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The Able and Fair Reasoning of Butler's Analogy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
In the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (entry for Tuesday, August 17) Boswell relates that at a meeting with Dr Johnson the poet Blacklock spoke “with apparent uneasiness” about uncertainty in morals and religion.
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1978
References
1. Analogy, Introduction, Butler's Works, ed. J. H. Bernard (London, 1900) 2:2–3.Google Scholar
2. In the Sermon “Upon the Ignorance of Man” (Works, 1:194)Google Scholar “difficulties in speculation”, i.e. difficulties as to belief (the reference is particularly to religious belief) are compared with “difficulties in practice”, i.e. difficulties in acting conformably to belief.
3. We shall use the word “religion” to cover both “natural” and “revealed” religion, as Butler sometimes does when he thinks of natural religion as taken up into revealed religion and has no occasion to distinguish between them.
4. Jeffner, Anders sets out this interpretation of Butler in his Butler and Hume on Religion (Stockholm, 1966).Google Scholar This book contains one of the few pieces of commentary on the Analogy which discern problems in understanding how Butler thinks our attitude towards religion should he determined.
5. “…si vous mourez sans adorer le vrai principle, vous êtes perdu,” Pensées, ed. L. Brunschvicg, No. 236.
6. In the Charge to the Clergy of Durham (delivered in 1751, fifteen years after the publication of the Analogy) Butler says: “…were the evidence of religion no more than doubtful, then it ought not to be concluded false any more than true, nor denied any more than affirmed; for suspense would be the reasonable state of mind with regard to it” (Works, 1:289).
7. Butler did not have to discuss the evidence for the existence of God, since the existence of God was an assumption common to him and the readers to whom the Analogy is addressed. His handling of the grounds for assent to other doctrines of “natural religion,” such as that of a future life, is his own. He saw the evidence for the truth of “revealed religion”, of Chrisitianity, in accordance with standard apologetic, as being primarily a matter of miracle and the fulfilment of prophecy, but he stressed the importance of “indirect” considerations, such as the force of Christianity in the world, and he stressed the importance of the cumulative weight of the considerations in favour of Christianity, comparing this to “what they call the effect in architecture” (Analogy Pt. 2, Ch. 7, p.221).
8. Cf. p. 258 in the same chapter: “Religion is a practical thing…” This passage connects “the practice of religion” very closely with a concern for one's happiness, and it would have to be understood as making this concern a reason for accepting the beliefs of religion if Butler means to include in the “practice of religion” a profession of its beliefs. When Butler uses the word “practice” in connection with religion, it is sometimes plain, and sometimes not plain, that he is not using it with any implications as to belief.
9. “…the argument from probability not infrequently becomes the argument from possibility. Butler, indeed, sometimes uses the latter word in this context, Because Revealed Religion is not incredible, he says in effect, a prudent man ought to accept it and to conduct his life on its principles” (Mossner, E. C., Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason, New York, 1936, p. 101).Google Scholar In the Weekly Miscellany for January 8, 1737, a critic of the Analogy argues that we are to accept anything as divinely authorized which is more probably so than not. “The Doctor” [i.e. Butler], he says, “runs this matter much further, and seems to maintain that if the Question remain'd equally doubtful, the Religious Side ought still to be embraced”. (His is an opinion with “a pious Appearance,” he adds, but one which is destructive of religion, “since Religion consists in believing what we think God expects us to believe and doing what we think he expects us to do,” and equiprobability destroys expectation.)
10. Butler gives no indication as to what the difference should be. The man who does not believe might go to church, presumably, but not say the creed, and not go to communion.
11. “Dieu est, ou il n'est pas… Que gagerez-vous?… il faut parier…” Pensées, No. 233.