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which no virtuous mind will difpute, which no mind fenfible of the importance of these studies to the fupreme concernments of mankind. will not rejoice to fee acknowledged. Whatever difference, or whatever opposition, fome, who perufe your Lordship's writings, may perceive between your conclufions and their own, the good and wife of all perfuafions will revere that industry, which has for its object the illuftration or defence of our common Chriftianity. Your Lordship's researches have never lost sight of one purpose, namely, to recover the fimplicity of the gospel from beneath that load of unauthorized additions, which the ignorance of fome ages, and the learning of others, the fuperftition of weak, and the craft of defigning men, have (unhappily for its intereft) heaped upon it. And this purpose, i am convinced, was dictated by the pureft motive; by a firm, and, I think, a juft opinion, that whatever renders religion more rational, renders it more credible; that he, who, by a diligent and faithful examination of the original records, difmiffes from the system one article, which contra dicts the apprehenfion, the experience, or the reafoning of mankind, does more towards recommending the belief, and, with the belief, the influence of Chriftianity, to the understandings and confciences of ferious inquirers, and through them to univerfal reception and authority, than can be effected by a thousand contenders for creeds and ordinances of human establishment.

When the doctrine of tranfubftantiation had taken poffeffion of the Christian world, it was

not

not without the industry of learned men that it came at length to be discovered, that no fuch doctrine was contained in the New Teftament, But had those excellent perfons done nothing more by their discovery, than abolished an innocent fuperftition, or changed some directions in the ceremonial of public worship, they had merited little of that veneration, with which the gratitude of proteftant churches remembers their fervices. What they did for mankind was this, they exonerated Chriftianity of a weight which funk it. If indolence or timidity had checked thefe exertions, or fuppreffed the fruit and publication of thefe inquiries, is it too much to affirm, that infidelity would at this day have been univerfal?

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I do not mean, my Lord, by the mention of this example, to infinuate, that any popular opinion which your Lordship may have encountered, ought to be compared with tranfubftantiation, or that the affurance with which we reject that extravagant absurdity, is attainable in the controverfies in which your Lordship has been engaged: but I mean, by calling to mind thofe great reformers of the public faith, to obferve, or rather to express my own perfuafion, that to reftore the purity, is most effectually to promote the progrefs of Chriftianity; and that the fame virtuous motive, which hath fanctified their labours, fuggefted yours. At a time when fome men appear not to perceive any good, and others to suspect an evil tendency, in that fpirit of examination. and research which is gone forth in Chriftian countries, this teftimony is become due not

only

[vi]

only to the probity of your Lordship's views, but to the general cause of intellectual and religious liberty.

That your Lordship's life may be prolonged in health and honour; that it may continue to afford an instructive proof, how ferene and easy old age can be made, by the memory of important and well intended labours, by the poffeffion of public and deserved esteem, by the prefence of many grateful relatives; above all, by the resources of religion, by an unshaken confidence in the defigns of a "faithful Creator," and a fettled truft in the truth and in the promises of Chriftianity, is the fervent prayer of, my Lord,

66

Your Lordship's dutiful,

Moft obliged,

And most devoted fervant

WILLIAM PALEY.

Carlisle, Feb. 10, 1785.

PREFACE.

PREFACE.

IN

N the treatises that I have met with upon the subject of morals, I appear to myself to have remarked the following imperfectionseither that the principle was erroneous, or that it was indiftinâly explained, or that the rules deduced from it were not fufficiently adapted to real life and to actual fituations. The writings of Grotius, and the larger work of Puffendorff are of too forenfic a cast, too much mixed up with the civil law, and with the jurifprudence of Germany, to answer precifely the defign of a fyftem of ethics-the direction of private confciences in the general conduct of human life. Perhaps, indeed, they are not to be regarded as inftitutes of morality calculated to inftruct an individual in his duty, fo much as a species of law books and law authorities, fuited to the practice of those courts of juftice, whofe decifions are regulated by general principles of natural equity in conjunction with the maxims of the Roman code: of which

may

kind, I understand, there are many upon the continent. To which be added concerning both these authors, that they are more occupied in defcribing the rights and ufages of independent communities, than is neceffary in a work which profeffes, not to adjust the correfpondence of nations, but to delineate the offices of domeftic life. The profufion alfo of claffical quotations, with which many of their pages abound, feems to me a fault from which it will not be easy to excufe them. If these extracts be intended as decorations of style, the compofition is overloaded with ornaments of one kind. To any thing more than ornament they can make no claim. To propose them as ferious arguments; gravely to attempt to establish or fortify a moral duty by the testimony of a Greek or Roman poet, is to trifle with the attention of the reader, or rather to take it off from all juft principles of reasoning

in morals.

Of our own writers in this branch of philofophy, I find none that I think perfectly free from the three objections which I have ftated. There is likewife a fourth property obfervable in almost all of them, namely, that they divide too much of the law of nature from the precepts of revelation; fome authors industriously declining the mention of fcripture authorities, as belonging to a different province, and others referving them for a feparate volume: which appears to me much the fame defect, as if a commentator on the laws of England should content himself with ftating upon each head the common law of the land, without taking

any

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