June 16: Joseph Butler, Bishop and Theologian, 1752

The Collect of the Day

Joseph Butler

O God, who raises up scholars for your church in every generation; we praise you for the wisdom and insight granted to your bishop and theologian Joseph Butler, and pray that your church may never be destitute of such gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Joseph Butler

O God, who dost raise up scholars for thy church in every generation; we praise thee for the wisdom and insight granted to thy bishop and theologian Joseph Butler, and pray that thy church may never be destitute of such gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Ecclesiastes 1:12–18
Psalm 1
Luke 10:25–28

Joseph Butler was born in Berkshire in 1692, into a Presbyterian family. His early education was in dissenting academies, but in his early twenties he became an Anglican. He entered Oxford in 1715 and was ordained in 1718.

Butler distinguished himself as a preacher while serving Rolls Chapel, Chancery Lane, London, and then went on to serve several parishes before being appointed Bishop of Bristol in 1738. He declined the primacy of Canterbury, but accepted translation to Durham in 1750. He died on June 16th, 1752, in Bath, and his body was entombed in Bristol Cathedral.

Butler’s importance rests chiefly on his acute apology for orthodox Christianity against the Deistic thought prevalent in England in his time in his work The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, 1736. He maintained the “reasonable probability” of Christianity, with action upon that probability as a basis for faith.

Butler’s was a rational exposition of the faith grounded in deep personal piety, a worthy counterpoint to the enthusiasm of the Wesleyan revival of the same period.

Lessons and Psalm

First Lesson

Psalm

¹Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, *nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scornful!

²Their delight is in the law of the Lord, *and they meditate on his law day and night.

³They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; *everything they do shall prosper.

⁴It is not so with the wicked; *they are like chaff which the wind blows away.

⁵Therefore the wicked shall not stand upright when judgment comes, *nor the sinner in the council of the righteous.

⁶For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, *but the way of the wicked is doomed.

Gospel

¹²I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, ¹³applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. ¹⁴I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. ¹⁵What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. ¹⁶I said to myself, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” ¹⁷And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. ¹⁸For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.