ment.*

which we approve and feel a pleasure in what is right, and conceive a distaste to what is wrong. Still, however, when we are endeavouring to establish either this moral or that natural difference, it ought never to be forgotten, or rather it will require to be distinctly shown, that both of these, when traced up to their source, suppose an intelligent Author of nature and moral Ruler of the world; who originally appointed these differences, and by such an appointment has signified his will that we should conform to them, as the only effectual method of securing our happiness on the whole under his governAnd of this consideration our Prelate himself was not unmindful; as may be collected from many expressions in different parts of his writings, and particularly from the following passages in his eleventh Sermon. "It may be allowed, without any prejudice to the cause of virtue and religion, that our ideas of happiness and misery are of all our ideas the nearest and most important to us; that they will, nay if you please, they ought to prevail over those of order, and beauty, and harmony, and proportion, if there should ever be, as it is impossible there ever should be, any inconsistence between them." And again, "Though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to and pursuit of what is right and good, as such; yet, when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it."t

Besides the general system of morality opened above, our Author in his volume of Sermons has stated with accuracy the difference between self-love and benevolence;

* “Far be it from me," says the excellent Dr T. Balguy (Discourse ix.) "to dispute the reality of a moral principle in the human heart. I feel its existence: I clearly discern its use and importance. But in no respect is it more important, than as it suggests the idea of a moral Governor. Let this idea be once effaced, and the principle of conscience will soon be found weak and ineffectual. Its influence on men's conduct has, indeed, been too much undervalued by some philosophical inquirers. But be that influence, while it lasts, more or less, it is not a steady and permanent principle of action. Unhappily we always have it in our power to lay it asleep.-Neglect alone will suppress and stifle it, and bring it almost into a state of stupefaction. Nor can any thing, less than the terrors of religion, awaken our minds from this dangerous and deadly sleep. It can never be a matter of indifference to a thinking man, whether he is to be happy or miserable beyond the grave.”

Serm. xl.

in opposition to those who, on the one hand, make the whole of virtue to consist in benevolence,* and to those who, on the other, assert that every particular affection and action is resolvable into self-love. In combating these opinions, he has shown, I think unanswerably, that there are the same kind of indications in human nature, that we were made to promote the happiness of others, as that we were made to promote our own: that it is no just objection to this, that we have dispositions to do evil to others as well as good; for we have also dispositions to do evil as well as good to ourselves, to our own most important interests even in this life, for the sake of gratifying a present passion: that the thing to be lamented is, not that men have too great a regard to their own real good, but that they have not enough: that benevolence is not more at variance with or unfriendly to self-love, than any other particular affection is and that by consulting the happiness of others a man is so far from lessening his own, that the very endeavour to do so, though he should fail in the accomplishment, is a source of the highest satisfaction and peace of mind.t He has also, in passing, animadverted on the philosopher of Malmsbury, who, in his book "Of Human Nature," has advanced, as discoveries in moral science, that benevolence is only the love of power, and compassion the fear of future calamity to ourselves. And this our Author has done, not so much with the design of exposing the false reasoning of Mr Hobbes, but because on so perverse an account of human nature he has raised a system, subversive of all justice and honesty.‡

II. The religious system of Bishop Butler is chiefly to be collected from the treatise, entitled, "The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature."

"All things are double one against another, and God hath made nothing imperfect."§ On this single observation of the son of Sirach, the whole fabric of our Prelate's defence of religion, in his Analogy, is raised. Instead * See the second Dissertation "On the Nature of Virtue," at the end of the Analogy.

† See Serm. i. and xi, and the preface to the volume of Sermons.

See the Notes to Serm. i. and v.

§ Eccles. xlii. 24.

of indulging in idle speculations, how the world might possibly have been better than it is; or, forgetful of the difference between hypothesis and fact, attempting to explain the divine economy with respect to intelligent creatures, from preconceived notions of his own; he first inquires what the constitution of nature, as made known to us in the way of experiment, actually is; and from this, now seen and acknowledged, he endeavours to form a judgment of that larger constitution, which religion discovers to us. If the dispensation of Providence we are now under, considered as inhabitants of this world, and having a temporal interest to secure in it, be found, on examination, to be analogous to, and of a piece with, that further dispensation, which relates to us as designed for another world, in which we have an eternal interest, depending on our behaviour here; if both may be traced up to the same general laws, and appear to be carried on according to the same plan of administration; the fair presumption is, that both proceed from one and the same Author. And if the principal parts objected to in this latter dispensation be similar to and of the same kind with what we certainly experience under the former; the objections, being clearly inconclusive in one case, because contradicted by plain fact, must, in all reason, be allowed to be inconclusive also in the other.

This way of arguing from what is acknowledged to what is disputed, from things known to other things that resemble them, from that part of the divine establishment which is exposed to our view to that more important one which lies beyond it, is on all hands confessed to be just. By this method Sir Isaac Newton has unfolded the system of nature; by the same method Bishop Butler has explained the system of grace; and thus, to use the words of a writer, whom I quote with pleasure, "has formed and concluded a happy alliance between faith and philosophy.'

And although the argument from analogy be allowed to be imperfect, and by no means sufficient to solve all difficulties respecting the government of God, and the designs of his Providence with regard to mankind (a

* Mr Mainwaring's Dissertation, prefixed to his volume of Sermons.

degree of knowledge, which we are not furnished with faculties for attaining, at least in the present state); yet surely it is of importance to learn from it, that the natural and moral world are intimately connected, and parts of one stupendous whole or system; and that the chief objections which are brought against religion may be urged with equal force against the constitution and course of nature, where they are certainly false in fact. And this information we may derive from the work before us; the proper design of which, it may be of use to observe, is not to prove the truth of religion, either natural or revealed, but to confirm that proof, already known, by considerations from analogy.

After this account of the method of reasoning employed by our Author, let us now advert to his manner of applying it, first to the subject of Natural Religion, and secondly to that of Revealed.

1. The foundation of all our hopes and fears is a future life; and with this the treatise begins. Neither the reason of the thing, nor the analogy of nature, according to Bishop Butler, give ground for imagining, that the unknown event, death, will be our destruction. The states in which we have formerly existed, in the womb and in infancy, are not more different from each other than from that of mature age in which we now exist: therefore, that we shall continue to exist hereafter, in a state as different from the present as the present is from those through which we have passed already, is a presumption favoured by the analogy of nature. we know from reason concerning death, is the effects it has upon animal bodies: and the frequent instances among men of the intellectual powers continuing in high health and vigour, at the very time when a mortal disease is on the point of putting an end to all the powers of sensation, induce us to hope that it may have no effect at all on the human soul, not even so much as to suspend the exercise of its faculties; though, if it have, the suspension of a power by no means implies its extinction, as sleep or a swoon may convince us.*

All that

The probability of a future state once granted, an im

* Part 1. chap. i.

portant question arises, How best to secure our interest in that state. We find from what passes daily before us, that the constitution of nature admits of misery as well as happiness; that both of these are the consequences of our own actions; and these consequences we are enabled to foresee. Therefore, that our happiness or misery in a future world may depend on our own actions also, and that rewards or punishments hereafter may follow our good or ill behaviour here, is but an appointment of the same sort with what we experience under the divine government, according to the regular course of nature.*

This supposition is confirmed from another circumstance, that the natural government of God, under which we now live, is also moral; in which rewards and punishments are the consequences of actions, considered as virtuous and vicious. Not that every man is rewarded or punished here in exact proportion to his desert; for the essential tendencies of virtue and vice, to produce happiness and the contrary, are often hindered from taking effect from accidental causes. However, there are plainly the rudiments and beginnings of a righteous administration to be discerned in the constitution of nature: from whence we are led to expect, that these accidental hindrances will one day be removed, and the rule of distributive justice obtain completely in a more perfect

state.i

The moral government of God, thus established, implies in the notion of it some sort of trial, or a moral possibility of acting wrong as well as right, in those who are the subjects of it. And the doctrine of religion, that the present life is in fact a state of probation for a future one, is rendered credible, from its being analogous throughout to the general conduct of Providence towards us with respect to this world; in which prudence is necessary to secure our temporal interest, just as we are taught that virtue is necessary to secure our eternal interest; and both are trusted to ourselves.‡

But the present life is not merely a state of probation, implying in it difficulties and danger; it is also a state of discipline and improvement; and that both in our tem† Chap. iii.

* Chap. ii.

Chap. iv.