Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 38:1 (NA 1987)
Article: A Note On Paley And His School – Was Sir Leslie Stephen Mistaken?
Author: Graham A. Cole

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TynBul 38:1 (1987) p. 151

A Note On Paley And His School –
Was Sir Leslie Stephen Mistaken?

Graham Cole

Though once described as one of Cambridge’s heroes, these days few bother to recall William Paley, Archdeacon of Carlisle.1 Those who do are usually in specialist areas of academia. Those, for example, interested in the history of Christian Apologetics remember Paley as an outstanding (even if no longer convincing) example of eighteenth century evidence writing. Others concerned with the history of science recall Paley as one of those windows through which one may glimpse the role of teleological explanations in the English Enlightenment period. Still others, whose penchant is the study of Natural Theology, find Paley of interest because he gave quintessential expression to one of the classic arguments for God’s existence: namely, the Design Argument centred on the analogy between a watch and the world on the one hand, and between a watchmaker and a putative world- maker on the other. Finally, for historians of ethical thought Paley represents the clearest exponent of theological utilitarianism and the anticipator of Jeremy Bentham’s own secularized version.2

For those who want a more general introduction to Paley’s thought, the place to begin with is still considered to be Sir Leslie Stephen’s pioneering work in the history of ideas English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.3 However, to

TynBul 38:1 (1987) p. 152

Stephen (1832–1904), Paley was definitely not one of Cambridge’s heroes and nor were two of his contemporaries - John Hey (1734–1815), the first Norrisian Professor at Cambridge and Richard Watson (1737–1816), Bishop of Llandaff, who at one stage was himself Professor of Divinity at the same university.4

Stephen’s account of Paley is open to criticism at a number of levels; one of which is the concern of this note. For in his highly influential English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Stephen links William Paley with John Hey and with Richard Watson under the head of ‘Paley and His School’.5 He notes that all were Cambridge men, nearly contemporary there and wranglers of the university. He also describes their theological views as ‘the Cambridge School’, the starting point of which lay in Bishop Edmund Law’s Considerations on the Theory of Religion published in 1745 and reprinted many times after. He further notes that Law, Paley and Watson spent their formative years...

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