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*hir, whrrf Matthew WM bom about the year 1057. In 

 Ifl7i he w$ admitted of Lincoln Cnllc-irc. Oxford, where 

 Dr. Hicke* was hi* tutor; hut he afterwards removed to 



r College ; and he was finally fleeted to a law fel- 

 lowship at All Soul*, *oon alter h had taken his degree 



V., in 1070. He proceeded I.I. H. in 1079, and wan 

 created I.L.D. in 10f>. If we may believe certain charges 

 which were lone afterwards made in print by the oppo- 

 nent* of his theological opinion*, tos debaucheries while 

 he redded at Oxford were no scandalous as to have drawn 

 down upon him on one occasion a public reprimand from 

 lij-< college. Soon after ho obtained his doctor's degree 

 In 1 went over tu the Church of Koine, not without subject- 

 ing himself (o the imputation of Imvinsr an eye to the 

 worldly advantages which such a stop might seem to pro- 

 mine u'nder the popish king just come to the throne. It 

 does not appear however that he actually obtained any 

 court favour or patronage by hit change of reliirion ; and, 



ding to his own account, given in a pamphlet he 

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

 l.'hnrch of Kngland some months before the Revolution, 

 having attended mass for the last time at Candlemas, 

 low. and publicly recei\ed the sacrament in his college 

 chapel at Easter following. He asserts that his mind, 

 which cHine a tabula rota to the university, had been pre- 

 pared for being seduced by James's Romish emissaries by 

 the 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 tinie : 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 

 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 nuic.kly found, and was surprised at the dis- 



V, that all his fill then undoubted maxims were so far 

 from having any solid inundation, that they were built on 

 as great a contradiction as can be, that of two independent 

 powers in the name society. Upon this he returned, as he 

 had good reason, to the' Church of England, which he 

 found, hy 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, na- 

 turally enough, became a zealous partizan of that settle- 

 ment. 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 aa an author in November. 1C93, by 

 the publication, in4to..of ' An Essay concerning Obedience 

 to the Supreme Powers, and the Duty of Subjects in ail 

 Revolutions, with some considerations concerning the pre- 

 sent juncture of affairs.' This was followed in March, 

 1GU4. bv ' An Essay concerning the Law of Nations and 

 the I 'a second edition of which, with 



additions, wan brought out in Uie same year. This year 

 :tcr to the Clergy of both Uni- 

 i;-ndation of certain alterations which 

 WM then some talk of making in the Liturgy ; and 

 in lUffi another pamphlet in support of the same views. 

 Hut the first work by which he attracted general attention 

 WM an Hvo. vol : i he published in 1700. entitled 



The Right* Of imrch Asserted, agai- 

 Komi-h and all other priest* who claim an independent 

 power over it.' This work, which is an elaborate u.i. \ 

 upon the theory of al impremacy, or what are 

 commonly called high-church principles, immediately 

 raked avast commotion. Itisielated that to a friend who 

 found him one day engaged upon it, pen in hand, he said 

 that he wan writing a book which would make the clergy 

 mad. Replies to it were immediately published by the 



;itcd \VilliamWotton, by Dr. Hickes ( Tindal's old 

 college tutor i. and others; the controversy continued to 

 liir several years: a bookseller and his shopman were 

 indicted for selling the book. In I7(7 Tindal pu!' 



A Defence' of his work, and, a few months aft 



.' butli Hi' which he republished- tor 

 addition*, in 1709: tho same year he also rcj 

 hk two Ba*ay* on Obedience and thu Law of Nations, alou^ 



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 i -a- 

 pamphlet, entitled ' New High Church turned Old Pres- 

 byterian,' in exposure of the pr 

 Sachevercll and his party : upon which the' i 

 mom, which the day before had condemned SH 

 sermons to be burned, on the 25th of March. 17 111, impar- 

 tially ordered Tindal's ' Rights of the Christian Church' 

 and the second edition of his two Defences' to be com- 

 mitted to the flames at the same time. Tins proceeding 

 drew from Tindal the same year three more pamphU ' 

 the first, entitled 'A High-Chun 

 The .lacohitism, Perjurv, and Popen 

 Priests:' the third, -The Merciful Judg 

 (.'Imrch triumphant, on Offending Clergymen an s 

 the reign of Charles I.' The next year, on the 1 

 House of Convocation having drawn "up and printed ' A 

 Representation of the present state of Religion, with re 

 gard to the late excessive growth of Infidelit \ . Hi-n ~y, and 

 Profaneness,' Tindal forthwith replied in The Sation 

 Vindicated from the Aspersions cast on it ' in the Mid 

 representation. The second part of this perlbrman 

 occupied with an explanation and defence of wha: 

 since been called the doctrine of philosophical in-i 

 in opposition to the assertion of the Convocation, that Midi 

 views went to overturn the foundations of all morality, and 

 of all religion, natural as well as revealed. For - 

 years from this date Tindal's active pen was < 

 occupied with the politics of the day ; but . 

 do not appear to have been very effective at the tune, and 

 have been long forgotten. It i- remarkable however that 

 in so voluminous a work as I moirs of Sir K 



Wnlpole,' no notice should be taken of a personal contro- 

 versy in which Tindal became involved with that mi- 

 after his resignation in 1717. and which produced various 

 pamphlets on both sides. Tindal considered himv 

 have been ill-used by Walpole, who, according to his ac- 

 count, liad first courted his alliance, and then suddenly 

 dropped him alter 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 friem's. 

 d 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 then 1 

 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 invoked: and it 

 implies therefore no political versatility or ir,< 

 in Tindal that a few years alter this, i'n 17:! 1. 17i and 

 1723, when Walpole was at the head of the mmi-tiv, he 

 carne forward as a strenuous defender of 1m government 

 in a succession of pamphlets. He did not return Ul 

 original field of theological polemics till n he 



published ' An Address to the Inhabitants of the two great 

 - of London and \\ iMimn.-U -r.' in reply to a pastoral 

 letter which the bishop of London, Dr. Gibson, dad ad 

 dressed to the people of his diocese on the subject of An- 

 thony Collins'* ' Scheme of Literal Prophecy Consii!. 

 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 Hvo. volume, with alterations 

 and additions. 



From this date Tindal seems to have remained quiet till 

 the year 17_H(), when he produced, in a 4to. volume, the 

 work by which he is now chiefly remembered, his 'Christ- 

 ianity aa Old as the Creation, or the Gospel a Republica- 

 tion of the Religion of Nature.' The object of this work. 

 [ as is indeed sufficiently declared in its title, is !o contend 

 that there in nothing more in Christianity, prop 



than what the human reason i< quite capable of 

 discovering for itself, and b\ implication to deny that any 

 special revelation has ever been made by tli 

 man. It did not however con \press denial of 



tlu- truth nl' Christianity; of win- : the author and 



his partisans rather professed to think that he bail found 

 out a new' defence stronger than > pre- 



\ion>K thought of. 'Tindal,' amid Wsrbn. VMM 



alter. n kind of bastard our spe- 



culations from heaven to 



advancing the antiquity of Christ -mred to under- 



mine its original.' The book made a great noise, and 



