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 fome directions in the ceremonial of public worship, they had merited little of that veneration, with which the gratitude of protestant churches remembers their fervices. What they did for mankind was this: they exonerated Christianity of a weight which funk it. If indolence or timidity had checked these exertions, or fuppreffed the fruit and publication of these enquiries, is it too much to affirm, that infidelity would at this day have been univerfal?

I do not mean, my Lord, by the mention

mention of this example, to infinuate, that any popular opinion which your Lordship may have encountered, ought to be compared with transubftantiation, 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 those great reformers of the public faith, to obferve, or rather to express my own perfuafion, that to restore 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 per-: ceive any good, and others to suspect

an

an evil tendency, in that spirit of examination and research which is gone forth in Christian countries, this testimony is become due not only to the probity of your Lordship's views, but to the general caufe of intellectual and religious liberty.

That your Lordship's life may be prolonged in health and honour, that

it

may continue to afford an inftruc

tive 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 deferved efteem, 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

truft in the truth and in the promises of Christianity, is the fervent prayer of, my Lord,

Carlisle,

Your Lordship's dutiful,
Moft obliged,

And most devoted fervant,

Feb. 10, 1785.

WILLIAM PALEY.

PREFACE.

N the treatises that I have met with upon

IN

the fubject of morals, I appear to myself to have remarked the following imperfections-either that the principle was erroneous, or that it was indiftinctly 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 caft, too much mixed up with civil law and with the jurisprudence of Germany, to anfwer precisely the defign of a system of ethics-the direction of private consciences