The Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature / To which are added two brief dissertations: I. On personal identity. II. On the nature of virtue.

by Joseph Butler

CONCLUSION.

This account of Christianity shows our great obligation to study the Scriptures.

CHAPTER II.
PRESUMPTIONS AGAINST A REVELATION, CONSIDERED AS MIRACULOUS.

Having shown the need of revelation, we now examine the presumptions against it.

The analogy of nature is generally supposed to afford presumptions against miracles.

They are deemed to require stronger evidence than other events.

I. Analogy furnishes no presumptions against the general scheme of Christianity.

• 1. It is no presumption against Christianity, that it is not the discovery of reason, or of experience.
• 2. Nor is it a presumption against Christianity, that it contains things unlike the apparent course of nature.
  • 1.) We cannot suppose every thing, in the vast universe, to be just like what is the course of nature in this little world.
  • 2.) Even within the present compass of our knowledge, we see many things greatly unlike.
• 3. If we choose to call what is unlike our known course of things, miraculous, still that does not make it improbable.

II. There is no presumption against such a revelation, as we should now call miraculous, being made, at the beginning of the world.

• 1. There was then no course of nature, as to this world.
• 2. Whether man then received a revelation involves a question not of miracles, but of fact.
• 3. Creation was a very different exertion of power from that which rules the world, now it is made.
• 4. Whether the power of forming stopped when man was made; or went on, and formed a religion for him, is merely a question as to the degree or extent, to which a power was exerted.
• 5. There is then no presumption from analogy against supposing man had a revelation when created.
• 6. All tradition and history teaches that he had, which amounts to a real and material proof.

III. There is no presumption against miracles, or a miraculous revelation, after the course of nature was settled.

• 1. Such a presumption, requires the adduction of some parallel case.
• 2. This would require us to know the history of some other world.
• 3. Even then, if drawn from only one other world, the presumption would be very precarious.
• To be more particular,
• 1. There is a strong presumption against any truth till it is proved—which yet is overcome by almost any proof.
  • —Hence the question of a presumption against miracles, involves only the degree of presumption, (not whether the presumption is peculiar to miracles,) and whether that degree is such as to render them incredible.
• 2. If we leave out religion, we are in total darkness as to the cause or circumstances on which the course of nature depends.
  • —Five or six thousand years may have given occasion and reasons for miraculous interpositions of Providence.
• 3. Taking in religion, there are distinct reasons for miracles; to afford additional instruction; to attest the truth of instruction.
• 4. Miracles must not be compared with common events, but with uncommon; earthquakes, pestilence, &c.