Butler, Joseph(1692–1752)
Though he has not left us a complete philosophical system, Joseph Butler produced a moral philosophy that is still held in the highest esteem, and a philosophical theology of considerable long-term value. Butler was the eighth child of a prosperous draper. His father enrolled him in a dissenting academy, but he decided to join the established church and entered Oriel College, Oxford, in 1714. While still at school he had engaged in a philosophical correspondence with Samuel Clarke and at Oxford was befriended by Edward Talbot, son of the Bishop of Salisbury. Clarke and Talbot's father were instrumental in Butler's being appointed, after graduation, as Preacher at the Chapel of the Rolls. A selection of his sermons there was published in 1726 under the title Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel. In 1729 a second edition appeared, with an important new preface. Bishop Talbot's patronage continued with Butler's entering the living of Haughton, and later that of Stanhope, in Talbot's later diocese of Durham. While at Stanhope Butler wrote his other major work, of which the full title is The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. This appeared in 1736, and appeared in a second edition in the same year.
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