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.