Lot #176: A View of the Evidences of Christianity by William Paley - J. Davis, 1800 - 7th edition - 2 books

A View of the Evidences of Christianity in Three Parts: Part I. Of the direct Historical Evidence of Christianity, and wherein it is distinguished from the Evidence alleged for other Miracles. Part II. Of the Auxiliary Evidences of Christianity. Part III. A brief Consideration of some popular Objections. by William Paley, M.A., Archdeacon of Carlisle. The Seventh Edition. In Two Volumes London: Printed by J. Davis, Chancery Lane; for R. Faulder, New Bond Stree. M.DCCC. [1800] Two volumes in marbled boards with leather spines and corners, 5 1/2" x 8 3/4", 416 and 383 pages. Wear and aging to exteriors, with some leather loss at spine of volume I, splitting at exterior hinges. Interiors very good + with no foxing after 226 years. Rare. This work is immortalized as Book #245 in Printing and the Mind of Man (1967): "Until this century 'Paley's Evidences' was the first divinity treatise for all students. It is the epitome of eighteenth-century theological reasoning; rational, empirical, it seeks to demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion by reference to physical phenomena. To a large extent Paley's material, and in some cases his arguments, are derived from earlier writers; but the directness and clarity of his approach make it perhaps the most effective statement of the external evidence for Christianity ever written. He rests his case on 'the necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent designing mind for the contriving and determining of the forms which organized bodies bear'. This concept of revelation as the purely mechanical relation of God to the world, in which the divine origin of Christianity is isolated from the history of mankind, was superseded in the nineteenth century by the view of revelation as a continuing process. But Paley's view (which controverts the theory of the adaptation of an organism to its circumstances by use) was still a dominant one in the nineteenth century; without an understanding of Paley's position, the opposition to the theory of evolution is meaningless. ... Darwin acknowledged that his study of Paley's works at Cambridge 'was the only part of the academic course which...was of the least use' to him. Given the idea of an evolving world - of which the Natural Theologists had no inkling - he showed that adaptation to circumstances did not imply design and a designer but could be explained as evolving through the action of natural selection. There is much truth in Thiselton Dyer's remark that Darwin 'swept in the whole of Paley's teleology, simply dispensing with its supernatural explanation". Pickup category timeslot {A}