Paley, WILLIAM, a celebrated English divine, was born at Peterborough, son of a minor canon of the cathedral, in 1743. His family belonged to the West Riding of Yorkshire, and not long after his birth his father returned to his native parish of Giggleswick to become master of the grammar-school there. In 1759 he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, as a sizar, and led for two years an idle (though not dissipated) life, but thereafter became a severe student, and in 1763 came out senior wrangler. After three years as an assistant-master at Greenwich, he was elected in 1768 a fellow and tutor of Christ's College, and here he lectured on moral philosophy till his marriage in 1776 and presentation to the rectory of Musgrave in Westmorland and the vicarage of Dalston in Cumberland, which were soon exchanged for the more profitable living of Appleby. In 1780 he was collated to a prebendal stall in Carlisle Cathedral, in 1782 he became archdeacon, and in 1785 chancellor of the diocese. In the latter year he published his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, for which he received £1000. In this work he propounds his ethical theory—a form of what is usually known as utilitarianism. He begins by adducing a series of strong objections against the popular doctrine of the moral sense, next takes up the question of the source of obligation, and resolves it into the will of God, enforced by future punishment, it being admitted candidly that virtue is prudence directed to the next world. The will of God, in so far as it is not rendered explicit by revelation, is to be interpreted by the tendency of actions to promote human happiness, the benevolence of the Deity being assumed. Objection may fairly be taken to the principles on which Paley rests his system, but the lucidity and appositeness of his illustrations are beyond all praise; and if his treatise cannot be regarded as a profoundly philosophical work, it is at any rate one of the clearest and most sensible ever written, even by an Englishman. In 1790 appeared his most original work, Horæ Paulinæ, the aim of which is to prove, by a great variety of 'undesigned coincidences,' the great improbability of the common hypothesis of the unbelief of that day, that the New Testament is a cunningly devised fable. It was followed in 1794 by his famous View of the Evidences of Christianity, in which dexterous use is made of Lardner's Credibility and Bishop Douglas' Criterion of Miracles. The treatment is on the historical method, flanked by auxiliary arguments drawn from the superior morality of the gospel, the originality of Christ's character, and the like. But the bases of controversy have now entirely shifted, and the work, regarded as it is, is no longer, even at Cambridge, regarded adequate as a defence. The champion of the faith was splendidly rewarded. The Bishop of London gave him a stall in St Paul's; shortly after he was made subdean of Lincoln, with £700 a year; Cambridge conferred on him the degree of D.D.; and the Bishop of Durham presented him to the rectory of Bishop Wearmouth, worth £1200 a year. Perhaps his latitudinarianism and essentially unspiritual temperament, as well as such homely sarcasms as comparing the 'divine right of kings' with the 'divine right of constables,' may have hindered him from yet higher preferment. After 1800 he became subject to a painful disease of the kidneys, yet in 1802 he published perhaps the most widely popular of all his works, Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, largely based on the Religious Philosopher of Nieuwentyt, a Dutch disciple of Descartes. An excellent edition is that by Lord Brougham and
Sir Charles Bell (1836-39). Paley died May 25, 1805.
A complete edition of his works was published by one of his sons, the Rev. Edmund Paley (7 vols. 1825); later editions are those by Wayland (5 vols. 1837) and Paxton (5 vols. 1838). The best biography is that by G. W. Meadley (Sunderland, 1809); and see Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876).