Main texts: the Butler-Clarke letters

Introduction

This chapter discusses the correspondence between the youthful Butler and Samuel Clarke, who, although prevented by his suspected Trinitarian heterodoxy from high office in the Church, was the friend and translator of Isaac Newton and was at this time considered Britain's leading metaphysician. Clarke had given the Boyle lectures for 1704 and 1705 and published them under the titles, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God: more particularly in answer to Mr. Hobbs, Spinoza, and their Followers. Wherein the Notion of Liberty is Stated, and the Possibility and Certainty of it Proved, in Opposition to Necessity and Fate (1705) and A Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation (1706). Butler read at least the 1705 volume.

The correspondence, which extends from 1713 to 1717, may best be examined in three groups. The first consists of five letters by Butler about two points arising from the lectures, together with Clarke's five replies. These ten letters date from 4 November 1713 to 8 April 1714. Clarke published them, together with a reply to another anonymous critic, as Several Letters to the Reverend Dr. Clarke, from a Gentleman in Glocestershire, relating to the first Volume of the Sermons preached at Mr. Boyle's Lecture; with the Dr's Answers thereunto. They appeared both as an addendum to the fourth edition of the lectures and in the volume of correspondence between Clarke and Leibniz. Clarke was probably all the more happy to publish the exchange because, in the light of concerns raised in Convocation by his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712), he had complied with the suggestion that he desist from writing about Trinitarian doctrine.

Only a single item of the second group of letters survives, sent by Butler from London and dated April 1714. The third group, of three letters from Butler and two replies by Clarke, were written in a burst between 30 September and 10 October 1717, when Butler, having at last conformed, was a commoner at Oriel College, Oxford. The second and third groups were not published until the nineteenth century, although the third group, expunged of the more personal passages, was projected for publication by Clarke with the ‘next edition’ of the Leibniz correspondence, from which we can surmise that there were no further relevant letters by Butler.