Tindal
MATTHEW, an English deist; born in Devonshire, England, in 1653; studied at Lincoln and Exeter Colleges, Oxford; graduated B.A. in 1676; and was elected Fellow of All Souls in 1678. In opinions he was first High Church, then Roman Catholic (1685); next Low Church, and finally Rationalist.
His chief work, "Christianity as Old as the Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature," was published anonymously in 1730. The argument of the book is that Christianity, as far as it is true, must be the religion of nature; for as God is unchangeable, so is human nature. He attacks many of the statements in Scripture, especially those TINDAL bearing on Jewish history in the ordinary rationalistic manner; but he does not explicitly deny the truth of the Christian revelation. Of Tindal's other works the following are the most important: "Four Discourses of Obedience to the Supreme Powers" (1694); "Rights of the Christian Church Asserted" (1706); "New High Church Turned Old Presbyterian" (1709); "A High Church Catechism" (1710). He died in Oxford, Aug. 16, 1733.