BUTLER, JOSEPH

English theologian and bishop of Durham; b. Wantage, Berkshire, England, May 18, 1692; d. Bath, June 16, 1752. Butler was the eighth and youngest child of a linen draper who reared him as a Presbyterian; he joined the Episcopal Church later and entered Oriel College, Oxford, in 1715, transferring to Cambridge on Sept. 30, 1717. He received the B.A. degree in 1718, was ordained deacon and priest in 1721 by Bp. William Talbot at Salisbury, and was appointed preacher at the Rolls Chapel, whence he delivered his famous "Sermons on Human Nature" (1726). In 1721 he received the B.C.L. degree and became prebendary of Salisbury. When Bishop Talbot was transferred to Durham, he gave Butler the rectory of Houghton-la-Skerne (1722) and the wealthy rectory of Stanhope (1725). In 1736 Butler was appointed clerk of the closet to Queen Caroline, who recommended his promotion in the church. In 1737 Caroline died, and George II arranged with Walpole for Butler's appointment to the impoverished See of Bristol. The sharp yet courteous letter of acceptance to Walpole indicated Butler's resentment. Butler was presented to St. Paul's attractive deanery in 1740, and made clerk of the closet to George II in 1746. He declined the primacy in 1747, explaining "it was too late to support a falling church," but in 1750 accepted the bishopric of Durham, where, after delivering a remonstrance, he urged the maintenance of churches and regular services. Earlier he had offered a plan for establishing Episcopal sees in the American colonies, but it remained unheeded.

Butler's Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736), serving as a retaliation against deistic writers who were attacking traditional theology, is widely accepted as the most solid defense of revealed religion during the 18th century. Cardinal J. H. Newman claimed that it "formed an era in his religious opinions." But others, such as John Stuart Mill, regarded the Analogy as a retort, not an exposition, and therefore skeptical in essence.

Bibliography: Works, ed. w. e. gladstone, 3 v. (London 1896); The Analogy of Religion, notes w. fitzgerald (Dublin 1849), with introd. e. c. mossner (New York 1961). a. e. baker, Bishop Butler (London 1923). e. c. mossner, Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason (New York 1936). a. e. taylor, Philosophical Studies (London 1934). y. m. j. congar, Catholicisme 2:336. j. homeyer, Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche, new eds. 2:844. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church 211. l. stephen, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900 3:519–524.

[m. a. frawley]