A VIEW OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. IN THREE PARTS. PART I. Of the direct Historical Evidence of Chriftianity, PART II. Of the Auxiliary Evidences of Chriftianity. PART III. A brief Confideration of fome popular Objections. BY WILLIAM PALEY, M. A. ARCHDEACON OF CARLISLE. THE FIFTH EDITION. IN TWO VOLUMES.-VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR R. FAULDER, NEW BOND STREET. M.DCC.XCVI. HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND JAMES YORK, D. D. LORD BISHOP OF ELY. MY LORD, WHEN five years ago an important station in the University of Cambridge awaited your Lordship's disposal, you were pleased to offer it to me. The circumstances, under which this offer was made, demand a public acknowledgement. I had never feen your Lordship: I poffeffed na connection which could poffibly recommend me to your favour: I was known to you, only by my endeavours, in common with many a 3 many others, to discharge my duty as a tutor in the University; and by fome very imperfect, but certainly well intended, and, as you thought, useful publications fince. In an age by no means wanting in examples of honourable patronage, although this deserve not to be mentioned in respect of the object of your Lordship's choice, it is inferior to none in the purity and difinterestedness of the motives which suggested it. How the following work may be received, I pretend not to foretell. My first prayer concerning it is, that it may do good to any my second hope, that it may affift what it hath always been my earnest wish to promote, the religious part of an academical education. If in this latter view it might feem, in any degree, to excufe your Lordship's judgement I |