  Butler’s moral philosophy is characterized by a very high degree of analytic rigor and argumentative care. This is all the more surprising for the fact that many of these rigorous arguments are presented in sermons (and particularly in footnotes to sermons). The manner in which Butler argues, and the details of the particular arguments, are indeed what many philosophers who have engaged with him have found most inspiring, even when they have rejected his conclusions whole-heartedly. Butler’s first three sermons provide a general framework for his moral philosophy via a teleological account of human nature. On the basis of this account of human nature Butler argues that self-love and benevolence or virtue -- principles that other moral philosophers have seen as in tension — are not only not in tension but mutually supporting when properly understood. The remaining sermons consider a number of key features of moral psychology — self-deception, benevolence, forgiveness, compassion — and further develop the discussions of self-love and virtue initiated in the first three sermons. They make manifest that Butler thought that the details of moral psychology when carefully presented and rigorously sorted ruled out many questionable commitments that looser philosophers took them to warrant. These particular moral psychological inquiries are followed by a discussion of love of God. For Butler this was a central and unifying sentiment that showed the continuity between morals and natural religion. Butler concluded the Sermons with a discussion of human ignorance, which in conjunction with his discussions of self-deceit underscored one of his central themes: the limits of human self-knowledge and knowledge of divine design, limits that had to be continuously in mind when making moral arguments.  Butler’s later sermons, the “Dissertation on Virtue”, and the sections of the Analogy of Religion that concern moral philosophy, also continue to develop many of these themes.