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From that time, for weeks, Butler spoke to all who approached him, of a full and free salvation. He died triumphantly repeating this passage.
If all that is said of the lack of evangelical sentiment in Butler or his book be conceded, it certainly cannot impair either the value of the analogical argument, or the force of our author’s use of it.
Various circumstances conspire to make the study of “The Analogy” difficult. The nature of the reasoning – the conciseness, and often obscurity of the style – the dislocation of parts by frequent digressions – the arrest of a close course of reasoning to answer objections – and the abstruseness of the subject itself – combine to make the full comprehension of its import difficult. Mackintosh says, “No thinker so great, was ever so bad a writer.” But this, like some other objections of Sir James, is stated too strongly. The language is good, sinewy Saxon, and will endure when much that is now called fine writing, will seem grotesque. Still it is possible to write philosophy in better phrase, as has been shown by at least two great men, Berkeley and Stewart. Had Butler but possessed the glowing style of Berkeley, or the smooth, graceful, and transparent diction of Dugald Stewart, his work, instead of serving only for close thinkers, or a college text-book, would have been read by all classes, and banished that vulgar infidelity which flippant writers still disseminate. That it is thus restricted in its influence is a misfortune to the world. But he wrote for a class, and did his work completely. Literary infidelity was conquered. Vulgar, ignorant, licentious infidelity, will always exist, and is even now deplorably prevalent. Both Europe and America contain conceited and malignant ignoramuses, who by their sneers, their cavils, and their audacity, make havoc of souls. Of these, Tom Paine is a type, whose book, the contempt of cultivated minds, continues to be sold and read. For this class of persons, “Baxter’s Call,” or “Alleine’s Alarm,” are far more suitable than treatises on the evidences of Christianity, or even Butler’s Analogy.
Editor’s Preface
The text is the result of a careful collation of the various principal editions. Occasionally solecisms are corrected, and a word transposed or put in italics, when a sentence could thus be made perspicuous. The author had a fashion of beginning a large proportion of his sentences with “and,” “but,” “now,” “indeed,” “however,” &c., which often served to perplex, and in such cases they have been omitted. Long paragraphs, comprehending different topics, have been so divided as to correspond with the true analysis; which will greatly assist the student in detecting the successive stages of the argument. Special pains has been taken to correct and improve the punctuation. Hundreds of sentences have thus been rendered more perspicuous, and many which were obscure, have been made lucid. In no respect was Butler’s style, as printed, so defective.
The Conspectus is made much ampler than any other, for this reason: that students are apt to content themselves with such help instead of mastering the full discussion by the author. In the present case they cannot so do, for such is the fulness of the Conspectus, that if they master this, they have mastered the subject itself in full.
Notes by the present editor are distinguished from those of the author by being enclosed in brackets. They are designed to open out further views, to elucidate the text, to facilitate extended researches, and to suggest topics for conversation in the class-room.
The Index has cost far more labor than would be supposed, and may not be of much benefit to the undergraduate. Its advantages will not be small to him in after life when he desires to recur to particular topics. The general scholar will find it enables him to make use of the book for occasional reference. Without it the work is not complete for the class-room, still less for the library.
That students of the Analogy need help, is confessed; and all attempts to furnish it have been kindly received. As is remarked by Bishop Wilson, “His argument, clear and convincing as it is to a prepared mind, is not obvious to the young reader, whose experience of life being small, and his habits of reflection feeble, has not the furniture necessary for comprehending, at first, the thoughts and conclusions of such a mind. The style is too close, too negligent, too obscure, to be suitable for the young.”
If it be asked why, with several existing helps to the study of the Analogy, I offer another, I frankly reply, because I have found none of them satisfactory, either to the public or to myself.
Some teachers prefer their text-books to be accompanied by a set of questions. Such will find in this edition all they desire. They have only to enunciate each sentence of the Conspectus in the interrogative form, and they will have every possible question prepared to their hand.
Conspectus of the Author’s Introduction
I. What is probable evidence?
1. It differs from demonstration in that it admits of degrees; of all degrees.
1.) One probability does not beget assurance.
2.) But the slightest presumption makes a probability.
3.) The repetition of it may make certainty.
2. What constitutes probability is likeness; in regard to the event itself, or its kind of evidences, or its circumstances.
1.) This daily affords presumptions, evidence, or conviction: according as it is occasional, common, or constant.
2.) Measures our hopes and fears.
3.) Regulates our expectations as to men’s conduct.
4.) Enables us to judge of character from conduct.
3. It is an imperfect mode of judging, and adapted to beings of limited capacities.
4. Where better evidence cannot be had, it constitutes moral obligation, even though great doubts remain.
1.) We are as much bound to do what, on the whole, appears to be best, as if we knew it to be so.
2.) In questions of great moment, it is reasonable to act when the favorable chances are no greater than the unfavorable.
3.) There are numberless cases in which a man would be thought distracted if he did not act, and that earnestly, where the chances of success were greatly against him.
II. The use and application of probabilities.
Shall not go further into the nature of probable evidence, nor inquire why likeness begets presumption and conviction; nor how far analogical reasoning can be reduced to a system; but shall only show how just and conclusive this mode of reasoning is.
1. In determining our judgments and practice.
1.) There may be cases in which its value is doubtful.
2.) There may be seeming analogies, which are not really such.
3.) But as a mode of argument, it is perfectly just and conclusive.
2. In noting correspondencies between the different parts of God’s government.
1.) We may expect to find the same sort of difficulties in the Bible, as we do in Nature.
2.) To deny the Bible to be of God, because of these difficulties, requires us to deny that the world was made by him.
3.) If there be a likeness between revelation and the system of nature, it affords a presumption that both have the same author.
4.) To reason on the construction and government of the world, without settling foundation-principles, is mere hypothesis.
5.) To apply principles which are certain, to cases which are not applicable, is no better.
6.) But to join abstract reasonings to the observation of facts, and argue, from known present things, to what is likely or credible, must be right.
7.) We cannot avoid acting thus, if we act at all.
3. In its application to religion, revealed, as well as natural. This is the use which will be made of analogy in the following work. In so using it,
1.) It will be taken for proved that there is an intelligent Creator and Ruler.
– There are no presumptions against this, prior to proof.
– There are proofs: – from analogy, reason, tradition, &c.
– The fact is not denied by the generality of skeptics.
2.) No regard will be paid to those who idly speculate as to how the world might have been made and governed.
– Such prating would amount to this:
· All creatures should have been made at first as happy as they could be.
· Nothing of hazard should be put upon them.
· Should have been secured in their happiness.
· All punishments avoided.
– It is a sufficient reply to such talk that mankind have not faculties for such speculations.
3.) We are, to some extent, judges as to ends; and may conclude that Nature and Providence are designed to produce virtue and happiness; but of the means of producing these in the highest degree, we are not competent judges.
– We know not the extent of the universe;
– Nor even how one person can best be brought to perfection.
– We are not often competent to judge of the conduct of each other.
– As to God, we may presume that order will prevail in his universe; but are no judges of his modes for accomplishing this end.
4.) Instead of vainly, and perhaps sinfully, imagining schemes for God’s conduct, we must study what is.
– Discovering general laws.
– Comparing the known course of things with what revelation teaches us to expect.
III. The force of this use of Analogy.
1. Sometimes is practically equivalent to proof.
2. Confirms what is otherwise proved.
3. Shows that the system of revelation is no more open to ridicule, than the system of nature.
4. Answers almost all objections against religion.
5. To a great extent answers objections against the proofs of religion.
IV. General scope of the book.
1. The divine government is considered, as containing in it,
Chap. 1. Man’s future existence.
” 2. In a state of reward or punishment.
” 3. This according to our behavior.
” 4. Our present life probationary.
” 5. And also disciplinary.
” 6. Notwithstanding the doctrine of necessity.
” 7. Or any apparent want of wisdom or goodness.
2. Revealed religion is considered,
Chap. 1. As important.
” 2. As proved by miracles.
” 3. As containing strange things.
” 4. As a scheme imperfectly comprehended.
” 5. As carried on by a mediator.
” 6. As having such an amount of evidence as God saw fit to give.
” 7. As having sufficient and full evidence.
Conspectus of the Analogy
PART I
CHAPTER I
A FUTURE LIFE
Will not discuss the subject of identity; but will consider what analogy suggests from changes which do not destroy; and thus see whether it is not probable that we shall live hereafter.
I. The probabilities that we shall survive death.
1. It is a law of nature that creatures should exist in different stages, and in various degrees of perfection.
– Worms turn into flies.
– Eggs are hatched into birds.
– Our own present state is as different from our state in the womb, as two states of the same being can be.
– That we shall hereafter exist in a state as different from the present as the present is from our state in the womb, is according to analogy.
2. We now have capacities for happiness, action, misery, &c., and there is always a probability that things will continue as they are, except when experience gives us reason to think they will be altered. This is a general law; and is our only natural reason for expecting the continuance of any thing.
3. There is no reason to apprehend that death will destroy us.
If there was, it would arise from the nature of death; or from the analogy of nature.
1.) Not from the nature of death.
– We know not what death is.
– But only some of its effects.
– These effects do not imply the destruction of the living agent.
– We know little of what the exercise of our powers depends upon; and nothing of what the powers themselves depend on.
– We may be unable to exercise our powers, and yet not lose them —e. g. sleep, swoon.
2.) Not from analogy.
– Reason shows no connection between death and our destruction.
– We have no faculties by which to trace any being beyond it.
– The possession of living powers, up to the very moment when our faculties cease to be able to trace them, is a probability of their continuing.
– We have already survived wonderful changes.
– To live after death is analogous to the course of nature.
II. Presumptions against a future life.
1. That death destroys us.
Ans. 1. This is an assumption that we are compound and material beings, and hence discerptible; which is not true.
1.) Consciousness is a single, indivisible power, and of course the subject of it must be.
2.) The material body is not ourself.
3.) We can easily conceive of our having more limbs, or of a different kind, or of having more or fewer senses, or of having no bodies at all, or of hereafter animating these same bodies, remodelled.
4.) The dissolution of a succession of new and strange bodies, would have no tendency to destroy us.
Ans. 2. Though the absolute simplicity of the living being cannot be proved by experiment, yet facts lead us so to conclude. We lose limbs, &c. Our bodies were once very small, but we might, then, have lost part of them. There is a constant destruction and renewal going on.
1.) Thus we see that no certain bulk is necessary to our existence, and unless it were proved that there is, and that it is larger than an indissoluble atom, there is no reason to presume that death destroys us, even if we are discerptible.
2.) The living agent is not an internal material organism, which dies with the body. Because
– Our only ground for this presumption is our relation to other systems of matter. But we see these are not necessary to us.
– It will not do to say that lost portions of the body were not essential– who is to determine?
– The relation between the living agent, and the most essential parts of the body, is only one by which they mutually affect each other.
3.) If we regard our body as made up of organs of sense, we come to the same result.
– We see with the eyes, just as we do with glasses. The eye is not a recipient, any more than a telescope.
– It is not pretended that vision, hearing, &c. can be traced clear up to the percipient; but so far as we can trace perceptions, the organ does not perceive.
– In dreams we perceive without organs.
– When we lose a limb we do not lose the directing power; we could move a new one, if it could be made, or a wooden one. But the limb cut off has no power of moving.
– Thus, our loss of the organs of perception and motion, not being the destruction of the power, there is no ground to think that the destruction of other organs or instruments would destroy us.
Objection. These observations apply equally to brutes.
Ans. 1. Be it so. Perhaps they are immortal: – may hereafter improve: we know not what latent powers they may have.
1.) The human being at one period looks as little likely to make great intellectual attainments; for a long time he has capacities for virtue and religion, but cannot use them.
2.) Many persons go out of the world who never became able to exercise these capacities; e. g. infants.
Ans. 2. If brutes were immortal, it does not prove them to be moral agents.
1.) It may be necessary, for aught we know, that there should be living creatures not moral agents, nor rational.
2.) All difficulties as to what would become of them, are founded in our ignorance.
2. That our souls, though not material, so depend upon the bodily structure, that we cannot survive its destruction.
Ans. 1. Reason, memory, &c. do not depend on the body, as perceptions by the senses do. Death may destroy those instruments, and yet not destroy the powers of reflection.
Ans. 2. Human beings exist, here, in two very different states, each having its own laws: sensation and reflection. By the first we feel; by the second we reason and will.
1.) Nothing which we know to be destroyed at death, is necessary to reflecting on ideas formerly received.
2.) Though the senses act like scaffolds, or levers, to bring in ideas, yet when once in, we can reflect, &c. without their aid.
Ans. 3. There are diseases which prove fatal, &c., yet do not, in any part of their course, impair the intellect; and this indicates that they do not destroy it.
1.) In the diseases alluded to, persons have their reflective power, in full, the very moment before death.
2.) Now, why should a disease, at a certain degree, utterly destroy powers which were not even affected by it, up to that point?
3. That death at least suspends our reflective powers, or interrupts our continuing to exist in the like state of reflection which we do now.
Ans. There appears so little connection between our powers of sensation and our powers of reflection that we cannot presume that what might destroy the former, could even suspend the latter.
1.) We daily see reason, memory, &c. exercised without any assistance, that we know of, from our bodies.
2.) Seeing them in lively exercise to the last, we must infer that death is not a discontinuance of their exercise, nor of the enjoyments and sufferings of such exercise.
3.) Our posthumous life may be but a going on, with additions. Like the change at our birth – which produced not a suspension of the faculties we had before, nor a total change in our state of life; but a continuance of both, with great alterations.
4.) Death may but at once put us into a higher state of life, as our birth did; our relation to bodily organs may be the only hinderance to our entering a higher condition of the reflective powers.
5.) Were we even sure that death would suspend our intellectual powers, it would not furnish even the lowest probability that it would destroy them.
Objec. From the analogy of plants.
Ans. This furnishes poets with apt illustrations of our frailty, but affords no proper analogy. Plants are destitute of perception and action, and this is the very matter in question.
REMARKS
1. It has been shown, that confining ourselves to what we know, we see no probability of ever ceasing to be: – it cannot be concluded from the reason of the thing: – nor from the analogy of nature.
2. We are therefore to go upon the belief of a future existence.
3. Our going into new scenes and conditions, is just as natural as our coming into the world.
4. Our condition may naturally be a social one.
5. The advantages of it may naturally be bestowed, according to some fixed law, in proportion to one’s degrees in virtue.
1.) Perhaps not so much as now by society; but by God’s more immediate action.
2.) Yet this will be no less natural, i. e. stated, fixed, or settled.
3.) Our notions of what is natural, are enlarged by greater knowledge of God and his works.
4.) There may be some beings in the world, to whom the whole of Christianity is as natural as the visible course of nature seems to us.
6. These probabilities of a future life, though they do not satisfy curiosity, answer all the purposes of religion, as well as demonstration.
1.) Even a demonstration of a future state, would not demonstrate religion, but would be reconcilable with atheism.
2.) But as religion implies a future state, any presumption against such a state, would be a presumption against religion.
3.) The foregoing observations remove all presumptions of that sort, and prove to a great probability, a fundamental doctrine of religion.
CHAPTER II
THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD BY REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS
The question of a future life is rendered momentous by our capacity for happiness and misery.
Especially if that happiness or misery depends on our present conduct.
We should feel the deepest solicitude on this subject.
And that if there were no proof of a future life and interest, other than the probabilities just discussed.
I. In the present world our pleasures and pains are, to a great extent, in our own power
1. We see them to be consequences of our actions.
2. And we can foresee these consequences.
3. Our desires are not gratified, without the right kind of exertion.
4. By prudence we may enjoy life; rashness, or even neglect may make us miserable.
5. Why this is so is another matter.
1.) It may be impossible to be otherwise.
2.) Or it may be best on the whole.
3.) Or God’s plan may be to make only the good happy.
4.) Or the whole plan may be incomprehensible to us.
Objec. It may be said “this is only the course of nature.”
Ans. It is granted: but
1. The course of nature is but the will of God. We admit that God is the natural governor of the world: and must not turn round and deny it because his government is uniform.
2. Our natural foresight of the consequences of actions, is his appointment.
3. The consequences themselves, are his appointment.
4. Our ability to foresee these consequences, is God’s instruction how we are to act.
Objec. By this reasoning we are instructed to gratify our appetites, and such gratification is our reward for so doing.
Ans. Certainly not. Foreseen pleasures and pains are proper motives to action in general; but we may, in particular cases, damage ourselves by indulgence. Our eyes are made to see with, but not to look at every thing: – for instance the sun.
It follows, from what has been said, that
II. We are, now, actually under God’s government, in the strictest sense
1. Admitting that there is a God, it is not so much a matter of speculation, as of experience, that he governs us.
2. The annexing of pleasures and pains to certain actions, and giving notice them, is the very essence of government.
3. Whether by direct acts upon us, or by contriving a general plan, does not affect the argument.
1.) If magistrates could make laws which should execute themselves, their government would be far more perfect than it is.
2.) God’s making fire burn us, is as much an instance of government, as if he directly inflicted the burn, whenever we touched fire.
4. Hence the analogy of nature shows nothing to render incredible the Bible doctrine of God’s rewarding or punishing according to our actions.
Additional remarks on Punishment
As men object chiefly to future punishment, it is proper to show further that the course of administration, as to present punishment, is analogous to what religion teaches as to the future.
Indeed they add credibility to it.
And ought to raise the most serious apprehension.
I. Circumstances to be observed touching present punishments
1. They often follow acts which produce present pleasure or advantage.
2. The sufferings often far exceed the pleasure or advantage.
3. They often follow remotely.
4. After long delay they often come suddenly.
5. As those remote effects are not certainly foreseen, they may not be thought of at the time; or if so, there is a hope of escaping.
6. There are opportunities of advantage, which if neglected do not recur.
7. Though, in some cases, men who have sinned up to a certain point, may retrieve their affairs, yet in many cases, reformation is of no avail.
8. Inconsiderateness is often as disastrous as wilful wrong-doing.
9. As some punishments by civil government, are capital, so are some natural punishments.
1.) Seem intended to remove the offender out of the way.
2.) Or as an example to others.
II. These things are not accidental, but proceed from fixed laws
1. They are matters of daily experience.
2. Proceed from the general laws, by which the world is governed.
III. They so closely resemble what religion teaches, as to future punishment, that both might be expressed in the same words
e. g. Proverbs, ch. i.
The analogy sufficiently answers all objections against the Scripture doctrine of future punishment, such as
1.) That our frailty or temptations annihilate the guilt of vice.
2.) Or the objection from necessity.
3.) Or that the Almighty cannot be contradicted.
4.) Or that he cannot be offended.
REMARKS
1. Such reflections are terrific, but ought to be stated and considered.
2. Disregard of a hereafter cannot be justified by any thing short of a demonstration of atheism. Even skeptical doctrines afford no justification.
3. There is no pretence of reason for presuming that the licentious will not find it better for them that they had never been born.
CHAPTER III
MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD
As the structure of the world shows intelligence, so the mode of distributing pleasure and pain, shows government. That is, God’s natural government, such as a king exercises over his subjects.
But this does not, at first sight, determine what is the moral character of such government.
I. What is a moral or righteous government?
1. Not mere rewarding and punishing.
2. But doing this according to character.
3. The perfection of moral government is doing this exactly.
Objec. God is simply and absolutely benevolent.
Ans. Benevolence, infinite in degree, would dispose him to produce the greatest possible happiness, regardless of behaviour. This would rob God of other attributes; and should not be asserted unless it can be proved. And whether it can be proved is not the point now in hand.
The question is not whether there may not be, in the universe, beings to whom he manifests absolute benevolence, which might not be incompatible with justice; but whether he treats us so.
4. It must be owned to be vastly difficult, in such a disordered world, to estimate with exactness the overplus of happiness on the side of virtue: and there may be exceptions to the rule. But it is far from being doubtful that on the whole, virtue is happier than vice, in this world.
II. The beginnings of a righteous administration, are seen in nature
1. It has been proved (ch. ii.) that God governs: and it is reasonable to suppose that he would govern righteously.
1.) Any other rule of government would be harder to account for.
2.) The Bible doctrine that hereafter the good shall be happy, and the wicked miserable, is no more than an expectation that a method of government, now begun, shall be carried on.
2. The opposite consequences of prudence and rashness, show a right constitution of nature; and our ability to foresee and control these consequences, shows that we are under moral law.
3. God has so constructed society that vice, to a great degree, is actually punished by it.
1.) Without this, society could not exist.
2.) This is God’s government, through society; and is as natural, as society.
3.) Since the course of things is God’s appointment, men are unavoidably accountable for their behaviour.
Objec. Society often punishes good actions, and rewards wickedness.
Ans. 1. This is not necessary, and consequently not natural.
2. Good actions are never punished by society as good, but because considered bad.
4. By the course of nature, virtue is rewarded, and vice punished, as such, which proves a moral government; as will be seen if we rightly distinguish between actions and their qualities.
1.) An action may produce present gratification though it be wrong: in which case the gratification is in the act, not the morality of it: in other cases the enjoyment consists wholly in the quality of virtuousness.
2.) Vice is naturally attended with uneasiness, apprehension, vexation, remorse, &c.
– This is a very different feeling from that produced by mere misfortune.
– Men comfort themselves under misfortune, that it was not their own fault.
3.) Honest and good men are befriended as such.
4.) Injuries are resented as implying fault; and good offices are regarded with gratitude on account of the intention, even when they fail to benefit us.
– This is seen in family government, where children are punished for falsehood, fretfulness, &c., though no one is hurt.
– And also in civil government, where the absence or presence of ill intention goes far in determining the penalty of wrong-doing.
5.) The whole course of the world, in all ages and relations, turns much upon approbation and disapprobation.
6.) The very fact of our having a moral nature, is a proof of our being under God’s moral government.
– We are placed in a condition which unavoidably operates on our moral nature.
– Hence it arises that reward to virtue and reprobation of vice, as such, is a rule, never inverted. If it be thought that there are instances to the contrary, (which is not so,) they are evidently monstrous.
– The degree in which virtue and vice receive proper returns, is not the question now, but only the thing itself, in some degree.
7.) It is admitted that virtue sometimes suffers, and vice prospers; but this is disorder, and not the order of nature.
8.) It follows, that we have in the government of the world, a declaration from God, for virtue and against vice. So far as a man is true to virtue, is he on the side of the divine administration. Such a man must have a sense of security, and a hope of something better.
5. This hope is confirmed by observing that virtue has necessary tendencies beyond their present effects.
1.) These are very obvious with regard to individuals.
2.) Are as real, though not so patent, in regard to society.
– The power of a society under the direction of virtue, tends to prevail over power not so directed, just as power under direction of reason, tends to prevail over brute force.
– As this may not be conceded, we will notice how the case stands, as to reason:
· Length of time, and proper opportunity, are necessary for reason to triumph over brutes.
· Rational beings, disunited, envious, unjust, and treacherous, may be overcome by brutes, uniting themselves by instinct: but this would be an inverted order of things.
– A like tendency has virtue to produce superiority.
· By making the good of society, the object of every member of it.
· By making every one industrious in his own sphere.
· By uniting all in one bond of veracity and justice.
3.) If the part of God’s government which we see, and the part we do not see, make up one scheme, then we see a tendency in virtue to superiority.
4.) But to produce that superiority there must be
– A force proportioned to the obstacles.
– Sufficient lapse of time.
– A fair field of trial; such as extent of time, adequate occasions, and opportunities for the virtuous to unite.
5.) These things are denied to virtue in this life, so that its tendencies, though real, are hindered.
6.) But it may have all requisite advantages hereafter.
– Eternity will be lasting enough.
– Good men will unite; as they cannot do now, scattered over the earth, and ignorant of one another.
– Other orders of virtuous beings will join; for the very nature of virtue is a bond of union.
7.) The tendency of such an order of things, so far as seen by vicious beings in any part of the universe, would be to the amendment of all who were capable of it, and their recovery to virtue.
8.) All this goes to show that the hinderances to virtue are contingent, and that its beneficial tendencies are God’s declarations in its favor.
9.) If the preceding considerations are thought to be too speculative, we may easily come to the same result by reflecting on the supremacy which any earthly nation would attain, by entire virtue for many ages.
REMARKS
Consider now the general system of religion. The government of the world is one; it is moral; virtue shall in the end prevail over wickedness; and to see the importance and fitness of such an arrangement we have only to consider what would be the state of things, if vice had these advantages, or virtue the contrary.
