Matthew Tindal 1653?-1733 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 adovcate, 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. M'CLINTOCK AND STRONG, eds., 1881, Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. x, pp. 425, 426. 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." -HEARNE, THOMAS, 1733, Reliquia Hearniana, ed, Bliss, Aug. 20, vol. III, p. 102. 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.-WARBURTON, WILLIAM, 1758, Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate, p. 267. 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.-FARRAR, ADAM STOREY, 1862, Critical History of Free Thought, Lecture iv, p. 195. 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." -HUNT, JOHN, 1869, Matthew Tindal, Contemporary Review, vol. 10, p. 589. 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. 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 He 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.-STEPHEN LESLIE, 1876, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1, p. 135. "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. . ground of Tindal was really the key of the Deistic position; and hence with his defeat the struggle became less close and stubborn.-CAIRNS, JOHN, 1881, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 84, 85. Thomas Woolston 1670-1733 The Born at Northampton, England, 1669; died in London, 1732; was educated at Cambridge, and obtained a fellowship there. After attracting an unenviable attention by some other writings, he published, London, 1727-1729, six discourses "On the Miracles of our Saviour," which, on account of their tone of ridicule, gave so much offence that he was prosecuted by the attorney-general, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment and to pay a fine of £100. Being unable to pay the fine, he remained in prison and died there shortly after. There is some reason, however, for believing his mind was diseased.-JACKSON, SAMUEL MACAULEY, ed., 1889-91, Concise Dictionary of Religious Knowledge, p. 980. GENERAL He might at the same rate of arguing have undertaken to prove that there was no such person as Jesus Christ, or his apostles, or that they were only allegorical persons, and that Christianity was never planted or propagated in the world at all.-LELAND, JOHN, 1754-56, A View of the Deistical Writers, Letter VIII. The letters ["Discourses"] were written with a coarseness and irreverence so singular, even in the attacks of that age, that it were well if they could be attributed to insanity. They contain the most undisguised abuse which had been uttered against Christianity since the days of the early heathens. . . . In classifying Woolston with later writers against miracles, he may be compared in some cases, though with striking differences of tone, with those German rationalists, like Paulus, who have rationalized the miracles, but in more cases with those who, like Strauss, have idealized them. His method, however, is an appeal to general probability, rather than to literary criticism.-FARRAR, ADAM STOREY, 1862, Critical History of Free Thought, Lecture IV. No man was ever more thoroughly refuted than Thomas Woolston. It seems a pity that such men as Pearce, Sherlock and Lardner should have been under the necessity of defending Christianity against one who, it is charitable to suppose, was not really sane. It was a pity in many respects that the Deist controversy reached its climax in a madman. Woolston's mind was typical of the minds of a large class which is fairly divided between believers and unbelievers. They can only be Christians while they can lean upon a book, a Church, Primitive antiquity, or some external authority. When this prop fails, they are unbelievers. So long as Woolston could believe in the Fathers, he was a Christian. When he found it impossible to believe Christianity on their authority, he was no more a believer. He had no eye to see the everlasting harmonies. He had no soul to feel that there is a Divine Christ in the miracles, whatever else we may know about them. That spirit which giveth life was more dead to him than the letter which he despised. He wrote against the clergy; perhaps they deserved it. He wrote much against the Gospels, and he could have written much more of the same kind. It is easy to raise a thousand plausible and ingenious objections to anything whatever, and as easy to make a thousand answers as plausible and ingenious, while the thing itself remains where it was. HUNT, JOHN, 1871, Religious Thought in England from the Reformation to the End of the Last Century, vol. II, p. 431. Woolston's discourses, written to prove the miracles of the new testament are as mythical and allegorical as the prophecies of the old, appeared at the same time, and had an enormous sale. Voltaire was much struck by this writer's coarse and hardy way of dealing with the miraculous legends, and the article on miracles in the Philosophical Dictionary shows how carefully he had read Woolston's book.MORLEY, JOHN, 1872, Voltaire, p. 84. Through six straggling discourses, Woolston attempts to make fun of the miracles. There are, at intervals, queer gleams of distorted sense, and even of literary power, in the midst of his buffoonery. Occasionally he hits a real blot; more frequently he indulges in the most absurd quibbles, and throughout he shows almost as little approximation to a genuine critical capacity as to reverential appreciation of the beauty of many of the narratives. He is a mere buffoon jingling his cap and bells in a sacred shrine; and his strange ribaldry is painful even to those for whom the supernatural glory of the temple has long utterly faded away. Even where some straggling shreds of sense obtrude themselves, the language is obtrusively coarse, and occasionally degenerates into mere slang.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1876, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1, p. 231. The discussion in regard to miracles, which immediately followed that as to prophecy, and made, in one sense the most flagrant and noted passages of the Deistical controversy, was unhappily connected with a leader who wanted every quality that could give it a solid and a permanent interest, being either so blunted in his moral perceptions, or, what is more probable, so near to madness in his mental condition, and in any case so destitute of judgment and learning, that the deniers of Christianity in our day would as little consent to be represented by him as his antagonists. This was Thomas Woolston.-CAIRNS, JOHN, 1881, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, p. 79. He bore the repute of a sound scholar, a good preacher, a charitable and estimable man. His reading led him to study the works of Origen, from whom he adopted the idea of interpreting the scripture as allegory. The vigour of the discourses is undeniable, and it has been said with some truth that they anticipate the mythical theory of Strauss.-GORDON, ALEXANDER, 1900, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LXII, p. 439. John Dennis 1657-1734 Son of a London saddler, after education at Harrow and at Caius College, Cambridge, travelled in France and Italy, and began his career as a writer in the reign of William III., with "The Passion of Byblis" in 1692, and in the same year "The Impartial Critic; or, some Observations on Mr. Rymer's late Book, entitled a Short View of Tragedy." In 1693 Dennis published "Miscellanies in Verse and Prose." In 1695 he published a poem, "The Court of Death," on the death of Queen Mary; and in 1696, "Letters on Milton and Congreve," and "Letters upon Several Occasions, Written by and between Mr. Wycherley, Mr. Dryden, Mr. Moyle, Mr. Congreve, and Mr. Dennis;" also adverse "Remarks" on Blackmore's "Prince Arthur." In 1697 he published "Miscellaneous Poems;" in 1698 "The Usefulness of the Stage to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion, occasioned by a late Book written by Jeremy Collier, M. A. ;" in 1701 a little treatise on the "Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry;" and in 1702 an "Essay on the Navy," a tract against Sacheverell's party, "Priestcraft dangerous to Religion and Government," a volume of collected "Works," and, on the death of William III., a poem sacred to his memory, "The Monument.” He produced plays also, poor ones: "A Plot and No Plot," in 1697; "Rinaldo and Armida," in 1699; in 1702, "Iphigenia," and "The Comical Gallant; or, the Amours of Sir John Falstaff, with an Essay on Taste in Poetry." In 1711 he attacked Pope in "Reflections Critical and Satirical upon a late Rhapsody called An Essay on Criticism;" and in 1713, on the production of Addison's Cato, Dennis appeared as a hostile critic, with "Remarks upon Cato, a Tragedy." In 1718 Dennis's "Letters" were published in two volumes; and in the same year his "Select Works," consisting of plays, poems, etc., likewise in two volumes. -MORLEY, HENRY, 1879, A Manual of English Literature, ed. Tyler, pp. 511, 512. PERSONAL At a meeting of the masters and fellows, Sir Dennis mulcted 31., his scholarship taken away, and he sent out of the college, for assaulting and wounding Sir Glenham with a sword.-CAMBRIDGE, GESTA BOOK, 1680, March 4. Appius reddens at each word you speak, And stares, tremendous, with a threatening eye, Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry. I observed his room was hung with old tapestry, which had several holes in it, caused, as the old woman informed me, by his having cut out of it the heads of divers tyrants, the fierceness of whose visages had much provoked him. On all sides of his room were pinned a great many sheets of a tragedy called Cato, with notes on the margin with his own hand. The words absurd, monstrous, execrable, were everywhere written in such large characters, that I could read them without my spectacles. By the fireside lay three farthings worth of small coal in a Spectator, and behind the door huge heaps of papers of the same title, which his nurse informed me she had conveyed thither out of his sight, believing they were books of the black art; for her master never read in them, but he was either quite moped, or in raving fits. There was nothing neat in the whole room, except some books on his shelves, very well bound and gilded, whose names I had never before heard of, nor I believe were anywhere else to be found; such as "Gibraltar, a Comedy;" "Remarks on Prince Arthur;" "The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry;" "An Essay on Public Spirit." The only one I had any knowledge of was a "Paradise Lost," interleaved. The whole floor was covered with manuscripts, as thick as a pastry-cook's shop on a Christmas eve. On his table were some ends of verse and of candles; a gallipot of ink with a yellow pen in it, and a pot of half dead ale covered with a Longinus. POPE, ALEXANDER? 1713, The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris; Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, vol. x, p. 453. His motion is quick and sudden, turning on all sides, with a suspicion of every object, as if he had done or feared some extraordinary mischief. You see wickedness in his meaning, but folly of countenance, that betrays him to be unfit for the execution of it. He starts, stares, and looks round him. This constant shuffle of haste without speed, makes the man thought a little touched; but the vacant look of his two eyes gives you to understand that he could never run out of his wits, which seemed not so much to be lost, as to want employment; they are not so much astray, as they are a wool-gathering. He has the face and surliness of a mastiff, which has often saved him from being treated like a cur, till some more sagacious than ordinary found his nature, and used him accordingly. Unhappy being! terrible without, fearful within! Not a wolf in sheep's clothing, but a sheep in a wolf's. STEELE, RICHARD, 1720, The Theatre; Disraeli, Calamities of Authors. Say what revenge on Dennis can be had, Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad. On one so poor you cannot take the law, On one so old your sword you scorn to draw. Uncaged then, let the harmless monster rage, Secure in dullness, madness, want, and age! -SAVAGE, RICHARD, ? 1731, Grub Street Journal, July 1. Adieu! unsocial excellence! at last Thy foes are vanquish'd, and thy fears are pass'd: Want, the grim recompense of truth like thine, Shall now no longer dim thy destined shine. His reason dies not-and has friends to find! Though here, revenge and pride withheld his praise, No wrongs shall reach him through his future days: sit at a table or enter a coffee-house without exerting the despotism of a literary dictator. How could the mind that had devoted itself to the contemplation of masterpieces, only to reward its industry by detailing to the public their human frailties, experience one hour of amenity, one idea of grace, one generous impulse of sensibility? But the poor critic himself at length fell, really more the victim of his criticism than the genius he had insulted. Having incurred the public neglect, the blind and helpless Cacus in his den sunk fast into contempt, dragged on a life of misery, and in his last days, scarcely vomiting his fire and smoke, became the most pitiable creature, receiving the alms he craved from triumphant genius.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1812–13, Influence of a Bad Temper in Criticism, Calamities of Authors. The great opportunities for success and self-praise offered by the stage, it is to be feared, engender more of malice, hatred, and ill-will than is found in other professions. There is an episode, in which Pope figured, which gathers these vices into a small compass in an incredible way. Dennis, the savage critic, grown old and reduced to poverty, was to have a benefit, and bethought him that if he could get his old enemy's (Pope's) patronage for the performance, it would bring money and company. What follows Voltaire might have described. might have described. The old critic declared that he knew how to get him to consent. He knew pretty well the vanity of the little gentleman, and would, therefore, solicit him to write a prologue, and that he was sure, notwithstanding their mutual enmity, the reputation of appearing charitable would readily induce him to undertake it. He was not deceived. Pope consented, and the play, thus The rising ages shall redeem his name; It was not literature, then, that made the mind coarse, brutalising the habits and inflaming the style of Dennis. He had thrown himself among the walks of genius, and aspired to fix himself on a throne to which Nature had refused him a legitimate claim. What a lasting source of vexation and rage, even for a longlived patriarch of criticism! Accustomed to suspend the scourge over the heads of the first authors of the age, he could not while the virtue of forgiveness of enemies was loudly chanted to Pope's honour. Both the world, however, and Dennis were deceived, for the prologue was couched in such terms that every line contained some fine ironical stroke of satire against the poor devil he professed to serve. FITZGERALD, PERCY, 1882, A New History of the English Stage, vol. 1, p. 323. The careers of Rymer and Dennis are amongst the saddest and most deplorable stories to be found in the annals of |