The Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature. Butler Joseph
any more than a telescope.—It is not pretended that vision, hearing, &c. can be traced clear up to the percipient; but so far as we can trace perceptions, the organ does not perceive.—In dreams we perceive without organs.—When we lose a limb we do not lose the directing power; we could move a new one, if it could be made, or a wooden one. But the limb cut off has no power of moving.—Thus, our loss of the organs of perception and motion, not being the destruction of the power, there is no ground to think that the destruction of other organs or instruments would destroy us.
Objection. These observations apply equally to brutes.Ans. 1. Be it so. Perhaps they are immortal:—may hereafter improve: we know not what latent powers they may have.1.) The human being at one period looks as little likely to make great intellectual attainments; for a long time he has capacities for virtue and religion, but cannot use them.2.) Many persons go out of the world who never became able to exercise these capacities; e.g. infants.Ans. 2. If brutes were immortal, it does not prove them to be moral agents.1.) It may be necessary, for aught we know, that there should be living creatures not moral agents, nor rational.2.) All difficulties as to what would become of them, are founded in our ignorance.
2. That our souls, though not material, so depend upon the bodily structure, that we cannot survive its destruction.Ans. 1. Reason, memory, &c. do not depend on the body, as perceptions by the senses do. Death may destroy those instruments, and yet not destroy the powers of reflection.Ans. 2. Human beings exist, here, in two very different states, each having its own laws: sensation and reflection. By the first we feel; by the second we reason and will.1.) Nothing which we know to be destroyed at death, is necessary to reflecting on ideas formerly received.2.) Though the senses act like scaffolds, or levers, to bring in ideas, yet when once in, we can reflect, &c. without their aid.Ans. 3. There are diseases which prove fatal, &c., yet do not, in any part of their course, impair the intellect; and this indicates that they do not destroy it.1.) In the diseases alluded to, persons have their reflective power, in full, the very moment before death.2.) Now, why should a disease, at a certain degree, utterly destroy powers which were not even affected by it, up to that point?
3. That death at least suspends our reflective powers, or interrupts our continuing to exist in the like state of reflection which we do now.Ans. There appears so little connection between our powers of sensation and our powers of reflection that we cannot presume that what might destroy the former, could even suspend the latter.1.) We daily see reason, memory, &c. exercised without any assistance, that we know of, from our bodies.2.) Seeing them in lively exercise to the last, we must infer that death is not a discontinuance of their exercise, nor of the enjoyments and sufferings of such exercise.3.) Our posthumous life may be but a going on, with additions. Like the change at our birth—which produced not a suspension of the faculties we had before, nor a total change in our state of life; but a continuance of both, with great alterations.4.) Death may but at once put us into a higher state of life, as our birth did; our relation to bodily organs may be the only hinderance to our entering a higher condition of the reflective powers.5.) Were we even sure that death would suspend our intellectual powers, it would not furnish even the lowest probability that it would destroy them.
Objec. From the analogy of plants.Ans. This furnishes poets with apt illustrations of our frailty, but affords no proper analogy. Plants are destitute of perception and action, and this is the very matter in question.
REMARKS.
1. It has been shown, that confining ourselves to what we know, we see no probability of ever ceasing to be:—it cannot be concluded from the reason of the thing:—nor from the analogy of nature.
2. We are therefore to go upon the belief of a future existence.
3. Our going into new scenes and conditions, is just as natural as our coming into the world.
4. Our condition may naturally be a social one.
5. The advantages of it may naturally be bestowed, according to some fixed law, in proportion to one’s degrees in virtue.1.) Perhaps not so much as now by society; but by God’s more immediate action.2.) Yet this will be no less natural, i.e. stated, fixed, or settled.3.) Our notions of what is natural, are enlarged by greater knowledge of God and his works.4.) There may be some beings in the world, to whom the whole of Christianity is as natural as the visible course of nature seems to us.
6. These probabilities of a future life, though they do not satisfy curiosity, answer all the purposes of religion, as well as demonstration.1.) Even a demonstration of a future state, would not demonstrate religion, but would be reconcilable with atheism.2.) But as religion implies a future state, any presumption against such a state, would be a presumption against religion.3.) The foregoing observations remove all presumptions of that sort, and prove to a great probability, a fundamental doctrine of religion.
CHAPTER II.
THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD BY REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.
The question of a future life is rendered momentous by our capacity for happiness and misery.
Especially if that happiness or misery depends on our present conduct.
We should feel the deepest solicitude on this subject.
And that if there were no proof of a future life and interest, other than the probabilities just discussed.
I. In the present world our pleasures and pains are, to a great extent, in our own power.
1. We see them to be consequences of our actions.
2. And we can foresee these consequences.
3. Our desires are not gratified, without the right kind of exertion.
4. By prudence we may enjoy life; rashness, or even neglect may make us miserable.
5. Why this is so is another matter.1.) It may be impossible to be otherwise.2.) Or it may be best on the whole.3.) Or God’s plan may be to make only the good happy.4.) Or the whole plan may be incomprehensible to us.
Objec. It may be said “this is only the course of nature.”Ans. It is granted: but1. The course of nature is but the will of God. We admit that God is the natural governor of the world: and must not turn round and deny it because his government is uniform.2. Our natural foresight of the consequences of actions, is his appointment.3. The consequences themselves, are his appointment.4. Our ability to foresee these consequences, is God’s instruction how we are to act.
Objec. By this reasoning we are instructed to gratify our appetites, and such gratification is our reward for so doing.Ans. Certainly not. Foreseen pleasures and pains are proper motives to action in general; but we may, in particular cases, damage ourselves by indulgence. Our eyes are made to see with, but not to look at every thing:—for instance the sun.
It follows, from what has been said, that
II. We are, now, actually under God’s government, in the strictest sense.
1. Admitting that there is a God, it is not so much a matter of speculation, as of experience, that he governs us.
2. The annexing of pleasures and pains to certain actions, and giving notice them, is the very essence of government.
3. Whether by direct acts upon us, or by contriving a general plan, does not affect the argument.1.) If magistrates could make laws which should execute themselves, their government would be far more perfect than it is.2.) God’s making fire burn us, is as much an instance of government, as if he directly inflicted the burn, whenever we touched fire.
4. Hence the analogy of nature shows nothing to render incredible the Bible doctrine of God’s rewarding or punishing