TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES, LORD' TALBOT, BÁRON OF HENSOL, LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF GREAT BRITAIN, THE FOLLOWING TREATISE IS, WITH ALL RESPECT, INSCRIBED, IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE HIGHEST OBLI GATIONS TO THE LATE LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM AND TO HIMSELF, BY HIS LORDSHIP'S MOST DUTIFUL, MOST DEVOTED, AND MOST HUMBLE SERVANT, JOSEPH BUTLER. ADVERTISEMENT. If the reader should meet here with any thing which he had not before attended to, it will not be in the observations upon the constitution and course of nature, these being all obvious ; but in the application of them : in which, though there is nothing but what appears to me of some real weight, and therefore of great importance ; yet he will observe several things which will appear to him of very little, if he can think things to be of little importance, which are of any real weight at all, upon such a subject as religion. However, the proper force of the following treatise, lies in the whole general analogy considered together, It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it, as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained, |