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 Butler was
born in 1692 and ordained in 1718. In 1726 he published Fifteen Sermons,
preached at the Rolls Chapel in London, and chiefly dealing with human
nature and its implications for ethics and practical Christian life. He
maintained that it is normal for a man to have an instinct of self-interest,
which leads him to seek his own good, and equally normal for him to have an
instinct of benevolence, which leads him to seek the good of others
individually and generally, and that the two aims do not in fact conflict.
He served as parish priest in several parishes, and in 1736 was appointed
chaplain to Queen Caroline, wife of King George II. In the same year he
published his masterpiece, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, To
the Constitution and Course of Nature (often cited simply as "Butler's
Analogy"), a work chiefly directed against Deism, of which more will be said
below. Appended to the main work was a treatise, Of the Nature of Virtue,
which establishes him as one of the foremost British writers on ethics, or
moral philosophy.
When the Queen died in 1737, Butler was made Bishop of Bristol. (In England
at that time, bishoprics and parish churches were supported each by a
separate source of income that had been established for it perhaps centuries
earlier, and in consequence the funding was very unequal. Bristol, being the
lowest paid of all bishoprics, was where a new bishop usually started.
Later, he might be promoted to another diocese. The Reform movement of the
1830's and its aftermath have remedied this situation.) However, George II
had been impressed with him earlier, and in 1746 he was called back to court
and the next year offered the post of Archbishop of Canterbury. He refused
the post, but in 1750 he became Bishop of Durham (in the north of England,
near the Scottish border, and well known even then as having a tradition of
bishops whose speeches and writings attract public attention). He died there
on 16 June 1752.
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