The Scientific Evidences of Revealed Religion (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1900 Excerpt: ... VI BISHOP BUTLER'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES The "Analogy" of Bishop Butler was given to the world in the year 1736. In the same year of grace was born the orator, statesman, and first governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry, who in mature life made the Analogy his serious study, published an edition of it, and bequeathed it to his countrymen as a cure for the scepticism which had been coming in with the French Alliance during the Revolution. It is probable that this was the first American issue of the work. A hundred years have passed, and another great churchman and statesman, an English kinsman of Henry, Mr. Gladstone, has also published the Analogy, and stood forth as its champion among the leading thinkers of the age. The fresh interest thus aroused in Butler's writings would seem to make this juncture a fitting time in which to renew our estimate of his contribution to the Evidences of Christianity. Bishop Butler has strong claims upon American churchmen of all classes. In advance of modern schools of churchmanship, he illustrated much that was best in each of them. First of all, he was an evangelical churchman. Bred a Presbyterian non-conformist, he never lost that type of doctrinal belief which is common to the Confession of Faith and the Articles of Religion and expressed in portions of the Daily and Communion offices. It underlies and pervades Lis whole argument, especially in the chapters on the "Opinion of Necessity" and the "Appointment of a Mediator." An evangelical, yet he was also a Catholic churchman. A century before the appearance of the Oxford tracts and the Christian Year, he enunciated some of the leading principles of those epoch-making works. On both rational and historic grounds he argued that the visible Church was essent...