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A View of the Evidences of Christianity
1794 · 208 pages
A View of the Evidences of Christianity
by William Paley
Why our edition. The free text is a proofread transcription from Project Gutenberg rather than a page scan, so there is no scanning damage to report. What ours adds is the typesetting: one clean file, in three formats, without the boilerplate. The full text is public domain and free — linked below.
Worth knowing about this scan: A transcription, not a scan: there is no recognition damage in the text at all. The first nine chapters of Part I carry no titles and each restates the same proposition. That is Paley's own arrangement.
On this page: a summary of A View of the Evidences of Christianity, and our clean edition as a PDF or EPUB.
Paley set out the case from testimony: that the apostles went to their deaths for something they claimed to have seen, and that men do not do that for what they know they invented. It was the standard text at Cambridge for over a hundred years — Darwin read it there and said he could have written it out from memory. Hume had already written against miracles; this is the answer that held the field.
Summary
Paley sets aside the argument from design he is now better known for and argues entirely from testimony. His case is two propositions: that many who professed to have seen the Christian miracles passed their lives in labours, dangers and sufferings voluntarily undergone in attestation of what they reported; and that no body of witnesses to any other miracle has ever done the same.
The force of it is not that the apostles were honest but that they had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Men do not accept poverty, imprisonment and execution for a story they know they made up. Hume had argued a generation earlier that no testimony can establish a miracle; Paley's reply is that this particular testimony is of a kind Hume's argument never contemplated.
Part II turns to the auxiliary evidences — prophecy, the morality of the Gospel, the candour of writers who record what no forger would invent, and the undesigned coincidences between the letters and the narrative. Part III answers the objections: the discrepancies between the Gospels, the errors imputed to the apostles, and the fact that so much of the world never heard of any of it.
Who was William Paley?
William Paley (1743-1805) was Archdeacon of Carlisle and the most widely read Christian writer in English of his generation. He was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge and lectured there for nine years before taking a country living.
The Evidences was a set text at Cambridge for more than a century. Darwin sat the examination on it and wrote long afterwards that he could have written the book out from memory, and that its logic gave him as much delight as Euclid — this from a man whose own work would be taken to have answered Paley's other famous argument.
Which edition of A View of the Evidences of Christianity is this?
The text is free at Project Gutenberg, transcribed from the London printing of 1851, and that transcription is the source of our edition. It carries no recognition damage, so what our edition adds is the book's structure, its chapter titles restored to their chapters, and readable typography.
Common questions
- Is this the book with the watchmaker argument?
- No. That is Natural Theology, published in 1802, eight years later. The Evidences argues from the testimony of the witnesses, not from design in nature.
- Why do the first nine chapters have no titles?
- Because Paley put his proposition at the head of each of them instead. He says so: “The first of these propositions, as it forms the argument, will stand at the head of the following nine chapters.” It is his arrangement, not an omission in this edition.
A note on the text. A View of the Evidences of Christianity is in the public domain. What you’re buying is our edition: the careful typesetting and correction. The original text is also available free here.
That free text is already well proofread — we measure about 0.5 errors per 1,000 characters. What our edition adds is the typesetting, not a rescue: one clean file, in the formats above, without the archive boilerplate.
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