TINDAL, MATTHEW, LL.D. 



TINDAL, MATTHEW, LL.D. 



1722. This is the best work concerning Timur, although the author 

 often flatters. Arabshah, a Syrian, on the contrary, depreciates the 

 character of Timur; his history, or rather his epic, has been trans- 

 lated under the title 'Ahmedis Arabsiadae Vitas et Rerum Gestarum 

 Timuri qui vulgo Tamerlanes dicitur, Historia,' Lugduni-Batavorum, 

 1636. Longdit, Argote de Molina, Petrus Perundinus Pratensis, 

 Boekler, Richerius, &c. have also written the life of Timur. Among 

 the Byzantines, Ducas, Chalcondylas, and Phranzos contain many 

 valuable accounts, though Phranzes is less critical than the others. A 

 very interesting book is ' Scbildtberger eine Wunderbarliche und 

 Kurzweilige Histoire,' &c., 4to. The same book was translated into 

 modern German by Penzel, Miinchen, 1813. Schildtberger, a German 

 soldier, waa made prisoner by the Turks in the battle of Nicopolis 

 (1396), when he was only sixteen years old. In the battle of Angora 

 he was taken by the Tatars, and became a kind of secretary to Shah- 

 rokh and Miran-Sbnh, the sons of Timur. He finally returned to 

 Germany in 1427, after a captivity of thirty years, and then wrote the 

 history of his adventures. 



Gibbon gives a splendid view of Timur's conquests in the ' Decline 

 and Fall,' chap. Irv. Another most valuable work is Clavijo, ' Historia 

 del gran Tamerlan, e Itinerario,' &c. Clavijo, ambassador of King 

 Henry III. of Castile at the court of Timur, was present at the battle 

 of Angora. (Desguignes, ' Histoire des Huns,' vol. ii.) Timur may 

 be considered as the author of the ' Tufukat, or the Code of Laws.' 

 This work was originally written in the East-Turkish language, and was 

 translated into Persian. The Persian version, with the English trans- 

 lation and a most valuable index, was published by Major Davy and 

 Professor White, 4 to, Oxford, 1783; another version with a full biblio- 

 graphical account of the work prefixed, was published by Major C. 

 Stewart, late professor of Oriental languages in the East India Com- 

 pany's College, under the title of ' The Mulfuzat Timur, or Autobio- 

 graphical Memoirs of the Moghul Emperor Timur,' 8vo, 1830; and 

 the late Professor Langles translated the Persian version into French, 

 under the title, ' Instituts Politiques et Militaires de Tamerlan,' Pari?, 

 1787. This work is of great importance for the history of Timur; we 

 see that this Tatarian conqueror was provided with maps and works 

 concerning geography, which were composed by hia order. 



TINDAL, MATTHEW, LL.D., was the son of the Rev. John 

 Tindal, parish clergyman at Beer-Ferres in Devonshire, where Matthew 

 was born about the year 1657. In 1672 he was admitted of Lincoln 

 College, Oxford, where Dr. Hickes was his tutor ; but he afterwards 

 removed to Exeter College, and he was finally elected to a law fellow- 

 ship at All Souls, soon after he had taken his degree of B.A. in 1676. 

 He proceeded LL.B. in 1679, and was created LL.D. in 1685. If we 

 may believe certain charges which were long afterwards made in print 

 by the opponents of bis theological opinions, his debaucheries while 

 he resided at Oxford were so scandalous as to have drawn down upon 

 him on one occasion a public reprimand from his college. Soon after 

 he obtained his Doctor's degree he went over to the Church of Rome, 

 not without subjecting himself to the imputation of having an eye to 

 the worldly advantages which such a step might seem to promise 

 under the popish king just come to the throne. It does not appear 

 however that he actually obtained any court favour or patronage by 

 his change of religion ; and, according to his own account, given in a 

 pamphlet he published in his own defence in 1708, he reverted to the 

 Church of England some months before the revolution, having attended 

 mass for the last time at Candlemas 1688, and publicly received the 

 sacrament in his college chapel at Easter following. He asserts that 

 his mind, which came a tabula rasa to the university, had been 

 prepared for being seduced by James's Romish emissaries by tbe 

 notions as to the high and independent powers of the clergy which 

 then prevailed there, and which he had adopted without examination. 

 Accordingly, when he threw off Popery, he abandoned his high church 

 principles at the same time ; or rather, as he puts it, he discovered 

 that these principles were unfounded, and that at once cured him of 

 his Popery. " Meeting," he says, " upon his going into the world, 

 with people who treated that notion of the independent power as it 

 deserved, and finding the absurdities of Popery to be much greater at 

 hand than they appeared at a distance, he began to examine the whole 

 matter with all the attention he was capable of ; and then he quickly 

 found, and was surprised at the discovery, that all his till then 

 undoubted maxims were so far from having any solid foundation, that 

 they were built on as great a contradiction as can be, that of two 

 independent powers in the same society. Upon this he returned, as 

 ho had good reason, to the Church of England, which he found, by 

 examining into her constitution, disclaimed all that independent power 

 he had been bred up to the belief of." The revolution having taken 

 place, he now also, naturally enough, became a zealous partisan of that 

 settlement. The history of the rest of his life, during which he 

 appears to have resided mostly in London, consists almost entirely of 

 that of his successive publications and of the controversies in which 

 they involved him. 



He first appeared as an author in November 1693, by the publi- 

 cation, in 4to, of ' An Essay concerning Obedience to the Supreme 

 Powers, and the Duty of Subjects in all Revolutions, with some con- 

 siderations concerning the present juncture of affairs.' This was 

 followed in March 1694 by ' An Essay concerning the Law of Nations 

 and the Rights of Sovereigns,' a second edition of which, with addi- 



tions, was brought out in the same year. This year also he published 

 'A Letter to the Clergy of both Universities,' in recommendation of 

 certain alterations which there was then some talk of making in the 

 Liturgy ; and in 1695 another pamphlet in support of the same 

 views. But the first work by which he attracted general attention 

 was an 8vo volume which he published in 1706, entitled ' The Rights 

 of the Christian Church Asserted, against the Romish and all other 

 priests who claim an independent power over it.' This work, which is 

 an elaborate attack upon the theory of hierarchical supremacy, or 

 what are commonly called high-church principles, immediately raised 

 a vast commotion. It is related that to a friend who found him one 

 day engaged upon it, pen in hand, he said that he was writing a book 

 which would make the clergy mad. Replies to it were immediately 

 published by the celebrated William Wotton, by Dr. Hickes (TindaPs 

 old college tutor), and others ; the controversy continued to rage for 

 several years. A bookseller and his shopman were indicted for selling 

 the book. In 1707 Tindal published 'A Defence ' of his work, and a 

 few months after, ' A Second Defence,' both of which he republished 

 together, with additions, in 1709 : the same year he also reprinted his 

 two Essays on Obedience and the Law of Nations, along with 'A 

 Discourse for the Liberty of the Press, and an Essay concerning the 

 Rights of Mankind in matters of Religion.' About the same time he 

 came forth with a fresh pamphlet, entitled ' New High Church turned 

 Old Presbyterian,' in exposure of the pretensions put forward by 

 Sacheverell and his party ; upon which the House of Commons, which 

 the day before had condemned Sacheverell's sermons to be burned, on 

 the 25th of March 1710 impartially ordered Tindal's 'Rights of the 

 Christian Church,' and the second edition of his two ' Defences,' to be 

 committed to the flames at the same time. This proceeding drew 

 from Tindal the same year three more pamphlets the first entitled 

 'A High-Church Catechism;' the second, 'The Jacobitism, Perjury, 

 and Popery of the High-Church Priests ; ' the third, ' The Merciful 

 Judgments of High Church triumphant, on Offending Clergymen and 

 others, in the reign of Charles I.' The next year, on the Lower House 

 of Convocation having drawn up and printed 'A Representation of the 

 present state of Religion, with regard to the late excessive growth of 

 Infidelity, Heresy, and Profaneness,' Tindal forthwith replied in ' The 

 Nation Vindicated from the Aspersions cast on it ' in the said repre- 

 sentation. The second part of this performance is occupied with an 

 explanation and defence of what has since been called the doctrine of 

 philosophical necessity, in opposition to the assertion of the Convo- 

 cation, that such views went to overturn the foundations of all 

 morality, and of all religion, natural as well as revealed. For some 

 years from this date Tindal's active pen was exclusively occupied with 

 the politics of the day ; but his performances do not appear to have 

 been very effective at the time, and have been long forgotten. It is 

 remarkable however that in so voluminous a work as Coxe's ' Memoirs 

 of Sir Robert Walpole,' no notice should be taken of a personal con- 

 troversy in which Tindal became involved with that minister after hia 

 resignation in 1717, and which produced various pamphlets on both 

 sides. Tindal considered himself to have been ill-used by Walpole, 

 who, according to his account, had first courted his alliance, and then 

 suddenly dropped him after he had so far committed himself in 

 writing that it was imagined his hostility in print was not to be 

 dreaded. Walpole, on the other hand, or his friends, accused Tindal 

 of a treacherous desertion to the opposite faction as soon as he found 

 that Walpole had been or was about to be deprived of power. It is 

 probable that there was some misunderstanding on both sides. In 

 any case this ministerial rupture was merely a personal quarrel, in 

 which little or no public principle was involved ; and it implies there- 

 fore no political versatility or inconsistency in Tindal that a few years 

 after this, in 1721, 1722, and 1723, when Walpole was at the head of 

 the ministry, he came forward as a strenuous defender of his govern- 

 ment in a succession of pamphlets. He did not return to his original 

 field of theological polemics till 1728, when he published 'An Address 

 to the Inhabitants of the two great Cities of London and Westminster,' 

 in reply to a pastoral letter which the Bishop of London, Dr. Gibson, 

 had addressed to the people of his diocese on the subject of Anthony 

 Collins's ' Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered,' and other recent 

 deistical writings. A ' Second Pastoral Letter,' soon after published 

 by the bishop, called forth a ' Second Address' from Tindal; and both 

 addresses were reprinted the same year, in an Svo volume, with altera- 

 tions and additions. 



From this date Tindal seems to have remained quiet till the year 

 1 730, when he produced, in a 4to volume, the work by which he is 

 now chiefly remembered, his ' Christianity as Old as the Creation, or 

 the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature.' The object 

 of this work, as is indeed sufficiently declared in its title, is to contend 

 that there is nothing more in Christianity, properly understood, than 

 what the human reason is quite capable of discovering for itself, and 

 by implication to deny that any special revelation has ever been made 

 by the Deity to man. It did not however contain any express denial 

 of the truth of Christianity ; of which indeed the author and his 

 partisans rather professed to think that he had found out a new 

 defence stronger than any that had been previously thought of. 

 " Tindal," says Warburton, some years after, " a kind of bastard 

 Socrates, had brought our speculations from heaven to earth ; and, 

 under pretence of advancing the antiquity of Christianity, laboured to 



