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 the 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 endeavouring 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 ourselves 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 * See note [E], at the end of this preface. † Ser. XI. 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; 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 †. 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 * See the 2d Dissertation "On the Nature of Virtue." See Sermons I. and XI. and the Preface to the Volume of Sermons. 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 oeconomy 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 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 Eccles. xlii, 24. 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 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 Mr Mainwaring's Dissertation, prefixed to his volume of Sermons. 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. 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 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 *. : 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 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 vitious. Not that every man is rewarded or pu |