonconformist divines, Samuel Chandler, Daniel Scott, and Jeremiah Jones, and John Bowes, who became Lord Chancellor of Ireland. There is extant a letter^ written in November, 171 1, by Seeker to Dr. Isaac Watts, which gives an account of the studies of the second year of the five years* course. The sixteen students rose at fiyt o'clock ; they spoke Latin, "except when below-stairs amongst the family" ; every day they turned.

1 Printed in Thomas Milner's " Life of Isnac Wfttta," \\, 9-^,

194723

^J viii Introduction

two verses of the Hebrew Bible into Greek ; twice a week they read Isocrates ^nd Terence, with notes of the Leyden Professor, Perizonius, under whom Jones had studied. In logic they used the manual of another Leyden Professor, Adrian Heereboord, but. Seeker says that Jones was " no great admirer of the old logic," and made his pupils go over "the far greater part" of Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding." In the afternoon, after a lecture on the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, "we read a chapter in the Greelc Testament, and aftfer that Mathematics." Seeker's admiration for his master is emphatic. He has " real piety, great learning, and an agreeable temper " ; "he is very strict in keeping good orders, and will effectually preserve his pupils from negligence and immorality." His library, "composed for the most part of foreign books," is of great advantage to the students.

It was at Tewkesbury, in November, 17 13, being twenty-one years old, that Butler gave the first indication of his special aptitude for philosophical speculation. After Locke's death in 1704, Samuel Clarke, of Norwich, was regarded for a quarter of a century as the ablest English philosopher. His reputation rested on his "Boyle Lectures," delivered in 1704 and 1705. Butler studied these lectures, and in the " Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God " found certain difficulties. He wished to consult Clarke on two points especially, and therefore addressed to him, in November, 1713, an anonymous letter which he signed "A Gentleman in Gloucestershire," and got Seeker to post for him in the town of Gloucester. The opening sentences of the letter are strangely prophetic of the writer's future achievements. " I have made it, sir, my business, ever since I thought myself capable of such sort of reasoning, to prove to myself the being and attributes of God . . . not only more fully to satisfy my own mind, but also in order to defend the great truths of natural religion, and those of the Christian revelation which follow from them, against all opposers ; but must own with concern, that hitherto I have been unsuccessful ; and thouffh I have got very probable arguments^ yet I can go but a very little

Introduction ix

way into demonstration in the proof of those things." Clarke answered the letter at once, -and by April, 1714, five letters had been written by Butler, which, with their answers, were all printed by Clarke in the fourth edition of the " Boyle Lectures" in 1 7 16. The final sentence of Butler's fourth letter throws a sudden search-light on the mind and aspirations of the yoimg man of twenty-one : " for, as / design the search after truth as the business of my life^ I shall not be ashamed to learn from any person ; though, at the same time, I cannot but be sensible, that instruction from some men is like the gift of a prince — it reflects an honour on the person on whom it lays an obligation."

It was after the writing of these letters that Butler began to feel that he could not enter the Presbyterian ministry. There is a letter in the British Museum, written by Butler to Dr. Clarke, from London, apparently in 17 14, three weeks after leaving the academy of Samuel Jones, in which he reveals his distress of mind. He speaks of the " melancholy thoughts I had upon my being obliged to quit those studies that had a direct tendency to divinity, that being what I should choose for the business of my life, it being, I think, of all other studies, the most suitable to a reasonable nature. I say my being obliged, for there is very little encouragement (whether one regards interest or usefulness) nowadays for any to enter that profession, who has not got a way of commanding his assent to received opinions without examination." Butler's father attempted to remove his son's scruples by arranging interviews with Presbyterian ministers of repute, but no impression was made, and finally the father gave way and allowed his son in March, 17 14- 15, to enter at Oriel College, Oxford, perhaps without any definite plan as to his future.

At Oriel, Butler did not find the routine of the Oxford schools stimulating or useful. He writes in September, 1 7 1 7, to Dr. Clarke at Cambridge, proposing to migrate to that University and take there a degree in laws, as his father has consented to the plan. Of Oxford he says, " We are obliged to mis-spend so much time here in attending fiivolous lectures and unintelligible disputations, that I am quite tired out with k

X Introduction

such a disagreeable way of trifling." He goes on to discuss with Clarke, " a difficulty in relation to Freedom, which very much perplexes me." He has been reading Clarke's "Letters to Leibnitz." " Upon reading what you last published . • . I see great reason to be satisfied that Freedom and Action are identical ideas, and that -man is, properly speaking, an Agent or a Free Being." But because he believes in oiu: power to act or not to act in any given case, he cannot see that it follows that he believes in oiu: power to act virtuously. He wishes for more light on the connection between Freedom and Moral Government. He ends by saying that he is " conscious of somewhat in myself, and discern the same in others, which seems directly to contradict the foregoing objections, but I am not able at present to see where the weakness of them lies." His next words explain his discontent with Oxford : " and our people here never had any doubt in their lives concerning a received opinion ; so that I cannot mention a difficulty to them." Butler wrote three letters in September and October, 171 7, to Clarke, from Oriel, on this subject Clarke answered the first two and kept the correspondence, endorsing it, " These to be added to * Leibnitz's Letters,' next edition."

Finding that the terms already kept at Oxford could not be counted towards a Cambridge degree, Butler gave up the idea of migrating. He had besides made valuable friends at Oxford. Of these the chief was Edward Talbot, Fellow of Oriel, whose father was bishop successively of Oxford, Salisbury, and Durham. In 17 17 Talbot was made vicar of East Hendred, near Wantage, and it appears from the parish registers that Butler gave him assistance in his work. In October, 17 18, Butler took his B.A. degree, and before the end of the month was ordained deacon by Bishop Talbot in the Palace Chapel at Salisbury. The same Bishop in December ordained him priest in the chiurch of St James, Westminster, of which Dr. Clarke was rector. By Clarke's and Talbot's influence he was appointed Preacher at the Rolls Chapel in the following July, and held the post for eight years. Meanwhile, Thomas Seeker had declined, like Butler, to enter the ministry for which he was bred, and had

IMI

Introduction xi

turned to the study of medicine. He was in Paris in 17 18-19 attending medical lectures and corresponding with Butier, when he made the acquaintance of the saintly Martin Benson, a friend of Edward Talbot's, who was returning with Berkeley from Italy. Seeker, under the combined influence of Butler and Benson, decided to seek ordination in the English Church. He came to England in the summer of 1720, and was with Edward Talbot at Oxford. In December the centre of this group of friends, Talbot, died of smallpox, but the unexpected blow made his father especially attentive to his son's last wishes that Benson, Butler, and Seeker should be cared for by the Bishop. Benson's sister was staying in Edward Talbot's house at the time of his death, and formed so strong a friendship with his widow, that when Miss Benson married Seeker in 1725, Mrs. Talbot and her posthumous daughter Catherine took up their abode in Seeker's household,and Seeker himself supervised Catherine's education. Catherine Talbot and her friend, Mrs. Carter, the translator of Epictetus, were lifelong friends of Butler. To the group of men bound together by their friendship with Edward Talbot must be added Thomas Rundle, afterwards Bishop of Derry. These men in the first half of the eighteenth century were the salt of the English Church. They set a standard of personal holiness and intellectual energy sorely needed in their day. Their advancement is to be ascribed not only to the friendship of Bishop Talbot and his eldest son Charles, who became Lord Chancellor in 1 733» but also to the high character and exceptional mental gifts of Queen Caroline, the wife of George II. In 1720 Butler was made a prebendary of Salisbury, and in 1722 rector of Houghton-le-Skerne, near Darlington. These preferments he owed to Bishop Talbot, but he was still in 1725 in receipt of money help from an elder brother and was not in comfortable circumstances until Seeker in 1725 persuaded Bishop Talbot to give him the living of Stanhope on the Wear in West Durham, known in the diocese as the "golden rectory." Here he published in 1726, Fifteen Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel^ a book as important and almost as famous as the Analogy, The book made no stir, xii Introduction

but a second edition was published in 1729, witn a preface in which the author states that the choice of the sermons has been " in great measure accidental/' Seeker is said to have revised the language of this preface, which aimed at making the general drift and object of the sermons more easily followed and appreciated. Butler remained at Stanhope seven years, and very little is recorded of his life there, except "a tradition of his riding a black pony, and riding always very fast,'* perhaps to escape beggars, whose importunities, we are told, he could not resist. But we may fairly assume that the Analogy was planned and mainly composed at Stanhope.

Charles Talbot became Chancellor in 1733 and appointed Butler as his chaplain, with the understanding that he was to reside half the year in his benefice. This brought Butler into court circles. Bishop Talbot gave him a prebendal stall at Rochester, and Queen Caroline made him clerk of the closet in 1736, and requested his attendance at those conversations upon philosophical and theological subjects, which she loved to arrange between distinguished divines and philosophers, from the hour of seven until nine in the evening. But Butler was not a brilliant conversationalist. He complains in the Analogy of the advantage people have who attack Christianity, "especially in conversation.'' It has even been suggested that the Analogy owes its composition to the author's dissatisfaction with himself as a defender of Christianity in the conversational tournaments then so popular. It is clear that all the irrelevant graces of wit and eloquence which make conversation delightful would appear to Butler treason to truth. He had a habit of walking up and down in his garden for hours " in the darkest night which the time of the year could afford." That habit was characteristic. He was a lonely thinker, who isolated himself as far as possible from every distraction when he desired to concentrate his mind upon the riddle of the universe. But the Analogy was published in 1736. It must therefore have been composed for the most part in the quiet and retirement of Stanhope, and the flippancies of polite conversation can have had very

Introduction xiii

little to do with it. Both the Fifteen Sermons and the Analogy came from deep down in Butler^s own mind and are to be defined fundamentally and primarily as realized portions of that " search for truth " which from the first the author had felt to be " the business of my life."

Butler's third work, Six Sermons preached upon Public Occasions^ is in a different class. It throws light upon his interests and activities as a bishop and his opinions as a Churchman. The sermons date from 1739 to ^748* Queen Caroline died in 1737. She is said to have recommended Butler for promotion " particularly and by name." A month later he preached before the King a sermon by which his Majesty was much affected. In 1738 he was made Bishop of Bristol. In accepting the see Butler remarks with great frankness that it is " not very suitable either to the condition of my fortune or the circumstances of my preferment." The Bristol bishopric was the poorest in England, with a stipend of less than ;£5oo, and in view of Diis fact Butler was allowed to remain prebend of Rochester and rector of Stanhope until 1740, when he was appointed dean of St. Paul's, and enabled to resign the other preferments. At Bristol he spent most of his stipend in restoring the Palace and its Chapel. The Bristol merchants helped him with a large present of cedar. Above the altar of his chapel he placed a slab of black marble with a cross inlaid in white, an ornament in the opinion of Bishop Fitzgerald " not very prudently selected.^ In all his cures he showed a great fondness for building operations, forestalling in some degree the nineteenth-century feeling for the beautiful in architecture. His house at Hampstead, built by Sir Harry Vane, is described by Miss Talbot as " a most enchanting, gay, pretty, elegant " residence, and was adorned by windows of painted glass of Butler's own choosing. The Protestants of the neighbourhood said they were a present from the Pope. Bishop Seeker and his wife, Bishop Benson, Mrs. Talbot and Miss Talbot formed the nucleus of the circle which was gathered together under the Hampstead roof. Miss Talbot, writing during Butler's last illness, remarks : " We all live in suspense ; and there is not a room in the house that does not peculiarly remind us xiv Introduction

of him who was so lately its possessor and who has so often, so cheerfully, and hospitably received us in it."

Butler's mind on the Roman Church is clearly declared in his "Accession Day" discourse, delivered before the House of Lords about a year after the battle of Culloden. Liberty is declared to be "the very genius of our civil constitution, extending its influence to the ecclesiastical part of it"; and therefore the Church of England is not only valuable for itself, but also for " what it is a security from ; I mean that great corruption of Christianity, popery, which is ever hard at work to bring us again under its yoke." The paragraph that follows is a sober but severe criticism of the Church of Rome. The Six Sermons have the same qualities of accurate and concentrated thought which distinguish the other works of the preacher, but they show us also that his heart and conscience were strenuously supporting certain special fields of practical Christian endeavour. And both in the things he cares for and his ways of caring for them he is in advance of his time, not only because his abilities are exceptional, but because his nature is exceptional. It is the spiritual power and reality in Butler that give his writings their appeal. It is a shallow judgment which finds in them only candour and common sense. It is likewise a shallow judgment which complains of his "gloom." His "gloom" is his sense of the mystery of life. He stares into life as we stare into the dark of midnight, not frightened nor appalled, but fascinated and God-encompassed. The anecdote told by his domestic chaplain at Bristol, Dr. Tucker, reveals the man very vividly. "His custom was, when at Bristol, to walk for hours in his garden in the darkest night which the time of the year could afford, and I had frequently the honour to attend him. After walking some time he would stop suddenly and ask the question, *What security is there against the insanity of individuals ? The physicians know of none ; and as to divines, we have no data, either from Scripture or from reason, to go upon relative to this affair.' ... He would then take another turn, and then

Introduction xv

stop short : ' Why might not whole communities and public bodies be seized with fits of insanity, as well as individuals 1 Nothing but this principle, that they are liable to insanity, can account for the major part of those transactions of which we read in history.'"^

In 1750 Butier was offered the See of Durham. Some delay was caused in his appointment by his refusal to accept the post on conditions. He distrusted his own worth and capacity. " It would be a melancholy thing in the close of life to have no reflections to entertain one*s self with, but that one had spent the revenues of the Bishopric of Durham in a sumptuous course of living, and enriched one's friends with the promotions of it, instead of having really set one's self to do good and promote worthy men ; yet this right use of fortune and power is more difficult than the generality of even good people think, and requires both a guard upon one's self and a strength of mind to withstand solicitations greater (I wish I may not find it) than I am master of.** But of Buder's mind and temper at the end of his life a most impressive record has come down to us in the famous Charge delivered to the Durham clergy at the Bishop's primary visitation in 175 1. It begins by deploring the "general decay of religion in this nation." The attitude which the clergy should maintain against the popular and voluble scepticism of the day is carefully considered, and then the necessity of a more earnest and careful use of external forms in religion is insisted upon: "the form of religion may indeed be where there is little of the thing itself; but the thing itself cannot be preserved amongst mankind without the form." The Charge insists regarding external forms that "these things are neglected to a degree which is and cannot but be attended with a decay of all that is good." One paragraph points out that in the' heathen world, among Mahometans, and in Roman Catholic countries, reUgion through outward forms and ceremonies " mixes itself with business, civil forms, diversions, domestic entertainments, and every part of common life." The Bishop therefore asks for more use of the services

xvi Introduction

of the Prayer Book, for the practice of family prayers and private prayers, and for more careful preparation for confirmation. The Charge was taken by fanatical persons as popish in its leanings. An anonymous writer a few years after Butler's death asserted that he died in the communion of the Roman Church. Archbishop Seeker demanded some proof of this. The writer answered alleging the cross in the chapel at Bristol and that ''his last episcopal charge has squinted very much towards that superstition.** Another writer stated that Butler had " a great fondness for the lives of Romish saints and their books of mystic piety." These attacks had the good effect of drawing from Seeker an interesting account of his friend's character, but they deserved no serious consideration. The important point about the Charge is that it is delivered by the author of the Analogy^ who was not in the least inclined to exaggerate the importance of external forms, but might have been expected unduly to magnify the mind and exalt the inward spiritual side of religion.

Soon after removing to Durham Butler's constitution began to break up. We have from historians of Durham some recollections of his appearance.^ Surtees says that " he conciliated all hearts ; in advanced years and on the episcopal throne he retained the same genuine modesty, and natural sweetness of disposition, which had distinguished him in youth and in retirement. During the ministerial performance of the sacred office, a divine animation seemed to pervade his whole manner, and lighted up his pale, wan countenance, already marked with the progress of disease, like a torch glimmering in its socket, yet bright and useful to the last." And Hutchinson says the same : '* He was of a most reverend aspect ; his face thin and pale ; but there was a divine placidness in his countenance which inspired veneration, and expressed the most benevolent mind. His white hair hung gracefully on his shoulders and his whole figure was patriarchal."

When the Bishop's condition became alarming he was re-

1 Surtees, History of Durham^ p. laa; and Hutchintoo't History tf Durham^ i. 578.

Introduction xvii

moved to Bath where his friend, Martin Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, attended him till the end. We have several letters written by Benson and by Nathaniel Forster, Butler's chaplain, to Seeker, then Bishop of Oxford, to keep him acquainted with the condition of the patient. He died on June i6 at the age of sixty, and was buried in Bristol Cathedral. Dr. Forster describes the funeral. "The hearse was followed only by two coaches-and-six, the servants in livery going before it on horseback. The pall was supported by the Chancellor, Dr. Waterland, and four others of the senior clergy, who were most known to his Lordship, and followed by myself and the rest of the family, in the same order in which we usually attended his Lordship to the cathedral at Durham." His will left legacies of friendship and respect to Mrs. Talbot and to Catherine Talbot, her daughter, as well as to Seeker, and ordered "all my sermons, letters and papers, whatever," to be "burnt without being read by any one as soon as may be after my decease." In 1834 a monument was erected in the cathedral by subscription, for which a notable inscription was written by Southey. After recording the name it proceeds : —

"Others had established the historical and prophetical grounds of the Christian religion, and that sure testimony of its truth which is found in its perfect adaptation to the heart of man. It was reserved for him to develope its analogy to the constitution and course of nature ; and laying his strong foundations in the depth of that great argument, there to construct another and irrefragable proof: thus rendering philosophy subservient to faith ; and finding in outward and visible things the type and evidence of those within the veil."

It remains now to explain very briefly the general philosophical method of the Analogy and its connection with the controversies of its time.

We have seen that Butler at the age of twenty-one was studying the Boyle Lectures of Samuel Clarke. Those lectures claimed to be a demonstrative proof of the being and attributes of God, and to establish the moral law by reasonings as irresistible as a proposition in Euclid. Clarke's

A 2 xviii Introduction

philosophy was influenced very largely by the mathematical and physical reasonings of Descartes and Newton. He aimed at using the same method in philosophical and ethical inquiry. His reasoning is therefore on the whole a priori. He deduces from fundamental axioms an elaborate system of metaphysical truth. From this method Butler instinctively recoiled. He did not question the value of Clarke's work, but his own work was different. In the Fifteen Sermons and the Analogy Butler aims at interpreting experience. He collects and arranges facts — in the Fifteen Sermons the facts of the moral experience of the individual man ; in the Analogy y the facts of the experience of society — of life in the widest sense. Butler's method is therefore inductive ; as Dr. Chalmers expresses it : '' Butler is in theology what Bacon was in science ; the reigning principle of the latter is, that it is not for man to theorise on the works of God ; and of the former, that it is not for man to theorise on the ways of God. Both deferred alike to the certainty of experience as being paramount to all the plausibilities of hypothesis."

But the Analogy is written with a direct reference to the voluminous deistical controversies of the beginning of the eighteenth century. After the enthusiasms and excitements of the civil wars an age of reason succeeded — a reason that tended to be severely logical. It was a rationalism that found it easy to dispense with imagination and emotion because the spiritual vitality of the time was low. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity^ published in 1695, may be taken as a starting-point for the whole of Deism. The next step may be represented by Toland's Christianity not Mysterious. Toland called himself a follower of Locke, though Locke refused to acknowledge him. Toland's position is further developed by Tindal in Christianity as old as Creation. The very titles of these books explain the course of the controversy. The deist ignored all that was deepest and most characteristic in Christianity. He left out that part of it which was not as old as creation. He fell back upon a natural religion which he considered plain and reasonable. He accepted a Creator and Governor of the

Introduction xix

universe Whose wisdom and power he did not deny. This moral Governor all men by their natural reason can know and obey ; and there is no necessity for revelation at all. Butler's answer is directed especially to the deist who accepts God as a moral Governor, and declares that no mysteries are left in life. The Analogy urges that the deist accepts his moral Governor in the face of the same difficulties and mysteries which make him reject revelation. The deist has not got rid of the mysteries of life by denying revelation. If he will only look at life fairly, he will find that natural and revealed religion are of a piece in their mysteriousness. Man's unaided intellect does not find the world as reasonable as a proposition of Euclid.

It has been said that Butler raises more doubts than he solves. But he wrote against men who had no use for revelation because they saw nothing to doubt about in the universe. Butler's whole treatise implies that religious conviction cannot be made to depend only upon demonstrative proof. There is no effort of faith in accepting the right answer to a sum.

"You must mix some uncertainty With faith if you would have faith be."

JOSEPH BUTLER, 1692-1752.

Fifteen Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel, 1726.

The Analogy of Religion^ Natural and Revealed^ to the Constitution and Course of Nature (with dissertations : " Of Personal Identity," " Of the Nature of Virtue"). 1736.

Six Sermons preached upon public occasions. Published separately, 1739, i74o, 1741, i745> i747, 1748.

A Charge delivered to the Clergy at the Visitation of Durham, 1871.

Collected Edition (with Life and Notes), 1804 ; reprinted 1807 ; Ufe^ by Thomas Bartlett. 1839.

Some Remains hitherto unpublished of Bishop Butler, 1853. Edited by Bishop Steere.

ANALYSIS

The Introduction distinguishes probable evidence from demonstration. It claims that we continually use in life and practice a method of analogy which argues from a known series of facts to a like {verisimile) series less known. The treatise that follows will attempt to prove that the doctrines of religion have such a likeness to the ordinary course of experience that the same Author is probably responsible for both. This will at least be shown to be possible. The argument assumes as its known series of facts a world made and governed by God.

Chapter I. The first chapter of the Analogy— ** Oi a Future Life** — states the argument for immortality without reference to the teachings of revelation or to those deductions from essential religious principles by which it is generally maintained. The chapter therefore disappoints most readers, who are unaware how very largely their faith in immortality depends upon considerations which Butler's method compels him to ignore. It is disconcerting to find rather the possibility than the probability of immortality proved by the inductive method which reasons from the facts of experience. The chapter is not therefore conclusive-or exhaustive. It is characteristic because it so conscientiously refrains from a priori proof. But the case for immortality cannot be fully and fairly put without a priori arguments, nor by the Christian without appeal to the revelation through Christ. Butler, then, insists only that the movement in nature from matter to mind forces us to conceive a further movement ; nature's effect upon the mind of man is to persuade him of the probability of a future life. The Dissertation on Personal Identity belongs to the chapter.