On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man

Two Volumes in One. William Paley’s Natural Theology was the inspiration for a series of remarkable works whose thesis was that all of nature shows design and that the argument is cumulative, case by case. The Earl of Bridgewater left GBP 8,000 for the undertaking. The intentions of the will were carried out by the President of the Royal Society, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of London, who, in turn, chose the Reverend Thomas Chalmers, Professor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh, to write the first of the eight works, entitled On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man . The object was to illustrate such work by all reasonable arguments, as for instance, the variety and formation of God’s creatures in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms; the effect of digestion, and thereby of conversion; the construction of the hand of man, and an infinite variety of other arguments; as also by discoveries ancient and modern, in arts, sciences, and the whole extent of literature.