William Paley (1743-1805) was a thinker of remarkable vigour and clearness rather than originality; his acquirements as a scholar and Churchman were grafted on a homely, shrewd, and kindly nature. He was born at Peterborough in 1743, the son of a minor canon, afterwards teacher of the grammar-school at Giggleswick, Yorkshire. At the age of fifteen he was entered as sizar at Christ's College, Cambridge, and after two years of idleness worked hard and came out senior wrangler. For a time a teacher and then curate at Greenwich, he was in 1768 elected a Fellow of his college, and lectured in the university on Moral Philosophy and the Greek Testament till he was presented with the rectory of Musgrave in Westmorland in 1776. He held contemporaneously the livings of Dalston, Great Salkeld, Appleby, and Stanwix; and was made prebendary (1780), archdeacon (1782), and chancellor (1785) of Carlisle. In 1785 appeared his long-meditated Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy; in 1790 his Hora Pauline; and in 1794 his famous View of the Evidences of Christianity. Friends and preferment

now crowded in on him. The Bishop of London (Porteus) made Paley a prebendary of St Paul's; the Bishop of Lincoln presented him with the subdeanery of Lincoln; and the Bishop of Durham gave him the rectory of Bishop - Wearmouth, worth £1200 a year-and all these within six months, the luckiest half-year of his life. The boldness and freedom of some of Paley's disquisitions on government, a certain north-country roughness of speech and manner, his unspiritualness and 'common-sense' views of religion, and a suspected tendency to Unitarianism prevented his rising to the bench of bishops. In 1802 Paley published his Natural Theology, his last work, which reached a twentieth edition in 1820, and was translated into Spanish and Italian even. He enjoyed himself in the country with his duties and recreations: he was fond of angling; and he mixed familiarly with his neighbours in sociality and even conviviality. He disposed of his time with great regularity: in his garden he limited himself to one hour at a time, twice a day; in reading books of amusement, one hour at breakfast and another in the evening, and one for dinner and his newspaper.

Few theological or philosophical works were so extensively popular or held their place so long as those of Paley. His perspicacity of intellect was as remarkable as the vigour and simplicity of a style that in the eyes of his contemporaries was occasionally undignified. He had the rare art of popularising recondite knowledge and blending the business of life with philosophy. His doctrine of expediency as a rule of morals was even in his own time thought to trench on the authority of revealed religion, and to lower the standard of public duty; in the shape he put it, it could not be expected to foster the great and heroic virtues.

He

In his early life he is reported to have said, on the subject of his having subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles, that he was 'too poor to keep a conscience;' and certainly there was little in him of poetry or enthusiasm. Like Dr Johnson, he was a practical moralist, abhorred pretence, cant, and hypocrisy, and was suspicious of ideal virtue and high-strung devotion. Paley did not write for philosophers or metaphysicians, but for the great body of the people anxious to acquire knowledge, and to be able to give 'a reason for the hope that is in them.' His common-sense philosophy and his teleological method are now antiquated. considered the art of life to consist in properly 'setting our habits,' and for this no subtle distinctions or profound theories were necessary. His Moral and Political Philosophy is a utilitarian system with a religious sanction; virtue is 'doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of future happiness.' It is not a new system, but rather an admirable compendium of the views of such earlier moralists as suited him, lucidly and vigorously stated. As in his other works, he made skilful use of any other writers whose arguments served his purpose-not, however, without many shrewd additions of his own. The famous argument from a watch was a commonplace, but was made classical in the pithy statement he gave it. Sir James Mackintosh summed up thus: 'The most original and ingenious of his writings is the Hora Paulina. The Evidences of Christianity are formed out of an admirable translation of Butler's Analogy, and a most skilful abridgment of Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History. He may be said to have thus given value to two works, of which the first was scarcely intelligible to most of those who were most desirous of profiting by it; and the second soon wearies out the greater part of readers, though the few who are more patient have almost always been gradually won over to feel pleasure in a display of knowledge, probity, charity, and meekness unmatched by an avowed advocate in a cause deeply interesting his warmest feelings. His Natural Theology is the wonderful work of a man who, after sixty, had studied anatomy in order to write it.' When Paley's name was mentioned to George III., the monarch said, 'Paley! what, Pigeon Paley?'-a nickname given to the archdeacon from a famous illustration in the Moral and Political Philosophy in a passage on property, which is a fair specimen of his style of reasoning.

Of Property.

If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn, and if-instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more-you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap, reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse, keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps worst pigeon of the flock; sitting

round and looking on all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about and wasting it; and if a pigeon more hardy and hungry than the rest touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it and tearing it to pieces: if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among men. Among men, you see the ninety-and-nine toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one, and this one, too, oftentimes the feeblest and worst of the whole set-a child, a woman, a madman, or a fool; getting nothing for themselves all the while but a little of the coarsest of the provision which their own industry produces; looking quietly on while they see the fruits of all their labour spent or spoiled; and if one of the number take or touch a particle of the hoard, the others joining against him, and hanging him for the theft. There must be some very important advantages to account for an institution which, in the view of it above given, is so paradoxical and unnatural. The principal of these advantages are the following:

I. It increases the produce of the earth.

The earth, in climates like ours, produces little without cultivation; and none would be found willing to cultivate the ground if others were to be admitted to an equal share of the produce. The same is true of the care of flocks and herds of tame animals. Crabs and acorns, red deer, rabbits, game, and fish, are all which we should have to subsist upon in this country if we trusted to the spontaneous productions of the soil; and it fares not much better with other countries. A nation of North American savages, consisting of two or three hundred, will take up and be half-starved upon a tract of land which in Europe, and with European management, would be sufficient for the maintenance of as many thousands. In some fertile soils, together with great abundance of fish upon their coasts, and in regions where clothes are unnecessary, a considerable degree of population may subsist without property in land, which is the case in the islands of Otaheite; but in less-favoured situations, as in the country of New Zealand, though this sort of property obtain in a small degree, the inhabitants, for want of a more secure and regular establishment of it, are driven oftentimes by the scarcity of provision to devour one another.

II. It preserves the produce of the earth to maturity. We may judge what would be the effects of a community of right to the productions of the earth from the trifling specimens which we see of it at present. A cherry-tree in a hedgerow, nuts in a wood, the grass of an unstinted pasture, are seldom of much advantage to anybody, because people do not wait for the proper season of reaping them. Corn, if any were sown, would never ripen; lambs and calves would never grow up to sheep and cows, because the first person that met them would reflect that he had better take them as they are than leave them for another.

III. It prevents contests.

War and waste, tumult and confusion, must be unavoidable and eternal where there is not enough for all, and where there are no rules to adjust the division.

IV. It improves the conveniency of living.

This it does two ways. It enables mankind to divide themselves into distinct professions, which is impossible unless a man can exchange the productions of his own art for what he wants from others, and exchange implies

property. Much of the advantage of civilised over savage life depends upon this. When a man is, from necessity, his own tailor, tent-maker, carpenter, cook, huntsman, and fisherman, it is not probable that he will be expert at any of his callings. Hence the rude habitations, furniture, clothing, and implements of savages, and the tedious length of time which all their operations require. It likewise encourages those arts by which the accommodations of human life are supplied, by appropriating to the artist the benefit of his discoveries and improvements, without which appropriation ingenuity will never be exerted with effect. Upon these several accounts we may venture, with a few exceptions, to pronounce that even the poorest and the worst provided, in countries where property and the consequences of property prevail, are in a better situation with respect to food, raiment, houses, and what are called the necessaries of life, than any are in places where most things remain in common. The balance, therefore, upon the whole, must preponderate in favour of property with a manifest and great excess. Inequality of property, in the degree in which it exists in most countries of Europe, abstractedly considered, is an evil; but it is an evil which flows from those rules concerning the acquisition and disposal of property, by which men are incited to industry, and by which the object of their industry is rendered secure and valuable. If there be any great inequality unconnected with this origin, it ought to be corrected.

Distinctions of Civil Life lost in Church.

The distinctions of civil life are almost always insisted upon too much and urged too far. Whatever, therefore, conduces to restore the level, by qualifying the disposi tions which grow out of great elevation or depression of rank, improves the character on both sides. Now things are made to appear little by being placed beside what is great. In which manner, superiorities, that occupy the whole field of the imagination, will vanish or shrink to their proper diminutiveness, when compared with the distance by which even the highest of men are removed from the Supreme Being, and this comparison is naturally introduced by all acts of joint worship. If ever the poor man holds up his head, it is at church: if ever the rich man views him with respect, it is there: and both will be the better, and the public profited, the oftener they meet in a situation in which the consciousness of dignity in the one is tempered and mitigated, and the spirit of the other erected and confirmed. (From the same work.)

The World made with a Benevolent Design. It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. The insect youth are on the wing.' Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties. A bee amongst the flowers in spring is one of the most cheerful objects that can be looked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoy. ment; so busy and so pleased: yet it is only a specimen of insect life, with which, by reason of the animal being half domesticated, we happen to be better acquainted

than we are with that of others. The whole winged insect tribe, it is probable, are equally intent upon their proper employments, and, under every variety of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by the offices which the Author of their nature has assigned to them. But the atmosphere is not the only scene of enjoyment for the insect race. Plants are covered with aphides, greedily sucking their juices, and constantly, as it should seem, in the act of sucking. It cannot be doubted but that this is a state of gratification: what else should fix them so close to the operation and so long? Other species are running about with an alacrity in their motions which carries with it every mark of pleasure. Large patches of ground are sometimes half covered with these brisk and sprightly natures. If we look to what the waters produce, shoals of the fry of fish frequent the margins of rivers, of lakes, and of the sea itself. These are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves. Their attitudes, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it-which I have noticed a thousand times with equal attention and amusement all conduce to shew their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess. Walking by the sea-side in a calm evening, upon a sandy shore and with an ebbing tide, I have frequently remarked the appearance of a dark cloud, or rather very thick mist, hanging over the edge of the water, to the height, perhaps, of half a yard, and of the breadth of two or three yards, stretching along the coast as far as the eye could reach, and always retiring with the water. this cloud came to be examined, it proved to be nothing else than so much space filled with young shrimps in the act of bounding into the air from the shallow margin of the water, or from the wet sand. If any motion of a mute animal could express delight, it was this; if they had meant to make signs of their happiness, they could not have done it more intelligibly. Suppose, then, what I have no doubt of, each individual of this number to be in a state of positive enjoyment; what a sum, collectively, of gratification and pleasure have we here before

our view!

When

The young of all animals appear to me to receive pleasure simply from the exercise of their limbs and bodily faculties, without reference to any end to be attained, or any use to be answered by the exertion. A child, without knowing anything of the use of language, is in a high degree delighted with being able to speak. Its incessant repetition of a few articulate sounds, or perhaps of a single word which it has learned to pronounce, proves this point clearly. Nor is it less pleased with its first successful endeavours to walk, or rather to run-which precedes walking-although entirely ignorant of the importance of the attainment to its future life, and even without applying it to any present purpose. A child is delighted with speaking, without having anything to say; and with walking, without knowing where to go. And, prior to both these, I am disposed to believe that the waking-hours of infancy are agreeably taken up with the exercise of vision, or perhaps, more properly speaking, with learning

to see.

But it is not for youth alone that the great Parent of creation hath provided. Happiness is found with the purring cat no less than with the playful kitten; in the arm-chair of dozing age, as well as in either the sprightliness of the dance or the animation of the chase. To

novelty, to acuteness of sensation, to hope, to ardour of pursuit, succeeds what is, in no inconsiderable degree, an equivalent for them all, ' perception of ease.' Herein is the exact difference between the young and the old. The young are not happy but when enjoying pleasure ; the old are happy when free from pain. And this constitution suits with the degrees of animal power which they respectively possess. The vigour of youth was to be stimulated to action by impatience of rest; whilst to the imbecility of age, quietness and repose become positive gratifications. In one important step the advantage is with the old. A state of ease is, generally speaking, more attainable than a state of pleasure. A constitution, therefore, which can enjoy ease is preferable to that which can taste only pleasure. This same perception of ease oftentimes renders old age a condition of great comfort, especially when riding at its anchor after a busy or tempestuous life. It is well described by Rousseau to be the interval of repose and enjoyment between the hurry and the end of life. How far the same cause extends to other animal natures cannot be judged of with certainty. The appearance of satisfaction with which most animals, as their activity subsides, seek and enjoy rest affords reason to believe that this source of gratification is appointed to advanced life under all or most of its various forms. In the species with which we are best acquainted, namely, our own, I am far, even as an observer of human life, from thinking that youth is its happiest season, much less the only happy one. (From Natural Theology.)

Character of St Paul.

Here, then, we have a man of liberal attainments, and, in other points, of sound judgment, who had addicted his life to the service of the gospel. We see him, in the prosecution of his purpose, travelling from country to country, enduring every species of hardship, encountering every extremity of danger, assaulted by the populace, punished by the magistrates, scourged, beat, stoned, left for dead; expecting, wherever he came, a renewal of the same treatment, and the same dangers; yet, when driven from one city, preaching in the next; spending his whole time in the employment, sacrificing to it his pleasures, his ease, his safety; persisting in this course to old age, unaltered by the experience of perverseness, ingratitude, prejudice, desertion; unsubdued by anxiety, want, labour, persecutions; unwearied by long confinement, undismayed by the prospect of death. Such was Paul. We have his letters in our hands; we have also a history purporting to be written by one of his fellow-travellers, and appearing, by a comparison with these letters, certainly to have been written by some person well acquainted with the transactions of his life. From the letters, as well as from the history, we gather not only the account which we have stated of him, but that he was one out of many who acted and suffered in the same manner; and that of those who did so, several had been the companions of Christ's ministry, the ocular witnesses, or pretending to be such, of his miracles and of his resurrection. We moreover find this same person referring in his letters to his supernatural conversion, the particulars and accompanying circumstances of which are related in the history; and which accompanying circumstances, if all or any of them be true, render it impossible to have been a

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delusion. We also find him positively, and in appropriate terms, asserting that he himself worked miracles, strictly and properly so called, in support of the mission which he executed; the history, meanwhile, recording various passages of his ministry which come up to the extent of this assertion. The question is, whether falsehood was ever attested by evidence like this. Falsehoods, we know, have found their way into reports, into tradition, into books; but is an example to be met with of a man voluntarily undertaking a life of want and pain, of incessant fatigue, of continual peril; submitting to the loss of his home and country, to stripes and stoning, to tedious imprisonment, and the constant expectation of a violent death, for the sake of carrying about a story of what was false, and what, if false, he must have known to be so?

(From the Hora Paulinæ.)

Paley published in all a score of works, including various collec. tions of sermons. Collective editions appeared in 1805-8, 1819, 1825, 1837, 1838, and 1851. There are Lives by Meadley (1809), his son (1825), and the other editors of the works.

John Brown of Haddington (1722-87), the founder of a house famous in Scottish theology, science, and literature for four generations, did himself by his theological works give an impress to the Scottish mind and evoke intellectual through religious interests. Born at Carpow near Abernethy in Perthshire, a poor weaver's child, he lost father and mother in boyhood and had but scanty schooling. Nevertheless, as a Tayside herd-boy he contrived to study not merely Latin to some purpose, but even Greek and a little Hebrew. For a time he was a pedlar; during the '45 served in the Fife Militia; taught in several schools; and having studied theology in connection with the Associate Burgher Synod, was in 1751 called to the congregation of Haddington. He was a man of much learning; open-handed on a stipend of £50 a year; a kindly humourist, though harrowing self-doubts tormented him all his life through ; and a powerful preacher. In 1768 he accepted the unsalaried Burgher chair of Divinity. Of his twenty-seven works, the most widely known are the Dictionary of the Bible (1768) and the Self-interpreting Bible (2 vols. 1778), both of which took rank with the Pilgrim's Progress and Boston's Fourfold State amongst the most treasured books of the Scottish people. Dr Brown's sons and grandsons were respected, learned, and eloquent divines; one grandson was a poet, chemist, and original thinker of exceptional accomplishments; a great-grandson was Professor of Chemistry in Edinburgh; and another great-grandson was the beloved Dr John Brown of Edinburgh, author of Rab and his Friends. The Memoirs and Select Remains of Dr Brown of Haddington were edited in 1856.

Beilby Porteus (1731-1808), Bishop first of Chester (1776) and then of London (1787), was another apologist whose Summary of Christian Evidences was long an educational force in England. Born at York of Virginian parentage, he studied at Christ's College, Cambridge. He took an active part in philanthropic and missionary

enterprises, and published, besides charges and sermons, a Life of Secker, and other works sufficient to fill six volumes.

Samuel Horsley (1733-1806), born in London and educated at Westminster and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, succeeded his father as rector of Newington in Surrey. A young F.R.S., he published comments on recent Arctic observations, helped to issue Newton's complete works, and conducted a grand controversy with Priestley, who had reckoned the divinity of Christ amongst his Corruptions of Christianity. Through this he attained successively to the sees of St Davids, Rochester, and St Asaph.

Richard Watson (1737-1816), a Westmorland man who studied at Trinity and became professor at Cambridge successively of Chemistry and Divinity, took more interest in farming and planting on his estate at Windermere than in his spiritual cures in Norfolk and Leicester. He was notoriously unspiritual in temper and a Liberal in politics and theology, but made himself famous by his Apologies in reply to Gibbon (1776) and Tom Paine (1796), and became Bishop of Llandaff in 1782.

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) was born at Hull, the son of a wealthy merchant, and educated at St John's College, Cambridge. Returned to Parliament for Hull and then for Yorkshire, he was a close friend of Pitt, though he remained independent of party. During a tour on the Continent with Dean Milner, he became seriously impressed about religious truth and duty; and in 1787 he founded an association for the reformation of manners. In 1788, supported by Clarkson and the Quakers, he entered on his nineteen years' struggle for the abolition of the slave-trade, crowned with victory in 1807. He next sought to secure the abolition of the slave-trade abroad and the total abolition of slavery itself, and was long a central figure in the 'Clapham sect' of Evangelicals. He wrote a Practical View of Christianity (1797), which was regarded as an epoch-making book. His Life was written by his sons (one of them the famous Bishop of Winchester; 1838), and his Private Papers were edited by Mrs A. M. Wilberforce (1898).

Herbert Marsh (1757–1839), son of the vicar of Faversham in Kent, after a course at St John's, Cambridge, was second wrangler and second Smith's prizeman. He continued his studies at Leipzig, and as translator of his master Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament ranks as the introducer to England of modern German Biblical criticism. He served England well by writing and publishing in German (1799) a defence of English policy in the French war which so conciliated German and Continental good-will that Napoleon proscribed the author, then in Germany, so that he had to lie concealed in Leipzig for months. Appointed professor at Cambridge, he increased

the excitement already caused by the dissertation appended to his translation of Michaelis, by lectures on the history of sacred criticism, and by a series of critical works which included books on the authenticity and credibility of the New Testament and on the authority of the Old Testament, all regarded as of dangerous and unsettling tendency. He involved himself still deeper in controversy by denouncing as immoral the Calvinistic doctrines of the Evangelical school. He was

vehement in polemics, and, appointed Bishop of Llandaff (1816) and of Peterborough (1819), proved an energetic administrator. He wrote innumerable charges, pamphlets, and books on such various subjects as the Pelasgi, the Roman Catholic controversy, Dr Bell's system of tuition, toleration, and the Government policy at various dates.

Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801), born at Nottingham, became Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, but renouncing his Anglican orders as a convinced Unitarian, became classical tutor in Dissenting academies at Warrington and Hackney. He lay two years in Dorchester jail for a 'seditious' answer to Bishop Watson, earnestly defending the French Revolution, not without severe strictures on the Government of the day and on pluralist bishops. He published editions of Bion and Moschus, Virgil, Horace, and Lucretius; Early Christian Writers on the Person of Christ (1784); Inquiry into the Expediency of Social Worship (1791; disapproving all public worship as such); Examination of Paine's Age of Reason (1794); and Silva Critica, illustrating the Scriptures from profane learning (1789-95). He was a keen controversialist, an enthusiast and political fanatic, a Pythagorean in his diet, and an eccentric in many of his ways. Porson said of him that he was as fierce against the Greek accents as he was against the Trinity; he felt keenly, acted on the first impulse, and wrote swiftly, often with force and eloquence. His Memoirs (1792) are uninteresting; not so his Correspondence with Fox (1813).

Dr John Lingard (1771–1851), born at Winchester, 5th February 1771, of humble Catholic parentage, was sent in 1782 to the English College at Douay, whence he escaped from the revolutionists in 1793 to England. He went with his fellow-refugees to the college established at Crockhall near Durham, and in 1808 at Ushaw, receiving priest's orders in 1795, and becoming vicepresident and Professor of Philosophy. In 1811 he accepted the mission of Hornby near Lancaster, at the same time declining a chair at Maynooth; in 1821 he obtained his D.D. from the Pope, and in 1839 a Crown pension of £300. His Antiquity of the Anglo-Saxon Church (1806) was the precursor of what became the labour of his life-the History of England to the Accession of William and Mary (8 vols. 1819-30; 6th ed. 1854-55). He had access to many unpublished documents in the

Vatican archives and other Catholic sources, and was able to correct quietly many errors not merely of ultra-Protestant authors, but of such writers as Hume. Inevitably, of course, most Protestants assumed that he had allowed his Catholic prepossessions to pervert the fidelity of his History, to palliate the atrocities of the Bartholomew Massacre, and especially to darken the shades in the characters of Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth, Cranmer, and others connected with the Reformation. His work was subjected to a severe scrutiny by Dr John Allen in two elaborate articles in the Edinburgh Review; by Archdeacon Todd, a zealous defender of Cranmer; and by other Protestant controversialists in the Quarterly and elsewhere. To these antagonists Dr Lingard replied in 1826 by a vindication of his fidelity as an historian, written in admirable tone and temper. His fairness had already been proved by the fact that Ultramontanes regarded him as Gallican and dangerous to his own Church polity. Moderate Protestants were surprised to find how candidly he had dealt with debatable matters; he had obviously so written as to encourage Protestants to study his version of controverted questions. No doubt on the whole he was on many such points nearer the truth than the ultra-Protestants; and his work cleared away many prepossessions and softened the asperity that had heretofore prevailed almost universally between Catholic and Protestant historians. For the earlier periods, especially for Anglo-Saxon and Norman history, Lingard's work has been completely superseded; it still retains high value for English readers as representing the view of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and of the Reformation, taken by a candid and conciliatory Roman Catholic. Content with plain speech, Dr Lingard did little to commend his sound and conscientious work by any special graces of style.

One single phrase in Lingard's History attained to special celebrity; the words 'what he deemed to be his duty' in the conclusion of his story of Thomas Becket's assassination, highly disapproved at headquarters, were held to have cost the judicious historian a cardinal's hat. The sentences in which the fateful phrase occurs are these:

Thus at the age of fifty-three perished this extraordinary man, a martyr to what he deemed to be his duty, the preservation of the immunities of the church. The moment of his death was the triumph of his cause. His personal virtues and exalted station, the dignity and composure with which he met his fate, the sacredness of the place where the murder was perpetrated, all contributed to inspire men with horror for his enemies and veneration for his character.

Cranmer and Pole.

From the window of his cell the archbishop had seen his two friends led to execution. At the sight his resolution began to waver: and he let fall some hints of a willingness to relent, and of a desire to confer with the legate. But in a short time he recovered the tranquillity