Main texts: The six occasional sermons, 1739–48

Introduction

In Fifteen Sermons and The Analogy Butler was concerned with giving an account of the human mind, the introvert (self-love) and extrovert (benevolence), the dynamic relationship between them prompted by the conscience and the fundamentally ethical nature of the consciousness. In the last chapter we looked at several texts, mostly not intended for publication, which documented his personal application of his doctrine and the ministerial praxis founded on it. In the present chapter we turn to the six occasional sermons on questions of public policy. It is to be expected that such documents will be exemplars of the charitable application of benevolence and of the obligations and proper social relations of the Butlerian Christian.

The point will not be laboured below, but the continuity of method will also be noticed: in whatever Butler undertakes he always establishes his position or course of action in relation to ethical principles, doing new thinking where necessary, but always taking bearings from his moral philosophy. There is always, therefore, a doctrinaire strain in Butler's preaching and writing, which was entirely appropriate to his understanding of his office. The concept of duty should be borne in mind when considering his legacy to the nineteenth-century Church.

Although these six sermons are of great historical importance, and some of exceptional intellectual distinction, they have been little noticed and perhaps have been avoided as period pieces, which, of course, occasional sermons should partly be. Given that Butler is known as a religious apologist and moral philosopher, it may surprise the reader to encounter discussions of things like parliamentary legislation, such as the Truck Acts and the Master and Servant Acts; developments in economic theory; the east coast coal and shipping industries; the organization of the workhouse; the dangers of bureaucracy and institutionalization in charitable organizations; and the social implications of new technology. It reminds us that his chaplain, Josiah Tucker, moved from anti-Methodist polemic to political and economic questions (from internal evidence, very likely with Butler's encouragement) and that while it is true that ‘the “long eighteenth century” was not … an age of major interventionist reforms’ the essential theoretical and cultural groundwork for the nineteenth-century reforms was done at that time.