Alderman—Bibliographical Evidence of Shaftesbury, 67 
motives are the purest and most sublime; but which are most use¬ 
ful, and most effectual, to prevail with degenerate man and accom¬ 
plish his regeneration. ^ ’ The answer is clearly implied in the title. 
Joseph Butler (1692-1762) was both a friend and foe of Shaftes¬ 
bury. In his Preface to the 1729 edition of .the Fifteen Sermons 
he gives not a little space to the discussion of Shaftesbury’s teach¬ 
ings. In fact the Third Earl is the only one to whom he does give 
elaborate or explicit attention. Although he readily admits him 
to be authoritative in the main, and says that ^^he has shown be¬ 
yond all contradiction that virtue is naturally the interest or hap¬ 
piness, and vice the misery, of such a creature as man, placed in 
the circumstances which we are in this world,” he cannot accept 
as adequate his moral sense” as a guide to correct action. 
Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753) in the third Dialogue of Alciphron, 
or the Minute Philosopher (1732), adopts a kind of Theological 
Utilitarianism not unlike that of Locke. ^^Alciphron, adapting 
Shaftesbury, reduces conscience to a taste, enlarges upon the 
beauty of virtue, and disparages faith in a future life as a selfish 
and cowardly appeal to hope and fear. Against this Euphranor 
maintains that a sense of the beauty of goodness is inadequate for 
making us good, as man needs for this a stronger and more awe¬ 
inspiring motive than taste: the springs of action must be sus¬ 
tained by faith in the destiny of man under God. ’ A strange 
answer to Berkeley appeared two years after the Minute Philos¬ 
opher under the title A Vindication of the Beverend D -B——Y 
from the scandalous imputation of being the author of the late 
book entitled Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher. Affecting 
to believe Berkeley’s attack a forgery, the author refutes it with 
passages from Shaftesbury, and with statements none too friendly 
toward orthodoxy. 
A country clergyman by the name of Elisha Smith came forward 
in 1736 with The Cure of Deism. In the title he charges Tindal 
and Shaftesbury with having given a ‘Wery imperfect account of 
the religion of Nature, and of Christianity,” and proposes ^Uhe 
Mediatorial scheme of Jesus Christ” as *Ghe only true Eeligion.” 
The work proved to be of great interest and was reprinted in octavo 
form in 1737, 1739, and 1740. This is especially interesting in 
that it shows the constant tendency of the time to regard Shaftes¬ 
bury as an open enemy to all those things sacred to orthodoxy. 
Dr. War burton, who in his Dedication of the Divine Legation to 
Fraser in Preface to Aleiphron in Worlcs, Oxford, 1901. Vol. II, p. 10. 
