Natural theology PDF
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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS WILLIAM PALEY Natural Theology or Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, collected from the appearances of nature Edited with an Introduction and Notes by MATTHEW D. EDDY and DAVID KNIGHT 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in OxfordNew York AucklandCape TownDar es SalaamHong KongKarachi Kuala LumpurMadridMelbourneMexico CityNairobi New DelhiShanghaiTaipeiToronto With offices in ArgentinaAustriaBrazilChileCzech RepublicFranceGreece GuatemalaHungaryItalyJapanPolandPortugalSingapore South KoreaSwitzerlandThailandTurkeyUkraineVietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Editorial material © Matthew D. Eddy and David Knight 2006 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Paley, William, 1743–1805. Natural theology : evidence of the existence and attributes of the deity, collected from the appearances of nature / William Paley ; edited with an introduction and notes by Matthew D. Eddy and David Knight. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Natural theology. I. Eddy, Matthew, 1972– II. Knight, David M. III. Title. BL183.P35 2006 210––dc22 2005026316 Typeset in Ehrhardt by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd., St Ives plc ISBN 0–19–280584–3 978–0–19–280584–3 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We offer a special thanks to the many students and colleagues who encouraged us to pursue this project, particularly to those who responded to our initial emails in the early stages of our research and to the following scholars who offered considerable moral support and advice: John H. Brooke, Geoffrey N. Cantor, Beth Rainey, Roger Norris, Jonathan Topham, Aileen Fyfe, William H. Brock, Peter J. Bowler, Andreas-Holger Maehle, E. Jonathan Lowe, Simon P. James, Andreas Pantazatos, Momme von Sydow, Stephen W. Sykes, Paul Murray, Colin G. Crowder, Rob Iliffe, Anthony Grafton, Ann Blair, and Alistair McGrath. Resources and funds for our research were generously supplied by the University of Durham, the Dibner Institute for the History of Science, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholars Programme, Princeton Theological Seminary, the University of Edinburgh’s library system (the Special Collections Department and New College Library) and the Harvard University Library system (especially the Hilles Library, which provided a gratis photocopy of the first edition of Natural Theology). Finally, our thanks are extended to Dimitrios Grigoropoulos, who graciously translated all Latin and Greek quotations, to Geoffrey Scarre, who lent us his personal copy of John Ray’sThe Wisdom of God (London, 1714), and to Dick Watson, who read the draft of the introduction and made helpful suggestions for its improvement. CONTENTS Introduction ix Note on the Text xxx Select Bibliography xxxii A Chronology of William Paley xxxvi NATURAL THEOLOGY 1 Appendix:Further Reading 284 Explanatory Notes 294 INTRODUCTION But can there be any person ... who can consider the regular movements of the heavenly bodies, the prescribed courses of the stars, and see how all is linked and bound into a single system, and then deny that there is any conscious purpose in this and say that it is the work of chance? Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43bc),De Natura Deorum [T]he Almighty discovers more of his Wisdom in forming such a vast multitude of different sorts of Creatures, and all with admirable and irreprovable Art, than if he had created but a few; for this declares the greatness and unbounded capacity of his Understanding. John Ray, The Wisdom of God (1691) A Brief History of Natural Theology Natural Theology is the practice of inferring the existence and wis- dom of God from the order and beauty of the world. William Paley is so strongly identified with natural theology that he is sometimes thought to have invented it when he published Natural Theology in 1802. In fact, natural theology has a long history, going back well before the time of Jesus. Thus, in philosophy of religion courses today students are taught that there are three different kinds of arguments that seek to demonstrate the existence of God: cosmo- logical, teleological, and ontological. The first two have been around since the ancient Greeks, while the last was most clearly formulated by Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century. The cosmological argument holds that the world, and everything in it, depends on something for its existence. This ‘something’ must be God. Some forms of the argument go even further and say that the physical causes operating in the natural world (cosmos) were started by a divine first cause (God) at some point in the past. The teleological argument holds that the natural world appears to have been designed, or created, by a designer; some forms of the argument also affirm that the world was created to serve some sort of divinely inspired end (telos). The ontological argument holds that existence is entailed by the concept of God––a move which inherently assumes that x Introduction God exists a priori (before experience) and which is dependent upon evidence taken from reason alone (not the physical world). Though dividing up arguments for God’s existence into three categories is a helpful heuristic tool, the history of Western thought shows that these arguments did not usually come in neat packages. More often than not, teleological and cosmological premises were combined to form arguments that sought to describe the nature of the divine. A good example of this practice is given in the last dialogue of Plato’s Laws. There Clinias, one of the characters, exclaims about unbelievers, ‘Why, to begin with, think of the earth, and sun, and planets, and everything! And the wonderful and beautiful order of the seasons with its distinctions of years and months!’ Throughout late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, different ver- sions of natural theology were promoted by Christian Churches, but orthodox believers were reminded that such arguments were only supplementary to what was found in the Bible. With the ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century, the telescope and microscope opened new and wonderful vistas, and Plato’s belief that the wander- ings of the planets across the sky would be shown to be orderly was vindicated. Sir Isaac Newton’s law of gravity revealed the simplicity and rationality of the solar system, uniting heaven and earth in a new physics. Natural theology was much strengthened. On his Grand Tour, the philosopher and scientist Robert Boyle visited Strasbourg, and likened the universe to the intricate workings of its great cath- edral clock. But was the Deity, First Cause, or Supreme Being who had made the immense clockwork universe and presided over it, also the personal God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, concerned at the fall of a sparrow, ready to work miracles, and to provide salvation? There were many competing answers offered to this question during the early modern period. One of the most influential thinkers on this topic was Isaac Newton. Although Newton’s natural philosophy would eventually become closely intertwined with natural theology, the actual process of link- ing his ideas with theological topics was done by others. Robert Boyle, an orthodox and pious Anglican and prominent Fellow of the newly founded Royal Society, bequeathed £50 a year to fund lectures confuting atheism. The first series was delivered in 1692 by Richard Bentley, an ambitious young cleric who would later become Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Perceiving how Newton’s recently Introduction xi published Principia Mathematica (1687) strengthened the argument from design, he wrote to Newton for advice on how to exploit this in his lectures. Newton took examples not only from astronomy, but also from anatomy: ‘such an usefulness of things or a fitness of means to Ends, as neither proceeds from the necessity of their Beings, nor can happen to them by Chance, doth necessarily infer that there was an Intelligent Being, which was the Author and Con- triver of that Usefulness.’1 Bentley’s project was judged a great success and other works soon followed, each unique in their own way. John Ray’s The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691) invoked Nature as God’s agent, preserving God’s wisdom and benevolence while allowing for the explanation of occa- sional apparent mistakes or failures of design in the world. Conversely, Thomas Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth (1684) suggested that the earth was a ruin, a sphere of punishment, hard labour, pain, disease, and death––a spoilt paradise rather than a magnificent clock. Building on the success of these and other works, the publication of natural theology books continued at a steady pace well into the nineteenth century. Using evidence harvested from the ‘Book of Nature’ to supple- ment descriptions of the divine found in the ‘Book of Scripture’ was a practice that stretched back to the Old and New Testaments through to the Trinitarian debates of the early Christian councils. Early theologians argued that even though the true nature of the divine was beyond human perception or understanding, the personal qualities of God, or the divine attributes, could be inferred from the Bible. Using attributes like wisdom, omniscience, goodness, and immutability as a starting point, Church leaders used the natural world to illuminate these qualities. Personal experience was aug- mented,first by Aristotle’s natural philosophy, and then by Lockean empiricism and Newtonian mechanics. In his Essay (1689), Locke had suggested that the ‘idea’ of God was not innate, but learned: ‘Since then though the knowledge of a GOD, be the most natural discovery of humane reason, yet the Idea of him, is not innate.’2 Though this notion was not fully acceptable to theologians 1 Isaac Newton’s Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy, ed. I. Bernard Cohen and Robert E. Schofield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958),393. 2 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975; reprint of the 4th edn. (1700)), I. iv. x. xii Introduction (especially since Locke’s explication is clouded), it did act to increase the empirical language used to comprehend the attributes of God. Newton made connections between God and physics in the third edition of his Principia (1726) and the fourth edition of his Opticks (1730). Yet Newton’s view of God was unorthodox, and so the ‘Newtonization’ of the divine attributes was left to apologists like Bentley and Samuel Clarke. By the 1720s natural theology was considered orthodox in the Church of England and was thus a lantern meant to illuminate, but not replace, the scriptural basis of the divine attributes. Because Hanoverian Britain was permissive of heterodox theological thought, there were poets, philosophers, and pamphleteers (and even priests!) who offered natural religion instead. These should not be confused with Paley, whose interest in the attributes of God is evinced in the very subtitle of his Natural Theology: ‘Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity’: echoing the subtitle of William Derham’s Physico-Theology (1713) and other works published throughout the eighteenth century. Paley’s orthodoxy explains why he did not directly cite the descriptions of God advanced in works like Burnet’sSacred Theory, William Wollaston’sReligion of Nature Delineated (1725), Alexander Pope’sAn Essay on Man (1733–4), and Joseph Priestley’s Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (1777). Though influenced by some of these heterogeneous works, Paley did not seek to give them greater currency, but sifted them for ideas that were compatible with what he already believed. Science in the eight- eenth century was saturated with natural theology, which made it seem serious and relevant (rather than a curious hobby) to a wide audience that ranged from the emerging professional classes to the aristocracy. Natural theology was also something that might have united all Christians in this time of religious controversy and division, when Dissenters from the established Churches were making their pres- ence felt. But for true believers it was suspiciously close to Deism (belief in a remote creator), or to the scepticism of those, like Edward Gibbon the historian, who saw no certainty in religion. For church- men, such threats to the moral basis of society needed answering; and so especially did the philosopher David Hume, whose irreligion allied with respectability was deeply shocking. His posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) were a Introduction xiii particular challenge to natural theologians, bringing sceptical doubts to their comparisons of human artefacts and divine creation, and suggesting a brutal world of pain and struggle, ill-adapted to happy life. Across Europe, scepticism and enquiry, disseminated by writers and philosophers such as Diderot, d’Alembert, and Voltaire in revo- lutionary France, alarmed the governing classes;3 it was essential to demonstrate that science properly conducted and understood was the handmaid of religion. The stage was set for William Paley. William Paley William Paley was born in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, in July 1743. He was the eldest child of the Revd William Paley and his wife Elizabeth Clapham; his father was a minor canon at Peterborough and from 1745 headmaster of Giggleswick School in Yorkshire, where his son was educated. He was a clumsy but bright boy, devel- oping a lifelong keenness for fishing: Sir Humphry Davy records an anecdote that, when Natural Theology was being written, the Bishop of Durham (Shute Barrington, to whom the book was in due course dedicated) asked how it was going, and got the reply: ‘My Lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fishing season is over.’4 He also developed an early interest in the law, attending a murder trial in York shortly before going up to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1759. There, after a slow start, he worked hard, taking the pres- tigious mathematical course, winning scholarships and prizes, and emerging as senior wrangler, the best graduate of the year. He then taught at Greenwich for a time, enjoying theatres and attending trials at the Old Bailey, but determined on a career in the Church. He was ordained deacon in 1766, and became a curate in Greenwich; but was soon elected a fellow of his college, and returned to Cambridge, where he was ordained priest. There he became a close friend of John Law, whose father Edmund became Bishop of Carlisle in 1768. Energetic and able, they divided the instruction in the college between them, raising its reputation. Paley’s teaching of moral philosophy from 1768 to 1776 was particu- larly effective: he stressed the need to make students see the 3 See esp. J. Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002),16–22. 4 [H. Davy], Salmonia, London: Murray (3rd edn., 1832),7. xiv Introduction problems rather than giving them answers. In 1774 Edmund Law appointed his son to a prebend at Carlisle, and in 1775 presented Paley with a living, a parish in Westmorland. Vicars, but not College fellows, could marry, and in 1776 Paley wed Jane Hewitt, and left Cambridge. In 1785 he published his first book, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, based upon his Cambridge lectures. Paley was not an original thinker, and the book’s utilitarian philosophy was not new, but he was a wonderfully clear, fresh writer and guide to conduct. The book was a great success; though a new author, he was paid a princely £1,000 for it, and the publisher’s investment paid off. By 1793 the fifth edition was pirated in Dublin; and by 1809 it was in its seventeenth edition, with many versions still to come.5 Paley was comfortable and well off. He was a cheerful man, who saw Providence in the prevailing happiness of the world, human and animal. From 1789 he had become prominent in the agitation against the slave trade; thus he was neither a closet moralist nor a naive and foolish optimist like Voltaire’s Candide. But in 1791 his wife died, leaving him to bring up four sons and four daughters. He had become Chancellor and Archdeacon of Carlisle, holding various other posts in plurality. Content where he was, in 1789 he had turned down the Mastership of Jesus College, but in 1795 was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge. In 1795 he married a second wife, Catherine Dobinson of Carlisle, and moved into the magnificent parsonage at Bishop Wearmouth, Sunderland. Paley’s attempt to place reason at the centre of Christian ethics in what he took to be a mainstream Anglican tradition incurred sus- picion from clergy and faithful: this may be why, seeming too liberal or latitudinarian at a time of evangelical revival, he never got a bish- opric or deanery. His preferment culminated in an archdeaconry, and he ended as a vicar and as subdean at Lincoln Cathedral, where he spent three months each year. It was a useful, comfortable, reasonably eminent but not glittering career. InMoral and Political Philosophy, Paley had praised Edmund Law for demonstrating that ‘whatever renders religion more rational, renders it more credible’, purging it of ignorance and superstition. 5 William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),626; and this as a ‘conduct book’, pp. 273ff.
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