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If infidelity be disingenuously dispersed in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination, in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem, in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history, as Mr. Paley has well observed, I hope it is fair in me thus to meet such poison with an unexpected antidote, which I cannot doubt will be found powerful.
If such examples were of the same value in the one case as they are in the other, the existence of a Deity would be, as Paley appears to have thought it was, demonstrated by the fact. A brief and yet satisfactory answer to the second question is not so easy, and we may best approach it by assuming the existence of a Deity.
Paley says that the more wonderful a thing is, the greater the necessity for creation; that a watch is a wonderful thing, and that it must have had a creator; that the watchmaker is more wonderful than the watch, therefore he must have had a creator. Then we come to God; He is altogether more wonderful than the watchmaker, therefore He had no creator.
If you do not like this definition, take another; and then, by means of that, perhaps you will be defending St. Alfonso's equivocation. However, this is what I insist upon; that St. Alfonso, as Paley, is considering the different portions of a large subject, and he must, on the subject of lying, give his judgment, though on that subject it is difficult to form any judgment which is satisfactory.
Paley believed himself to be assigning it was his full purpose to assign the ratio cognoscendi; but, instead of that, unconsciously and surreptitiously, he has actually assigned the ratio essendi; and, after all, a false and imaginary ratio essendi.
He asked me if I could recommend him a broker here in Edinburgh who was thoroughly well acquainted with the very best class of American investments, and I at once recommended Mr. John Paley. And that's all I know, gentlemen." "Except," remarked Mr. Lindsey, "that you know that considerable transactions have taken place between Mr. Paley and Sir Gilbert Carstairs.
Hence arise questions which theologians rather evaded than attempted to answer. If with the help of Paley we can prove the existence of an invisible Being potentially omnipotent, though always operating as though limited there would still remain the question as to his attributes. He is skilful, we may grant, but is he benevolent or is he moral?
The battle is one of greater importance than appears at first sight. It is a battle between teleology and non-teleology, between the purposiveness and the non-purposiveness of the organs in animal and vegetable bodies. According to Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and Paley, organs are purposive; according to Mr. Darwin and his followers, they are not purposive.
A proof worthy of the manly mind of Luther, and compared with which the Grotian pretended demonstrations, from Grotius himself to Paley, are mischievous underminings of the Faith, pleadings fitter for an Old Bailey thieves' counsellor than for a Christian divine.
Bentham is thus at one in his first principle with Hume and with Paley; his peculiarity is to make it fruitful in numerous applications both to legislation and to morals. He carries out the principle with an unflinching rigour, and a logical force peculiarly his own. II. His Psychological Analysis is also studied and thorough-going.
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