the senses, as men are, than a religion of such a frame as should in its exercise require the joint exertions of the body and the mind. On the other hand, when penetrated with the dignity and importance of "the first and great commandment," love to God, he set himself to enquire, what those movements of the heart are, which are due to Him, the Author and cause of all things; he found, in the coolest way of consideration, that God is the natural object of the same affections of gratitude, reverence, fear, desire of approbation, trust, and dependence, the saine affections in kind, though doubtless in a very disproportionate degree, which any one would feel from contemplating a perfect character in a creature, in which goodness, with wisdom and power, are supposed to be the predominant qualities, with the further circumstance that this creature was also his governor and friend. The subject is manifestly a real one; there is noth ag in it fanciful or unreasonable: This way of being affected towards God is piety, in the strictest sense: This is religion, considered as a habit of mind; a religion, suited to the nature and condition of man t. II. From superstition to popery the transition is easy: No wonder then, that, in the progress of detraction, the simple imputation of the former of these, with which the attack on the character of our author was opened, should be followed by the more aggravated imputation of the latter. Nothing, I think, can fairly be gathered in support of such a suggestion from the Charge, in which popery is barely mentioned, and occasionally only, and in a sentence or two; yet even there, it should be remarked, the Bishop takes care to describe the peculiar observances required by it," some, as in themselves, wrong and superstitious, and others of them as being made subservient to *Matth. xxii. 38. See note [B], at the end of this preface. 1 the purposes of superstition." With respect to his other writings, any one at all conversant with them needs not to be told, that the matters treated of both in his Sermans and his Analogy did, none of them, directly lead him to consider, and much less to combat, the opinions, whether relating to faith or worship, which are peculiar to the church of Rome: It might therefore have happened, yet without any just conclusion arising from thence, of being himself inclined to favour those opinions, that he had never mentioned, so much as incidentally, the subject of popery at all. But fortunately for the reputation of the Bishop, and to the eternal disgrace of his calum niators, even this poor resource is wanting to support their malevolence. In his Sermon at St Bride's before the Lord Mayor in 1740, after having said that, “Our laws, and whole constitution, go more upon supposition of an equality amongst mankind, than the constitution and laws of other countries;", he goes on to observe, that "this plainly requires, that more particular regard should be had to the education of the lower people here, than in places where they are born slaves of power, and to be made slaves of superstition*:" meaning evidently in this place by the general term superstition, the particular errors of the Romanists. This is something; but we have a still plainer indication what his sentiments concerning popery really were, from another of his additional SerI mean that before the House of Lords on June the 11th, 1747, the anniversary of his late majesty's accession. The passage alluded to is as follows; and my readers will not be displeased that I give it them at length. "The value of our religious establishment ought to be very much heightened in our esteem, by considering what it is a security from; I mean that great corruption of Christianity, popery, which is ever hard at work to bring us again un mons, * Ser. XVII. der its yoke. Whoever will consider the popish claims, to the disposal of the whole earth, as of divine right, to dispense with the most sacred engagements, the claims to supreme absolute authority in religion; in short, the general claims which the Canonists express by the words, plenitude of power-whoever, I say, will consider popery as it is professed at Rome, may see, that it is manifest open usurpation of all human and divine authority. But even in those Roman-catholic countries where these monstrous claims are not admitted, and the civil power does, in many respects, restrain the papal; yet persecution is professed, as it is absolutely injoined by what is acknowledged to be their highest authority, a general council, so called, with the pope at the head of it; and is practised in all of them, I think without exception, where it can be done safely. Thus they go on to substitute force instead of argument; and external profession made by force instead of reasonable conviction. And thus corruptions of the grossest sort have been in vogue, for many generations, in many parts of Christendom; and are so still, even where popery obtains in its least absurd form: and their antiquity and wide extent are insisted upon as proofs of their truth; a kind of proof, which at best can only be presumptive, but which loses all its little weight, in proportion as the long and large prevalence of such corruptions have been obtained by force *." In another part of the same Sermon, where he is again speaking of our ecclesiastical constitution, he reminds his audience that it is to be valued, "not because it leaves us at liberty to have as little religion as we please, without being accountable to human judicatories; but because-it exhibits to our view, and enforces upon our consciences, genuine Christianity, free from the superstitions with which it is defiled in other countries;" which superstitions, he ob * Serm XX, serves, naturally tend to abate its force." The date. of this sermon should be here attended to. It was preached in June, 1747; that is, four years before the delivery and publication of the Charge, which was in the year 1751; and exactly five years before the Author died, which was in June 1752. We have then, in the passages now laid before the reader, a clear and unequivocal proof, brought down to within a few years of Bishop Butler's death, that popery was held by him in the utmost abhorrence, and that he regarded it in no other light, than as the great corruption of Christianity, and a manifest, open usur↳ pation of all human and divine authority. The argument is decisive; nor will any thing be of force to invalidate it, unless from some after-act during the short remainder of the Bishop's life, besides that of delivering and printing his Charge, (which, after what I have said here, and in the Notes added to this Preface and to the Charge, I must have leave to consider as affording no evidence at all of his inclination to papistical doctrines or ceremonies) the contrary shall incontrovertibly appear. སྙ ི III. One such after-act, however, has been alleged, which would effectually demolish all that we have urged in behalf of our prelate, were it true, as is pretended, that he died in the communion of the church of Rome. Had a story of this sort been invented and propagated by papists, the wonder might have been less : Hoc Ithacus velit, et magno mercentur Atridæ. But to the reproach of Protestantism, the fabrication of this calumny, for such we shall find it, originated from among ourselves. It is pretty remarkable that a circumstance so extraordinary should never have been divulged till the year 1767, fifteen years after the Bishop's decease. At that time Dr Thomas Secker was archbishop of Canterbury; who, of all others, was the most likely to know the truth or falsehood of the fact asserted, having been educated with our Author in his early youth, and having lived in a constant habit of intimacy with him to the very time of his death. The good archbishop was not silent on this occasion with a virtuous indignation he stood forth to protect the posthumous character of his friend; and in a public newspaper, under the signature of Misopseudes, called upon his accuser to support what he had advanced by whatever proofs he could. No proof, however, nor any thing like a proof, appeared in reply; and every man of sense and candour at that time was perfectly convinced the assertion was entirely groundless *. As a further confirmation of the rectitude of this judgment, it may not be amiss to mention, there is yet in existence a strong presumptive argument at least in its favour, drawn from the testimony of those who attended our Author in the sickness of which he died. The last days of this excellent Prelate were passed at Bath; Dr Nathaniel Forster, his chaplain, being continually with him; and for one day, and at the very end of his illness, Dr Martin Benson also, the then bishop of Gloucester, who shortened his own life in his pious haste to visit his dying friend. Both these persons constantly wrote letters to Dr Secker, then bishop of Oxford, containing accounts of Bishop Butler's declining health, and of the symptoms and progress of his disorder, which, as was conjectured, soon terminated in his death. These letters, which are still preserved in the Lambeth library †, I have read; and not the slenderest argument can be collected from them, in justification of the ridiculous slander we are here considering. If at that awful season the Bishop was not known to have expressed any opinion, tending to shew his dislike to Popery; neither was he known to have said any thing, that could at * See note [C], at the end of this preface. C |