DISSERTATION II. The Nature of Virtue (5)
Joseph Butler · The Analogy of Religion · 75 of 80
[101] [A forced or reluctant obedience is wholly incompatible with earthly happiness; but may, in the highest degree promote our future happiness. It will not long mar our happiness, even here; because being based on principle, and established by habit, it will, in process of time, be superseded by prompt and pleasurable submission. Thus a person habitually virtuous, is hardly conscious of self-denial; a fact noticed by Aristotle. “He who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights, is virtuous in this very abstinence; but he who is troubled by it is undisciplined.” Ethic. Nic. ii. 3.]
[103] [The student should learn to distinguish between the kinds of necessity. There is—1. “Logical necessity,” which requires the admission of a consequent to a premise 2. “Moral necessity,” which requires means in order to ends. “Physical necessity,” which is the compulsory connection of sequences to antecedents, in the material world. 4. “Metaphysical necessity,” which belongs to God only, as existing eternally and immutably. All these exist and operate, and by them we govern ourselves.But there are various other kinds of necessity, erroneous and pernicious, which may be grouped under two heads:—1. “Atheistic,” sometimes called the Democritic, which ascribes all things to the mechanical laws of matter. 2. “Theistic,” which admits the existence of God, but denies to him moral character, and makes him the arbitrary and only agent in the universe, and creatures not responsible. See Collings on Providence, Price’s Dissertations, Rutherford on Providence, Charnock’s Sermons, and Whately’s Logic.]
[106] [Hume says, “though man, in truth, is a necessary agent, having all his actions determined by fixed and immutable laws, yet, this being concealed from him, he acts with the conviction of being a free agent.”Which is the same as to say that God intended to conceal from men an important fact, involving the whole subject of right and wrong, but Mr. Hume found him out!]
[107] By will and character is meant that which, in speaking of men, we should express, not only by these words, but also by the words temper, taste, dispositions, practical principles: that whole frame of mind, from whence we act in one manner rather than another.
[112] Serm. 2, at the Rolls.
[114] However, I am far from intending to deny, that the will of God is determined, by what is fit, by the right and reason of the case; though one chooses to decline matters of such abstract speculation, and to speak with caution when one does speak of them. But if it be intelligible to say, that it is fit and reasonable for every one to consult his own happiness, then fitness of action, or the right and reason of the case, is an intelligible manner of speaking. And it seems as inconceivable, to suppose God to approve one course of action, or one end, preferably to another, which yet his acting at all from design implies that he does, without supposing somewhat prior in that end, to be the ground of the preference; as to suppose him to discern an abstract proposition to be true, without supposing somewhat prior in it, to be the ground of the discernment. It doth not therefore appear, that moral right is any more relative to perception, than abstract truth is; or that it is any more improper to speak of the fitness and lightness of actions and ends, as founded in the nature of things, than to speak of abstract truth, as thus founded.
[120] Serm. 8th, at the Rolls.
[121] [Consult, in favor of the doctrine of necessity, atheistical writers generally; such as Fichte, Hegel, D’Holback, Comte, Crousse, Martineau, Leroux, and Holyoake—also, Belsham’s Essays, Collins on Liberty, Crombie on Phil. Necessity, Hobbes’ Liberty and Necessity, and Leviathan, Priestley on Liberty, Hartley on Man, and Edwards on the Will.Against the doctrine, see Beattie’s Works, Part 2; Replies to Hobbes by Bramhall and Lawson; Replies to Priestley by Palmer and Bryant; Grove on Liberty; Clarke’s Sermons at the Boyle Lectures; Gibb’s Contemplations; King’s Origin of Evil; Reid on the Mind; Watts on Liberty; Harris’ Boyle Lectures; Jackson’s Defence; Butterworth on Moral Government.]
[122] [Maimonides makes use of the following similitude. “Suppose one of good understanding, whose mother had died soon after he was born to be brought up on an island, where he saw no human being but his father nor the female of any beast. This person when grown up inquires how men are produced. He is told that they are bred in the womb of one of the same species and that while in the womb we are very small and there move and are nourished. The young man inquires whether when thus in the womb we did not eat, and drink, and breathe, as we do now, and is answered, No. Then he denies it, and offers demonstration that it could not be so. For says he, if either of us cease to breathe our life is gone; and how could we have lived close shut up in a womb for months? So if we cease to eat and drink, we die, and how could the child live so for months? and thus he satisfies himself that it is impossible man should come into existence in such a manner.”]
[123] [Let us imagine a person to be taken to view some great historical painting, before which hangs a thick curtain. The attendant raises the curtain a few inches. Can the spectator, from the unmeaning strip of foreground, derive any conception of the figures yet concealed? Much less is he able to criticize their proportions, or beauty, or perspective, or even the design of the artist? The small fragment of a tree, or flower, or animal, or building, may seem quite unmeaning and even ugly, though the whole would present beauty, fitness, or grandeur. Now the portion of God’s dominions within our survey, is as utterly insignificant, compared to the universe, and its interminable duration, as, an atom compared to a planet or a man’s age to eternity.The concluding observations of this chapter, abundantly remove every difficulty as to such ignorance being as valid against the proofs of religion, as it is against objections to it.]
[124] [No truly philosophical mind can be arrogant; because the wider the range of thought, the greater are the discoveries of our ignorance. The young student may well hesitate to decide points, on which the profoundest thinkers take opposite sides, and when conscious of inability intrust himself to the guidance of those whose lives are best.]
[129] P. 68, and Part II. chap. vi.
[130] Serm. at the Rolls, p. 312, 2d ed.
[134] [The remainder of this chapter is a recapitulation of the whole argument from the beginning; and should be carefully conned.]
[137] [There is a slight indication in this chapter that Butler falls into the old plan of settling the necessity of Christianity, before determining its truth. Paley discards this order of arrangement, in his very first sentence; and with good reason. The necessity of revelation is an abstraction; the proofs of it are patent facts. To hold in abeyance the credentials presented by Christianity, till we first satisfy ourselves that God could or would make any such announcements, is unphilosophical and irreverent. This chapter discusses the importance rather than the necessity of revelation; and so is a fitting commencement of the discussion. Every truth disclosed in revelation, over and above the truths which natural religion furnishes, proves the necessity of revelation, if we would know any thing of such truths. And it is such truths which constitute the very peculiarities of revelation, and teach the way of salvation, for the sinful and helpless.]
[138] [No one can read the writings of the great sages of antiquity without a full and sad conviction that in relation to the character of God, the sinfulness of man, the future state, and the rules of living, those prime points on which we need knowledge, they were almost profoundly ignorant. See on this point, Leland’s Adv. and Necess.: Chalmers’ Nat. Theol.: McCosh’s Div. Gov.: Pascal’s Thoughts: Warburton’s Div. Legation.]
[139] Invenis multos——propterea nolle fieri Christianos, quia quasi sufficiunt sibi de bona vita sua. Bene vivere opus est, ait. Quid mihi præcepturus est Christus? Ut bene vivam? Jam bene vivo. Quid mihi necessarius est Christus; nullum homicidium, nullum furtum, nullam rapinam facio, res alienas non concupisco, nullo adulterio contaminor? Nam inveniatur in vita mea aliquid quod reprehendatur, et qui reprehenderit faciat Christianum. Aug. in Psal. xxxi. [You find many who refuse to become Christians, because they feel sufficient of themselves to lead a good life. “We ought to live well.” says one. “What will Christ teach me? To live well? I do live well, what need then have I of Christ? I commit no murder, no theft, no robbery. I covet no man’s goods, and am polluted by no adultery. Let some one find in me any thing to censure, and he who can do so, may make me a Christian.”]
[140] [The true mode of distinguishing a temporary, local, or individual command from such as are of universal and perpetual obligation, is well laid down by Wayland, Mor. Sci. ch. ix. sec. 2.]
[141] [Natural religion shows us the danger of sin; but not the infinite danger of eternal retribution, and the hopelessness of restoration after death. And as to the efficacy of repentance, it rather opposes that doctrine than teaches it. At least it does not teach that repentance may be accepted, so as not only to cancel guilt, but restore to the favor of God.]
[142] [“Christianity was left with Christians, to be transmitted, in like manner as the religion of nature had been left, with mankind in general. There was however this difference that by an institution of external religion with a standing ministry for instruction and discipline, it pleased God to unite Christiana into visible churches, and all along to preserve them over a great part of the world, and thus perpetuate a general publication of the Gospel.” Butler’s sermon before the Soc. for Prop. the Gospel. He goes on to show, in that discourse, that these churches, however corrupt any may become, are repositories for the written oracles of God, and so carry the antidote to their heresies.]
[143] Rev. xxii. 11.
[144] [“It is no real objection to this, though it may seem so at first sight, to say that since Christianity is a remedial system, designed to obviate those very evils which have been produced by the neglect and abuse of the light of nature, it ought not to be liable to the same perversions. Because—1. Christianity is not designed primarily to remedy the defects of nature, but of an unnatural state of ruin into which men were brought by the Fall. And 2. It is remedial of the defects of nature in a great degree, by its giving additional advantages. 3. It might be impossible that it should be remedial in a greater degree than it is, without destroying man’s free agency; which would be to destroy its own end, the practice of virtue.”—Fitzgerald’s Notes.]
[145] [Chalmers (Nat. Theol., b. v. ch. iv.) makes this very plain. He shows the ethics of natural religion to be one thing and its objects another. Natural religion discloses no Redeemer or Sanctifier; but it teaches how we should regard such a person, if there be one. It teaches love and conformity to such a being by the relation in which we of course stand to him. How we are to express that love and obedience it cannot teach.]
[146] See The Nature, Obligation, and Efficacy, of the Christian Sacraments, &c., [by Waterland,] and Colliber of Revealed Religion, as there quoted.
[147] [If Christianity were but “a republication of natural religion,” or as Tindall says, “as old as creation,” why do deists oppose it? It does indeed republish natural religion, but it adds stupendous truths beside. If it gave us no new light, no new motives, it would be but a tremendous curse, making us all the more responsible, and none the more instructed or secure.]
[150] John iii. 5.
[151] This is the distinction between moral and positive precepts considered respectively as such. But yet, since the latter have somewhat of a moral nature, we may see the reason of them, considered in this view. Moral and positive precepts are in some respects alike, in other respects different. So far as they are alike, we discern the reasons of both; so far as they are different, we discern the reasons of the former, but not of the latter. See p. 189, &c.
[152] [Without offering the least objection to what is here said of the comparative value of moral and positive institutions, it should not be overlooked that sometimes, obedience to a positive rite is more indicative of an obedient spirit, than obedience to a moral rule. The latter is urged by its intrinsic propriety, over and above the command, and appeals to several of our finer impulses. The former rests singly on our reverence for the will of God. There are many who would repel a temptation to steal, or to lie, who yet are insensible to the duty of baptism or the Lord’s supper.]
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