William Paley

In 1776 Paley was presented to the rectory of Musgrave in Westmorland which was exchanged soon after for Appleby. John Law observed at this time that "Paley has missed a mitre". Earlier in the century David Hume had argued against notions of design with counter examples drawn from monstrosity imperfect forms of testimony and probability and it has been assumed that Paley could not have read Hume.

He is best known for his exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology which made use of the watchmaker analogy (also see natural theology).