actions in themselves, and to disapprove of others. That this prineiple will of course have some influence on our behavior, at least at times, will hardly be disputed: but the particular influence which it ought to have, the precise degree of power in the regulating of our internal frame that is assigned it by him who placed it there, is a point of the utmost consequence in itself, and on the determination of which the very hinge of our Author's moral systemn turns. If the faculty here spoken of be indeed, what it is asserted to be, in nature and kind superior to every other passion and affection, if it be giv. en, not merely that it may exert its force occasionally, or as our present humor or fancy may dispose us, but that it may at all times exercise an uncontrollable authority and government over all the rest; it will then follow, that in order to complete the idea of human nature, as a system, we must not only take in each particular bias, propension, instinct, which are seen to belong to it, but we must add, besides the principle of conscience, together with the subjection that is due to it from all the other appetites and passions; just as the idea of a civil constitution is formed, not barely from enumerating the several members and ranks of which it is composed, but from these considered as acting in various degrees of subordination to each other, and all under the direction of the same supreme authority, whether that authority be vested in one person or more. The view here given of the internal constitution of man, and of the supremacy of conscience, agreeably to the conceptions of Bishop BUTLER, enables us to comprehend the force of that expression, common to him and the ancient moralists, that virtue consists in following nature. The meaning cannot be, that it consists in acting agreeably to that propensity of our nature which happens to be the strongest; or which propels us towards certain objects, without any regard to the methods by which they are to be obtained; but the meaning must be, that virtue consists in the due regulation and subjection of all the other appetites and affections to the superior faculty of conscience; from a conformity to which alone our actions are properly natural, or correspondent to the nature, to the whole nature of such an agent as man. From hence to it appears, that the Author of our frame is by no means indifferent to virtue and vice, or has left us at liberty to act at random, as humor or appetite may prompt us; but that every man has the rule of right within him; a rule attended in the very notion of it with authority, and such as has the force of a direction and a command from him, who made us what we are, what course of behavior is suited to our nature, and which he expects that we should follow. This moral faculty implies also a pre-sentiment and apprehension, that the judgment which it passes on our actions, considered as of good or ill desert, will hereafter be confirmed by the unerring judgment of God; when virtue and happiness, vice and misery, whose ideas are now so closely connected, shall be indissolubly united, and the divine government be found to correspond in the most exact proportion to the nature he has given us. Lastly, this just prerogative or supremacy of conscience it is, which Mr. POPE has described in his Universal Prayer, though perhaps he may have expressed it rather too strongly, where he says, C "What conscience dictates to be done, "Or warns me not to do, "This teach me MORE THAN Hell to shun, "That MORE THAN Heaven pursue." The reader will observe, that this way of treating the subject of morals by an appeal to facts does not at all interfere with that other way, adopted by Dr. Samuel Clarke, and others, which begins with inquiring into the relations and fitnesses of things, but rather illustrates and confirms it. That there are essential differences in the qualities of human actions, established by nature, and that this natu ral difference of things, prior to and independent of all will, creates a natural fitness in the agent to act agreeably to it, seems as little to be denied, as that there is a moral difference before explained, from which we approve and feel a pleasure in what is right, and conceive a distaste to what is wrong. Still, however, when we are endeavoring to establish either this moral or that natural difference, it ought never to be forgotten, or rather it will require to be distinctly shewn, 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 government.* And 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 XIth 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, that 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 ourselvs this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it."† 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; 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 shewn, 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 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 be * See note [E], at the end of this Preface. † Serm, XI. p. 229. nevolence is not more at variance with or unfriendly to self-love, than any other particular affection is; and that, by consulting the hap piness of others, a man is so far from lessening his own, that the very endeavor to do so, though he should fail in the accomplishment, is a source of the highest satisfaction and peace of mind.* He has also, in passing, animadverted on the philosopher of Malmsbuary, 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.t 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 of indulging to 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 pre-conceived 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 endeavors to form a judg ment 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 behavior 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."§ See Sermons I. and XI, and the Preface to the Volume of Sermons. 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 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 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 ma ture 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 favored by the analogy of nature. All that 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 vigor, 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. * The probability of a future state once granted, an important 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 behavior here, is but an appointment of the same sort with what we experience under the the divine government, according to the regular course of nature.t 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 Part I. Chap 2 * Part I Chap. 1, 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.* 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 temporal and religious capacity. Thus childhood is a state of discipline for youth; youth for manhood, and that for old age. Strength of body, and maturity of understanding, are acquired by degrees; and neither of them without continual exercise and attention on our part, not only in the beginning of life, but through the whole course of it. So again with respect to our religious concerns, the present world is fitted to be, and to good men is in event, a state of discipline and improvement for a future one. The several passions and propensions, implanted in our hearts, incline us, in a multitude of instances, to forbidden pleasures: this inward infirmity is increased by various snares and temptations, perpetually occurring from without. Hence arises the necessity of recollection and self-government, of withstanding the calls of appetite, and forming our minds to habits of piety and virtue; habits, of which we are capable, and which to creatures in a state of moral imperfection, and fallen from their original integrity, must be of the greatest use, as an additional security, over and above the principle of conscience, from the dangers to which we are exposed.‡ Nor is the credibility here given, by the analogy of nature to the general doctrine of religion, destroyed or weakened by any notions concerning necessity. Of itself it is a mere word, the sign of an abstract idea; and as much requires an agent, that is, a necessary agent, in order to effect any thing, as freedom requires a free agent. Admitting it to be speculatively true, if considered as influencing practice, it is the same as false; for it is matter of experience, that, with regard to our present interest, and as inhabitants of this world, we are treated as if we were free; and therefore the analogy of nature leads us to conclude, that, with regard to our future interest, and as designed for another world, we shall be treated as free also. Nor does the opinion of necessity, supposing it possible, at all affect either the general proof of religion, or its external evidence.§ |