  In his “Preface” to the 2nd edition of his Sermons Butler sketched his vision of “Morals, considered as a Science”, (“Preface”, §6) — i.e. speculative moral philosophy in need of defense from speculative objections as opposed to practical moral counsel or revealed religion. Morals considered as a science proceeds either from abstract relations of things or from matters of fact (“Preface”, §12). Clarke and William Wollaston were influential philosophers who argued primarily from abstract relations to moral obligations, duties, virtues, etc. in their moral systems. Clarke in particular had argued that we have a priori access to the eternal “fitnesses” of things through certain, abstract, and necessary quasi-mathematical arguments (Clarke 1706) that entail necessary moral obligations and duties insofar as actions accord with or fail to accord with eternal and immutable realities. In his correspondence with Clarke, the young Butler noted his discovery of a new method for establishing truths in morals (Butler/Clarke 1716, §1). Although the correspondence took place a few years before Butler delivered the Sermons, it seems likely that the method he alluded to in the correspondence was the nascent method that he would deploy in the first three sermons (which Butler stressed were argued strictly from matters of fact (“Preface” §13).