Note 15 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Most literary people are aware that it was borrowed by Paley himself. A reference very accessible to ordinary readers may be made to Knight's English Cyclopædia, Article Nieuwentyt. "A work," says the biographer, "was published by him at Amsterdam in 1715, in one volume 4to, entitled 'The right use of Contemplating the Works of the Creator': the object of the author is first to convince atheists of the existence of a supreme and benevolent Creator, by contemplating the mechanism of the heavens, the structure of animals, etc.; and, secondly, to remove the doubts of deists concerning revealed religion. It was originally published in Dutch, but has passed through several editions, in German, French, and English. The English editions, translated by Chamberlayne, under the title of the 'Religious Philosopher,' appeared at London in 1718-19 and 1730, in three vols. 8vo. This work, as was first pointed out in the Athenæum for 1848, pp. 803, 907, 930, served as the basis for Paley's 'Natural Theology,' the general argument and many of the illustrations in that remarkable work being directly copied—and without the slightest acknowledgment, though Paley was acquainted with the book—from the 'Religious Philosopher.'"
Lord Brougham, who does not appear to have seen Bernard Nieuwentyt's book, believes that Derham supplied the fountain from which Paley drank so freely. Apparently he used both.
To this note it may be added that the want of Natural Philosophy under which the Archdeacon himself laboured, has been recently commented on in the following terms:—
"Paley kicked his foot unconcernedly against the stone he found on the heath; for anything he knew, he says, it might have been there for ever. Geology was then a practically unknown science, or he might have found epochs of history in the stone, and evidence of all manner of special creations for man's benefit. But Paley was no natural philosopher, only a half-learned theologian, who skimmed over all difficulties, and produced a book which has done immense harm in leading Englishmen to anthropomorphic conceptions of God."—Report of an Address by A. J. Ellis, President of the Philological Society, in an American Newspaper (the Index) for August 10th, 1872.