Clerk of the Closet to the king
What was the position of Joseph Butler between Sep 1744 and Feb 1748?
Joseph Butler Joseph Butler ( 18 May 1692 – 16 June 1752 ) was an English Anglican bishop , theologian , apologist , and philosopher . He was born in Wantage in the English county of Berkshire ( now Oxfordshire ) . He is known , among other things , for his critique of Deism , Thomas Hobbess egoism , and John Lockes theory of personal identity . Butler influenced many philosophers and religious thinkers , including David Hume , Thomas Reid , Adam Smith , Henry Sidgwick , John Henry Newman , and C . D . Broad , and is widely considered as one of the preeminent English moralists . He also played an important , though under appreciated , role in the development of eighteenth-century economic discourse , greatly influencing the Dean of Gloucester and political economist Josiah Tucker . Biography . Early life and education . The son of a Presbyterian linen-draper , he was destined for the ministry of that church and , along with future archbishop Thomas Secker , entered Samuel Joness dissenting academy at Gloucester ( later Tewkesbury ) for that purpose . While there , he entered into a secret correspondence with the distinguished Anglican theologian and philosopher Samuel Clarke . In 1714 , Butler decided to enter the Church of England , and went to Oriel College , Oxford . He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1718 and later proceeded Doctor of Civil Law on 8 December 1733 . Church career . Butler was ordained a deacon on 26 October 1718 by William Talbot , Bishop of Salisbury , in his Bishops Palace , Salisbury , his palace chapel and a priest on 21 December 1718 by Talbot at St Jamess Church , Piccadilly . After holding various other high positions , he became rector of the rich living of Stanhope , County Durham . In 1736 he was made the head chaplain of George IIs wife Caroline , on the advice of Lancelot Blackburne . He was nominated Bishop of Bristol on 19 October 1738 and consecrated a bishop on 3 December 1738 at Lambeth Palace chapel . Remaining Bishop of Bristol , Butler was installed Dean of St Pauls on 24 May 1740 ; he kept that office until his translation to Durham . He is said ( apocryphally ) to have declined an offer to become the archbishop of Canterbury in 1747 but was appointed Clerk of the Closet to the king in 1746 ( until 1752 ) . He was translated to Durham by the confirmation of his election to that See in October 1750 ; he was then enthroned by proxy on 9 November 1750 . He is buried in Bristol Cathedral . Death and legacy . Butler died in 1752 at Rosewell House , Kingsmead Square in Bath , Somerset . His admirers praise him as an excellent man , and a diligent and conscientious churchman . Though indifferent to general literature , he had some taste in the fine arts , especially architecture . Joseph is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 16 June . He has his own collection of manuscripts ( e.g . Lectionary 189 ) . Philosophy . Attack on deism . During his lifetime and for many years after his death , Butler was most famous for his Analogy of Religion , Natural and Revealed ( 1736 ) , which , according to historian Will Durant , remained for a century the chief buttress of Christian argument against unbelief . English deists such as John Toland and Matthew Tindal had argued that nature provides clear evidence of an intelligent designer and artificer , but they rejected orthodox Christianity because of the incredibility of miracles and the cruelties and contradictions contained in the Bible . Butlers Analogy was one of many book-length replies to the deists , and it was long widely believed to be the most effective . Butler argued that nature itself was full of mysteries and cruelties , and thus shared the same alleged defects as the Bible . Arguing on empiricist grounds that all knowledge of nature and human conduct is merely probable , Butler then appealed to a series of patterns ( analogies ) observable in nature and human affairs , which , in his judgment , make the chief teachings of Christianity likely true . Butlers jiu-jitsu-like argumentative strategy was unusual and risky . Arguing that because nature is a mess of riddles , we cannot expect revelation to be any clearer obviously invited the retort that then both deism and Christianity were irrational . Today , Butlers Analogy is now largely of historical interest , but his claim that probability is the guide to life would be endorsed by many contemporary philosophers . Ethics and moral psychology . A Butler scholar , Stephen Darwall , wrote : Probably no figure had a greater impact on nineteenth-century British moral philosophy than Butler . Butlers chief target in the Sermons was Thomas Hobbes and the egoistic view of human nature he had defended in Leviathan ( 1651 ) . Hobbes was a materialist who believed that science reveals a world in which all events are causally determined and in which all human choices flow unavoidably from whatever desire is most powerful in a person at a given time . Hobbes saw human beings as being violent , self-seeking , and power-hungry . On such a view , there was no place for genuine altruism or benevolence or any conception of morality as traditionally conceived . In the Sermons , Butler argues that human motivation is less selfish and more complex than Hobbes claimed . Butler maintains that the human mind is an organized hierarchy of a number of different impulses and principles , many of which are not fundamentally selfish . On the ground floor , so to speak , is a wide variety of particular emotions , appetites , and affections , such as hunger , anger , fear , and sympathy . They , in properly organized minds , are under the control of two superior principles : self-love ( a desire to maximize ones own long-term happiness ) and benevolence ( a desire to promote the general happiness ) . The more general impulses are in turn subject to the highest practical authority in the human mind : moral conscience . Conscience , Butler claims , is an inborn sense of right and wrong , an inner light and monitor , received from God . Conscience tells one to promote both the general happiness and personal happiness . Experience informs that the two aims largely coincide in the present life . For many reasons , Butler argues , unethical and self-centered people who care nothing for the public good are usually not very happy . There are , however , rare cases where the wicked seem ( for a time ) to prosper . A perfect harmony of virtue and self-interest , Butler claimed , is guaranteed only by a just God , who , in the afterlife , rewards and punishes people as they deserve . Criticism of Lockes theory of personal identity . In Appendix 1 of the Analogy , Butler offers a famous criticism of John Lockes influential theory of personal identity , an explanation of what makes someone the same person from one time to the next , despite all the physical and psychological changes experienced over that period . Locke claimed that personal identity is not from having the same body or the same soul but from having the same consciousness and memory . According to Locke , memory is the glue that ties the various stages of our life together and constitutes sameness of person . More precisely , Locke claims , Person A is the same person as Person B just in case A and B share at least some of the same memories . Butler pointed out that the way real memories can be distinguished from false ones is that it was people who had the experiences that are truly remembered . Thus , Butler claimed , memory presupposes personal identity and so cannot constitute it . Veneration . Butler is honoured together with George Berkeley with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church ( USA ) on 16 June . Styles and titles . - 1692–1718 : Joseph Butler Esq . - 1718–1733 : The Reverend Joseph Butler - 1733–1738 : The Reverend Doctor Joseph Butler - 1738–1752 : The Right Reverend Doctor Joseph Butler Publications . - Several letters to the Reverend Dr . Clarke , 1716 , 1719 , 1725 – reprinted in Volume 1 of Gladstones edition of Butlers works - Fifteen sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel , 1726 , 1729 , 1736 , 1749 , 1759 , 1765 , 1769 , 1774 , 1792 - The Analogy of Religion , Natural and Revealed , to the Constitution and Course of Nature , 1736 , 1740 , 1750 , 1754 , 1764 , 1765 , 1771 , 1775 , 1785 , 1788 , 1791 , 1793 , 1796 , 1798 - A sermon preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts , 1739 - A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord-Mayor , 1740 - A sermon preached before the House of Lords , 1741 , 1747 - A sermon preached in the parish-church of Christ-Church , London , 1745 - A sermon , preached before His Grace Charles Duke of Richmond , Lenox , and Aubigny , president , 1748 , 1751 - Six sermons preached upon publick occasions , 1749 - A catalogue of the libraries [ ... ] , 1753 - A charge delivered to the clergy at the primary visitation of the diocese of Durham , 1751 , 1786 – reprinted in Volume 2 of Gladstones edition of Butlers works