First among such is the immortal work of Bishop Butler.  Wherever the English language is spoken, Butler’s ‘Analogy’ holds a distinguished place among English classics.  Published in the year 1736, when the excitement raised by ‘Christianity as old as the Creation’ was at its height, it was, as has been well remarked, ‘the result of twenty years’ study, the very twenty years during which the Deistical notions formed the atmosphere which educated people breathed.’[162] For those twenty years and longer still, the absolute certainty of God’s revelation of Himself in nature, and the absolute perfection of the religion founded on that revelation, in contradistinction to the uncertainty and imperfection of all traditional religions, had been the incessant cry of the new school of thought, a cry which had lately found its strongest and ablest expression in Tindal’s famous work.  It was to those who raised this cry, and to those who were likely to be influenced by it, that Butler’s famous argument was primarily addressed.  ‘You assert,’ he says in effect, ’that the law of nature is absolutely perfect and absolutely certain; I will show you that precisely the same kind of difficulties are found in nature as you find in revelation.’  Butler uttered no abuse, descended to no personalities such as spoiled too many of the anti-Deistical writings; but his book shows that his mind was positively steeped in Deistical literature.  Hardly an argument which the Deists had used is unnoticed; hardly an objection which they could raise is not anticipated.  But the very circumstance which constitutes one of the chief excellences of the ‘Analogy,’ its freedom from polemical bitterness, has been the principal cause of its being misunderstood.  To do any kind of justice to the book, it must be read in the light of Deism.  Had this obvious caution been always observed, such objections as those of Pitt, that ’it was a dangerous book, raising more doubts than it solves,’ would never have been heard; for at the time when it was written, the doubts were everywhere current.  Similar objections have been raised against the ‘Analogy’ in modern days, but the popular verdict will not be easily reversed.

Next in importance to Butler’s ‘Analogy’ is a far more voluminous and pretentious work, that of Bishop Warburton on ’The Divine Legation of Moses.’  It is said to have been called forth by Morgan’s ’Moral Philosopher.’  If so, it is somewhat curious that Warburton himself in noticing this work deprecates any answer being given to it.[163]

But, at any rate, we have Warburton’s own authority for saying that his book had special reference to the Deists or Freethinkers (for the terms were then used synonymously).

He begins the dedication of the first edition of the first three books to the Freethinkers with the words, ’Gentlemen, as the following discourse was written for your use, you have the best right to this address.’

The argument of the ‘Divine Legation’ is stated thus by Warburton himself in syllogistic form:—­