64 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF BISHOP BUTLER. 



third, the essential equipment of a true investigator and in harmony 

 with a temper of mind " eminently English." 



To anyone here who, having begun reading his works, has 

 abandoned the attempt, my counsel is — Gird up your loins and 

 resolutely begin again, remembering always that his arguments in 



Analogy " are especially addressed not to Atheists but to Deists 

 generally, and particularly to such persons " as can judge without 

 thinking, and such as can censure without judging ; " to those 

 who do not pretend that Christianity is proved false, but say the 

 evidence is unsatisfactory and surrounded with many difficulties. 

 To these objections he replies that in matters of our everyday 

 common world life we continually act upon evidence no stronger, 

 being guided by Probability ; and that the difficulties connected 

 with the Christian religion are of the same kind as those found in 

 Natural religion, so that a man sane enough to believe in the God 

 of nature must, if logically consistent, believe in the God of The 

 Bible — the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This 

 reasoning receives reinforcement from the testimony of Conscience, 

 concerning which he tells us : " You cannot form a notion of this 

 faculty, conscience, without taking in judgment, direction, superin- 

 tendency. This is a constituent part of the idea, that is, of the 

 faculty itself ; and to preside and to govern, from the very economy 

 and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength as it has 

 right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely 

 govern the world." (Sermon ii, on " Human Nature.") In this 

 manner Butler may be said to have prepared the way intellectually 

 for the preaching of the Gospel of Salvation proclaimed by John 

 Wesley. 



