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BUTLER, Joseph. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, To the Constitution and Course of Nature. To which are added Two brief Dissertations: I. Of Personal Identity. II. Of the Nature of Virtue.
London: Printed for James, John and Paul Knapton, ..., 1736. First edition. 4to., full contemporary calf, raised bands, leather spine label, (12), i-x, 11-320pp. Outer front hinge cracked and holding by cords, rear hinge tender, some wear but still a very good copy. PMM 193.
‘Butler was deeply preoccupied with the prevalence of Deism, originating in Herbert of Cherbury, and he saw that this was a not unexpected outcome of the overthrow of traditional conceptions of the universe by Copernicus and the Cartesian preparation for the Newtonian concept of the rule of law [in Nature]. Although not explicit, it was to combat this trend that Butler wrote the Analogy; and it is sometimes considered that its importance died with the theory of Deism itself. The book is grudgingly admitted to be the one last memento of the controversy; but that is all. Its inclusion here indicates a contrary view. It is, indeed, one of the bulwarks of Christian apologetics and, although its effect is not always as intended, its persistent influence is undoubted. Hume, who sent Butler his Essays in 1741, ranked him with Locke and Berkeley as one of the originators in the experimental method in moral science. John Stuart Mill considered that the arguments adduced by Butler were the turning point in his father's translation to scepticism. Newman marked a very different era in his religious opinions by his study of this work. Gladstone listed as his 'four doctors' Butler, Aristotle, Dante and St. Augustine. Macaulay called him 'a man of real genius'. Butler's was an empirical approach, similar to Hume's, but he held that philosophic scepticism should not entail religious scepticism. Assuming, as the deists were prepared to, that God is the author of nature, there are no contradictions, obscurities or improbabilities in religious doctrine different in kind from those encountered in science. Thus the religious order and the scientific order are similar in nature, and both show the working of the Supreme Creator.' (Printing and the Mind of Man, 193).