Butler's Analogy of Religion answers the deists; CCWV.LIFE

In 1736 Joseph Butler, Bishop of Bristol, publishes The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed. Butler answers the deists on their own ground: the difficulties they urge against revelation, obscurity and apparent arbitrariness, stand equally in the constitution of nature itself. The Analogy becomes the classic orthodox reply and a set text of English theology for a century.

Tagged: Deism

The Event

Date: 1736 (exact)
Era: The Deist Controversy; Standard periodization of deist history
Location: Oxford; today Oxford, England
Traditions: Deism
Streams: Deism
Key figures: Joseph Butler
Key texts: The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed

Connections

Illustration for Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation

History Event Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation 1730 written to answer the deist case at its strongest

Primary Sources

Butler, Joseph. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed. London, 1736.

Secondary Sources

Barnett, S. J. The Enlightenment and Religion: The Myths of Modernity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
Byrne, Peter. Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism. London: Routledge, 1989.
Walters, Kerry S. The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.

Provenance: HIST-1365; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.