Talbot to the living of Houghton. and in 1725 his kind patron presented him to the wealthy rectory of Stanhope. In the following year he resigned his preachership at the
Bolls, and published the first edition of the Sermons.For nearly eight years he remained in perfect seclusion at Stanhope, and our information as to his general mode of life is exceedingly scanty. He was only remembered in the neighbourhood as a man much loved and respected, who used to ride a black pony very fast, and whose known benevolence was much practised upon by beggars. In 1733 he was made chaplain to Lord Chancellor Talbot, and in 1736 prebendary of Eochester. In the same year he was appointed clerk of the closet to Queen Caroline, and began to take part in the brilliant metaphysical society which she loved to gather round her. He met Berkeley frequently, but in his writings does not refer to him.
In 1736 appeared the Analogy, which at once took its place as the corapletest answer to the general deistical rsasoners of the times, and as the best defence of revealed religion.
In 1736 Queen Caroline died ; on her deathbed she recommended Butler to the favour of her husband. George, however, had not his consort s partiality for metaphysics, and seemed to think his obligation sufficiently discharged by appointing Butler in 1738 to the bishopric of Bristol, the poorest see in the kingdom, The severe but dignified letter in which Butler signified his acceptance of the prefer ment, must have shown him that the slight was felt and resented. Two years later the bishop was presented to the rich deanery of St Paul s, and in 1746 was made clerk of the closet to the king. In 1747 it is said the primacy was offered to Butler, who declined to accept it, saying that " it was too late for him to try to support a falling church." The story has not the best authority, and though the desponding tone of some of Butler s writings may give it colour, it is not in harmony with the rest of his life ; for in 1750 he accepted the see of Durham, vacant by the death of Dr Edward Chandler. His charge to the clergy of the diocese, the only charge of his known to us, is a weighty and valuable address on the importance of external forms in religion. It gave rise to a most absurd rumour that the bishop had too great a leaning towards Romanism.
Of his life at Durham few incidents are known. He was very charitable, and expended large sums in building and decorating his church and residence. His private expenses were exceedingly small. He did not long survive his promotion. Shortly after the change to Durham his constitution began to break up, and he died on the 16th June 1752, at Bath, whither he had removed for his health. He was buried in the cathedral of Bristol, and over his grave a monument was erected in 1834, with an epitaph by Southey. According to his express orders, all his MSS. were burned after his death.
Butler was never married. His personal appearance has been sketched in a few lines by Hutchinson : " He was of a most reverend aspect ; his face thin and pale ; but there was a divine placidness which inspired veneration, and expressed the most benevolent mind. His white hair hung gracefully on his shoulders, and his whole figure was patriarchal."
Underneath the meagre facts of his life, eked out by the few letters left by him or anecdotes told about him, there can be traced the outlines of a great but somewhat severe spirit. He was an earnest and deep-thinking Christian, melancholy by temperament, and grieved by what seemed to him the hopelessly irreligious condition of his age. His intellect was profound and comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of meta physics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the practical and moral. Man s conduct in life, not his theory of the universe, was what interested him. His style has frequently been blamed for its obscurity and difficulty. These qualities, however, belong not so much to the form as to the matter of his works. The arguments are invariably compressed, and can never be taken individually. All are parts of one organic whole. Constant attention is thus required in order to grasp the relations of each isolated piece of reasoning. Above all, however, the special obscurity of the Analogy results from the difficulty of keeping constantly in mind the exact issue involved. Butler himself resolutely restricts his argument within the narrow limits prescribed for it, but it is difficult for any ordinary reader to keep this constantly in mind.
His great work, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Course and Constitution of Nature, cannot be adequately appreciated unless taken in connection with the circumstances of the period at which it appeared. It was intended as a defence against the great tide of deistical speculation, which in the apprehension of good men seemed likely to sweep away the restraints of religion, and make way for a general reign of licencs. Deism, as a fact in English thought, takes its rise mainly from Locke, though traces of it are not wanting in Herbert of Cherbury. Whether or not the Essay on the Human Understanding should be held responsible for its results is a disputed question ; but there can be no doubt that from the positions there laid down the general principles of the deists were drawn. Knowledge, in the strict sense of the word, had been restricted by Locke to the perception of the relations among ideas ; reason was defined as the faculty which com pared and compounded such ideas ; and though with regard to God, faith was still admitted, the only part of the divine nature withdrawn from the province of knowledge was the inscrutable essence, which was equally unknown in the case of all real beings. The whole course of nature, including man s moral powers, was therefore subjected to reason ; life must be regulated by reason. If, therefore, religion were to enter as a factor into the conduct of man, it must exhibit to reason the title deeds of its existence; Christianity must be reasonable. But with such a view of knowledge it was easy for the deists to make a successful attack upon at least one portion of the Christian scheme. A mystery by its very definition involved elements not capable of being represented in clear ideas ; it was therefore unreasonable, and must be absolutely rejected. Christianity not Mysterious is the title of Toland s most famous work.
The course of their argument soon carried the deists farther. They were willing to grant the fact of God s existence ; it was a dictate of reason. But they were not prepared to go beyond that, and the necessary deductions from it. The truths of natural religion thus took the form of inferences drawn from certain premises ; they were dis played in a coherent, perfectly rational system. Revealed religion, on the other hand, was confessedly imperfect, con tained things not in accordance with natural reason, incul cated duties on grounds of mere authority, was not uni versally and completely known, and must therefore be rejected. As Tindal puts it, "No religion can come from a Being of infinite wisdom and perfection but what is abso lutely perfect. A religion absolutely perfect can admit of no alteration, and can be capable of no addition or diminution. If God has given mankind such a law, he must likewise have given them sufficient means of knowing it ; he would other wise have defeated his own intent in giving it, since a law, so far as it is unintelligible, ceases to be a law." It was against this whole tendency of thought that Butler directed his Analogy. The method and course of his argument will appear more plainly when it has been considered what were the premises on which he proceeded, and what the object he had in view.
