As a side note, a charge of wholesale plagiarism from this book was brought against Paley in The Athenaeum for 1848, but the famous illustration of the watch was not peculiar to Nieuwentyt and had been used by many others before either Paley or Nieuwentyt. But the charge of plagiarism was based on more similarities. For example, Nieuwentyt wrote "in the middle of a Sandy down, or in a desart {sic} and solitary Place, where few People are used to pass, any one should find a Watch ..."Nieuwentyt quotation given in , pages 69–70. Jantzen elaborates on the charge of plagiarism on pages 168–169, and concludes "... I will take it as a given that, in fact, Paley passed off as his own (or, more charitably, 'reworked') an argument that he took from Nieuwentyt."
