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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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WILLIAM PALEY (1743 - 1805) The celebrated theologian became archdeacon at Carlisle in 1782. Occasionally accused of plagiarism, Paley advised preachers faced with a sermon every week to make one and steal five. In Carlisle, he published his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785) expounding a form of utilitarianism. It went through fifteen editions. A strenuous opponent of the slave trade, he wrote a paper on the subject in 1789. In the following year came his Horae Paulinae in defence of the New Testament against the notion that it is a cunningly-devised fable. In 1794, Paley published his famous Evidences of Christianity, which became the basic treatise on Christianity for over a century. It aims to prove the truth of Christianity, not by faith alone, but by reference to the physical world. This could lead to absurdities, parodied by Goethe in a famous verse praising the creator for providing the cork tree to furnish stoppers for wine bottles. The Bishop of Durham, Shute Barrington, offered Paley the rectorship of Bishopwearmouth. Of the house (demolished in 1855), Paley exclaimed: 'Such a house! I was told at Durham it is one of the best parsonages in England, there are not more than three bishops that have better!' Here he resided from 1795 until his death in 1805, and it was here that he wrote his most popular work Natural Theology (1802), which was dedicated to Barrington. This famous work, describing the world as an intricate designed mechanism which implies a creator was, surprisingly enough, held in the highest esteem by Charles Darwin, who knew much of it by heart. Darwin paid Paley the supreme compliment of inverting his former mentor's system to construct his own distinctive version of evolution. Paley begins his book with one of the most famous metaphors in English writing: 'In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place...'[A watch implies a maker. Complexity and construction for use cannot arise randomly. Organisms are even more complex and even more evidently designed for their modes of life than watches. If the watch implies a watchmaker then the better design of organisms requires a benevolent, creating God.] Paley's metaphor can be traced back at least as far as Cicero, but it has become strongly attached to his name. One of Professor Richard Dawkins' recent fine books on evolution is called The Blind Watchmaker. Though clumsy and given to grotesque gesticulation, Paley was a sociable man who played whist and amused his neighbours with his antics on horseback in the park. He was also fond of fishing. He bore the pain of his last illness with fortitude, according to John Clark, his Newcastle doctor. The church of St Michael, High Street West, contains a Victorian brass to Paley 'Bishopwearmouth's most illustrious rector.'
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