One of the successors of Toland and Shaftesbury in the school of English deists or freethinkers, was born at Beer-Ferrers, in Devonshire, about 1657. He was educated at Lincoln and Exeter Colleges, Oxford: took his A.B. in 1676; shortly after was elected fellow of All-Souls’, and was admitted doctor of laws at Oxford in 1685. He retained his fellowship during the reign of James II. by professing the Roman Catholic faith; he afterwards recanted, however, and, adopting revolutionary principles, went to the other extreme, and wrote against the nonjurors. He now became an advocate, and sat as judge in the court of delegates, with a pension from the crown of £200 per annum. Some time afterwards, considerable attention was drawn to him by his work entitled “The Rights of the Christian Church” (1706–7, 8vo), and the ensuing controversy; but the production which had rendered his name a memorable one was his “Christianity as Old as the Creation” (1730) which provoked replies from Dr. Warburton, Leland, Foster, and Conybeare…. Tindal died in London, Aug. 16, 1733, and was interred in Clerkenwell Church. Mr. Tindal also wrote, “An Essay concerning the Power of the Magistrate and the Rights of Mankind in Matters of Religion” (London 1697, 8vo):—“A Defence of the Rights of the Christian Church” (ibid. 1709, 2 pts. 8vo):—“The Nation Vindicated” (ibid. 1711; pt. ii, 1712):—“War with Priestcraft, or the Freethinker’s Iliad” (ibid. 1732, 8vo), a burlesque poem.
Personal
This day, at 12 o’clock at noon, St. Marie’s great bell rung out for Dr. Matthew Tindall, fellow of All Soul’s college, who died this last week out of the college…. He was a man of most vile principles, and of no religion, as may appear from many books he wrote and published, in which he had the assistance of the late Mr. Collins, yet without his name to them, amongst which are the “Rights of the Christian Church,” and “Christianity as old as the Creation.”
Christianity as Old as Creation, 1730
If you was here, you would see how I have scribbled over the margins of Tindal’s “Christianity as old as the Creation.” I think I have him as sure as I had Collins: that is, overturn the pillars of this famous edifice of impiety: which all the writers against him hitherto have left standing; busying themselves only to untile his roof.
This was not only the most important work that deism had yet produced, composed with care, and bearing the marks of thoughtful study of the chief contemporary arguments, Christian as well as Deist, but derives an interest from the circumstance that it was the book to which more than to any other single work, bishop Butler’s “Analogy” was designed as a reply.
The replies to Tindal, taking them altogether, were unsatisfactory. This may have been owing to a want of definiteness as to the object of his book. It was diffuse in its style, abounding in long quotations, and many subjects were merely alluded to and left for future treatment…. Tindal left another volume of his book in manuscript, but it fell into the hands of the Bishop of London, who thought the best way to answer it was to destroy it. Bishop Gibson had made Tindal’s work the subject of one of his “Pastoral Letters.” He had said the same things against it as Tindal’s other opponents, and he said them as well as any of them had done. Gibson was a liberal Churchman as well as an assiduous bishop, and had some of the best qualities of the rational divines of his time, but the world will scarcely forgive him for the sacrilege of destroying the work of one of the most thoughtful men of that age. On the monument erected to his memory in the vestibule of Fulham Church this is not recorded among his noble virtues and the great acts of his life. Could the deed speak, it would say—
| “Non ego sum titulis surripienda tuis.” |
He was about thirty at the time of his first escapade; at the ripe age of nearly fifty, he first attracted notice by a book called “The Rights of the Christian Church,” which was a vigorous assault upon his former High Church allies; and he was already past seventy when he produced the first volume of “Christianity as Old as the Creation.” The second which should have followed, was quietly burned by Bishop Gibson, into whose hands the MS. fell after the author’s death, and who acted on the principle that prevention was better than cure. The first volume, however, had done its work. It has not the force of style or the weight of thought which could secure a permanent place in literature; and has become rather heavy reading at the present day. The arrangement is confused; it is full of repetition. Yet it had the merit of bringing out with great distinctness the most essential position of the deists. Tindal was, in reality, just one stage in advance of Tillotson, Hoadly, Clarke, and other latitudinarian divines from whom he borrowed, and whose authority he freely quotes. He was to Clarke what Toland had been to Locke. The indignation which he produced amongst their followers was the livelier because he seemed to be unmasking their secret thoughts, and formulating the conclusions for which they had already provided the premises. Are you aware, asked some disputant, that the necessary inference from your argument is so and so? Yes, replied his antagonist, but I don’t draw it. Tindal insisted upon drawing it, and was reviled, accordingly.
“Christianity as old as the Creation,” a work published without his name, and never finished, revealed how deeply and long meditated had been this protest against all positive religion. This book, to my mind, has many and grievous faults. Being in the form of a dialogue between A and B, it commits the Christian cause to one of the greatest weaklings known in controversy. It is radically ambiguous. It has endless repetitions, is full of the fallacy of citation, and is crowded with particular objections to the Old Testament and New that do not belong to its main argument, holding right on, as in the case of the various readings, as if nothing had ever been said on the other side. But with all these drawbacks it compels the breaking up of new ground bearing on the relation of natural religion (so called) to revealed…. The ground of Tindal was really the key of the Deistic position; and hence with his defeat the struggle became less close and stubborn.
