Butler, Joseph

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Butler, Joseph (1692–1752). Anglican bishop and philosopher. From 1718 to 1726 he was preacher at the Rolls Chapel, where his sermons won him fame. He then became a parish priest in Co. Durham, where he wrote his Analogy of Religion (1736). He was consecrated bishop of Bristol in 1738 and became bishop of Durham in 1750. His own mistrust of the irrational and of appeal to the praeternatural in religion is contained in his remark, ‘The pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.’

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