Note 128 — Chapter XVI · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

It has been commonly assumed that after Chubb and Morgan the deistic movement in England “decayed,” or “passed into skepticism” with Hume; and that the decay was mainly owing to the persuasive effect of Bishop Butler’s Analogy (1736).128 This appears to be a complete misconception, arising out of the habit of looking to the mere succession of books without considering their vogue and the accompanying social conditions. Butler’s book had very little influence till long after his death,129 being indeed very ill-fitted to turn contemporary deists to Christianity. It does but develop one form of the skeptical argument for faith, as Berkeley had developed another; and that form of reasoning never does attain to anything better than a success of despair. The main argument being that natural religion is open to the same objections as revealed, on the score (1) of the inconsistency of Nature with divine benevolence, and (2) that we must be guided in opinion as in conduct by probability, a Mohammedan could as well use the theorem for the Koran as could a Christian for the Bible; and the argument against the justice of Nature tended logically to atheism. But the deists had left to them the resource of our modern theists—that of surmising a beneficence above human comprehension; and it is clear that if Butler made any converts they must have been of a very unenthusiastic kind. It is therefore safe to say with Pattison that “To whatever causes is to be attributed the decline of deism from 1750 onwards, the books polemically written against it cannot be reckoned among them.”130