[1] Butler was appointed to the job of preacher at the Rolls Chapel in London's legal district in 1719.

His other sermons preached here were lost; the Rolls Chapel no longer survives and in his will, Butler specified that any papers found "be burnt without being read by anyone".

David Hume and Adam Smith took note of it in developing their own theories of the moral sentiments.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge held the Sermons in high regard[2] and William Hazlitt wrote of Butler: The Analogy is a tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special-pleading; the Sermons (with the Preface to them) are in a fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our observation of human nature, without pedantry and without bias.

[2]Philosopher Aaron Garrett described the Sermons's later influence as follows: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Butler’s Sermons became more influential than the Analogy, due to their influence at Oxford and Cambridge and particularly on William Whewell and Sidgwick.