Abstract
During the period when the eighteenth century was
merging into the nineteenth, William Paley was regarded as
the outstanding apologist of the Christian religion in England.
So conclusive was his work considered to be that one reviewer
could write the following:
We regard Dr. Paley's writings on the
"Evidences of Christianity" as of so
signally decisive a character that we
could be content to let them stand as
the essence, and the close of the great
argument, on the part of its believers;
and should feel no despondency or chagrin, if we could be prophetically certain that such an efficient Christian reasoner
would never henceforward arise.
The above was written in the year 1809. Since then
Paley has been largely forgotten. The average student knows
about him only this: that he was called "Pigeon" Paley and that
he used some sort of analogy about a watch. To the writer it
appeared that a rediscovery of Paley might offer to the modern
reader some values that were greatly admired in the eighteenth
century.
