CHAPTER XI.

BUTLER.

It is somewhat remarkable that two such eminent prelates in the English Church as Butler and Secker, the one born in 1692, the other in 1693, should both have been bred among Dissenters from that Church. Butler was intended by his father for the ministry among the Presbyterians. But whilst yet very young, he examined closely the principles of the Dissenters, and rejected them for the doctrines of the Church of England. The powers of his mind were great, clear, and comprehensive; and, from his deep learning and pious regard for virtue and religion, arose that excellent and immortal work entitled, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed.

The first chapter of that work treats " Of a future Life," and, as from the continuous chain of argument which connects together the whole of this chapter, it is difficult, without grievous muti

lation, to separate any one part from the remainder, it shall be here given entire.

ments.

Strange difficulties have been raised by some concerning personal identity, or the sameness of living agents, implied in the notion of our existing now and hereafter, or in any two successive moBut without regard to any of them here, let us consider what the analogy of nature, and the several changes which we have undergone, and those which we know we may undergo without being destroyed, suggest, as to the effect which death may or may not have upon us; and whether it be not from thence probable, that we may survive this change, and exist in a future state of life and perception.

I. From our being born into the present world in the helpless imperfect state of infancy, and having arrived from thence to mature age, we find it to be a general law of nature in our own species, that the same creatures, the same individuals, should exist in degrees of life and perception, with capacities of action, of enjoyment and suffering, in one period of their being, greatly different from those appointed them in another period of it. And in other creatures the same law holds. For the difference of their capacities and states of life at

their birth (to go no higher) and in maturity; the change of worms into flies, and the vast enlargement of their locomotive powers by such change: and birds and insects bursting the shell, their habitation, and by this means entering into a new world, furnished with new accommodations for them, and finding a new sphere of action assigned them; these are instances of this general law of nature. Thus all the various and wonderful transformations of animals are to be taken into consideration here. But the states of life in which we ourselves existed formerly in the womb and in our infancy, are almost as different from our present in mature age, as it is possible to conceive any two states or degrees of life can be. Therefore that we are to exist hereafter in a state as different (suppose) from our present, as this is from our former, is but according to the analogy of nature; according to a natural order or appointment of the very same kind, with what we have already experienced.

II. We know we are endued with capacities of action, of happiness and misery; for we are conscious of acting, of enjoying pleasure, and suffering pain. Now, that we have these powers and capacities before death, is a presumption that we shall retain them through and after death; indeed a probability of it abundantly sufficient to act upon,

unless there be some positive reason to think that death is the destruction of those living powers; because there is in every case a probability that all things will continue, as we experience they are, in all respects, except those in which we have some reason to think they will be altered. This is that kind of presumption or probability from analogy expressed in the very word continuance, which seems our only natural reason for believing the course of the world will continue to-morrow, as it has done so far as our experience or knowledge of history can carry us back. Nay, it seems our only reason for believing, that any one substance now existing, will continue to exist a moment longer, the self-existent substance only excepted. Thus, if men were assured that the unknown event, death, was not the destruction of our faculties of perception and of action, there would be no apprehension that any other power or event unconnected with this of death, would destroy these faculties just at the instant of each creature's death; and, therefore, no doubt but that they would remain after it, which shews the high probability that our living powers will continue after death, unless there be some

I say kind of presumption or probability, for I do not mean to affirm that there is the same degree of conviction, that our living powers will continue after death, as there is that our substances will.

ground to think that death is their destruction *. For, if it would be in a manner certain that we should survive death, provided it were certain that death would not be our destruction, it must be highly probable we shall survive it, if there be no ground to think death will be our destruction.

Now though I think it must be acknowledged, that prior to the natural and moral proofs of a future life commonly insisted upon, there would arise a general confused suspicion, that in the great shock and alteration which we shall undergo by death, we, i. e. our living powers, might be wholly destroyed; yet even prior to those proofs, there is really no particular distinct ground or reason for this apprehension at all, so far as I can find. If there be, it must arise either from the reason of the thing, or from the analogy of nature.

But we cannot argue from the reason of the

* Destruction of living powers is a manner of expression unavoidably ambiguous, and may signify either the destruction of a living being, so as that the same living being shall be incapable of ever perceiving or acting again at all: or the destruction of those means and instruments by which it is capable of it's present life, of it's present state of perception and of action. It is here used in the former sense. When it is used in the latter, the epithet present is added. The loss of a man's eye is a destruction of living powers in the latter sense. But we have no reason to think the destruction of living powers, in the former sense, to be possible. We have no more reason to think a being endued with living powers ever loses them during its whole existence, than to believe that a stone ever acquires them.

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