The Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature: To which are added two brief dissertations: I. On personal identity. II. On the nature of virtue.Butler, Joseph
Religion
The Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature: To which are added two brief dissertations: I. On personal identity. II. On the nature of virtue.
Butler, Joseph
Analogy (Religion); Apologetics -- Early works to 1800; Eschatology; Natural theology; Revelation
Several of the observations here made may well seem strange, perhaps
unintelligible, to many good men. But if the persons for whose sake
they are made think so, (persons who object as above, and throw off all
regard to religion under pretence of want of evidence;) I desire them
to consider again, whether their thinking so be owing to any thing
unintelligible in these observations, or to their own not having such
a sense of religion and serious solicitude about it, as even their
state of scepticism does in all reason require? It ought to be forced
upon the reflection of these persons, that our nature and condition
necessarily require us, in the daily course of life, to act upon
evidence much lower than what is commonly called probable: to guard,
not only against what we fully believe will, but also against what we
think it supposable may, happen; and to engage in pursuits when the
probability is greatly against success, if it even be credible, that
possibly we may succeed in them.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PARTICULAR EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY.
The presumptions against revelation, and objections against the general
scheme of Christianity, and particular things relating to it, being
removed, there remains to be considered, what positive evidence we
have for the truth of it; chiefly in order to see, what the analogy
of nature suggests with regard to that evidence, and the objections
against it: or to see what is, and is allowed to be, the plain
natural rule of judgment and of action, in our temporal concerns, in
cases where we have the same kind of evidence, and the same kind of
objections against it, that we have in the case before us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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