Joseph
Butler
born May 18, 1692, Wantage, Berkshire,
England
died June 16, 1752, Bath, Somerset
Church of England bishop, moral philosopher,
preacher to the royal court, and influential
author who defended revealed religion against
the rationalists of his time.
Ordained in 1718, Butler became preacher at the
Rolls Chapel in London, where he delivered his
famous “Sermons on Human Nature” (1726),
addressed to the practical side of Christian
living. After several years as a parish priest,
he was appointed in 1736 head chaplain to
Caroline, wife of King George II. In the same
year, he published his most celebrated work, The
Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to
the Constitution and Course of Nature, attacking
Deist writers whose approach to God consisted in
arguing rationally from nature rather than from
faith in the doctrine of revelation. Butler
sought to demonstrate that nature and natural
religion were encumbered with the same kind of
uncertainties as revealed religion. The book,
together with the Wesleyan revival, silenced the
importance of Christian Deism in England. His Of
the Nature of Virtue, appended to the Analogy,
presented a refutation of hedonism and of the
notion that self-interest is the ultimate
principle of good conduct; for this work Butler
has been considered by some critics to be one of
the foremost British moral philosophers.
After the queen died in 1737, Butler went in
1738 to Bristol as bishop. His abilities as
chaplain, however, had impressed the king, and
in 1746 Butler was recalled to the royal
household. A year later Butler declined an offer
to become primate (archbishop of Canterbury),
but in 1750 he accepted the bishopric of Durham.
Among the many thinkers subsequently influenced
by his arguments in favour of traditional
theology was the Roman Catholic cardinal John
Henry Newman (1801–90).
