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We may add that this epistle does not mention the martyrdoms of the eye-witnesses, and it is hard to know why Paley drags it in, unless he wants to make us believe that his eye-witnesses suffered all the tortures he quotes; but even Paley cannot pretend that there is a scintilla of proof of their undergoing any such trials.
Darwin himself felt the grave difficulty in which the ordinary arguments had become involved; but he was most unwilling to abandon his belief in Design. "The old argument from design in nature as given by Paley," he wrote, "which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails now that the law of natural selection has been discovered.
The pamphlet is divided into four parts, treating respectively of the origin of government, of colonies in general, of the natural rights of colonists, and of the political and civil rights of the British colonists. The writer maintains, that government is founded not as some had supposed on compact, but as Paley afterwards affirmed, on the will of God.
But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people. In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does anyone think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis?
It would be absurd to believe that either Paley or Reid lived down to the level of his doctrine. I mean to say very little about philosophy in this volume. I wish to keep to ethics, a science old enough and strong enough to stand upon its own feet.
Paley and Lardner both deal with Justin somewhat briefly, calling every passage in his works resembling slightly any passage in the Gospels a "quotation;" in both cases only ignorance of Justin's writings can lead any reader to assent to the inferences they draw. HEGESIPPUS was a Jewish Christian, who, according to Eusebius, flourished about A.D. 166.
Then it struck me that this view was quite as likely to be taken as the other by a people who had no experience of European civilisation, and I was a little piqued with Paley for having led me so much astray; but I soon discovered that I had misinterpreted the expression on the magistrate's face, and that it was one not of fear, but hatred.
But when a special revelation has been given us, through human instruments; when the understanding is called in to certify the particular fact, that in such and such particular persons, writings, or events, God has made himself manifest in an extraordinary manner; it is the human instrumentality which requires the judgment of the understanding; the bringing in of human characters, and sensible facts, which are matters of sense and experience; and, therefore, it is mere ignorance when Christians speak slightingly of the outward and historical evidences of Christianity, and indulge in very misplaced contempt for Paley and others who have worked out the historical proof of it.
Now, note that the argument of the olden time that of Paley, etc., which your skeptic found so convincing was always the argument for design in the movement of the balls after deflection. For it was drawn from animals produced by generation, not by creation, and through a long succession of generations or deflections.
'I fear that the mode of defending christianity, adopted by Grotius first; and latterly, among many others, by Dr. Paley, has increased the number of infidels; never could it have been so great, if thinking men had been habitually led to look into their own souls, instead of always looking out, both of themselves, and of their nature.
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