upon the whole. But there is always some reason for any object, or any conduct, appearing desirable or preferable; a reason existing either in a man's own previous disposition of mind, or in his idea of the things proposed to him.'

After publishing the work from which the foregoing quotations have been taken, Priestley became separated from the Earl of Shelburne, in consequence, it is alleged, of the odium to which the author was subject, and the attacks made on him from the pulpit and the press. No other cause of dissension between Priestley and Lord Shelburne has ever transpired. In 1780, Priestley settled at Birmingham, and officiated as minister to the principal dissenting congregation, and subscriptions were raised to enable him to defray the expenses of his philosophical and chemical experiments, and to promote his theological investigations.

In 1782, he published his 'History of the Corruptions of the Church.' This work created great excitement, and was burnt by the hands of the common hangman at Dort. He afterwards engaged in a literary controversy with Dr. Horsley, which was carried on with great warmth; and his other works now excited so much opposition, that Priestley tells us he was obliged to write a pamphlet annually in their defence.

In political matters he was not so successful with the people. His 'Familiar Letters to the People of Birmingham,' by their keen irony exasperated his adversaries, who excited the mob against him; and this excitement was brought to a climax by the publication of his reply to Burke's Reflections.' Soon after its appearance, Priestley was nominated a citizen of the French Republic, and on the 14th July, 1791, a party of his friends gave a dinner, in celebration of the destruction of the Bastile. Priestley himself was not present. This dinner gave the mob an opportunity of gratifying their malice. A riot was got up. The house in which the dinner was given was demolished; after this the rabble proceeded to Priestley's house, broke into it, destroyed his chemical and philosophical apparatus, tore up his manuscripts, his books and papers, and then set fire to his dwelling; the fire was fortunately extinguished, but the work of destruction was complete, the labour of years was destroyed in a few hours. For many hundred yards from his house, the roads were strewed with partially destroyed books, torn manuscripts, etc. Priestley had a narrow escape, being obliged to ride for his life with his wife and family.

After this he removed to London, but finding himself shunned by his former friends, he determined to leave England, and accordingly sailed to America. He died at Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, on the 6th February, 1804, aged nearly seventy-one years.

Robert Hall eulogises him as follows:- The religious tenets of Dr. Priestley appear to me to be erroneous in the extreme; but I should be sorry to suffer any difference of sentiment to diminish my sensibility to virtue, or any admiration of genius. His enlightened and active mind, his unwearied assiduity, the extent of his researches, the light he has poured into almost every department of science, will be the admiration of that period, when the greater part of those who have favoured, or those who have opposed him will be alike forgotten. Distinguished merit will ever rise superior to oppression, and will draw lustre from reproach. The vapours which gather round the rising sun, and follow in its course, seldom fail at the close of it to form a magnificent theatre for its reception, and to invest with variegated tints, and with a softened effulgence, the luminary which they cannot hide.

JOHN WATTS, PRINTER, 147, FLEET STREET.

'I.'

WITH THE

FREETHINKERS.

EDITED BY 'ICONOCLAST,' ANTHONY COLLINS, & JOHN WATTS.

No. 14.]

Wednesday, April 15, 1857.

[Price 1d.

MATTHEW TINDAL.

Ir is easy to mark the progress of the age by recurring to the history of past Freethinkers. Bishops, established and Dissenting, are now repeating the parts the old Deists played. They were sadly treated for setting our example modern divines follow with applause. Matthew Tindal was an example of this. He laboured to establish religion on the foundation of Reason and Nature. It was to be expected that Christians would be pleased at efforts which would have no effect but to strengthen its foundations. The effort was met by reprobation, and resented as an injury. It is but a just retaliation that believers should now have to establish in vain that evidence they once denounced.

Matthew Tindal was an English Deistical writer, who was born at BeerTerres, in Devonshire, 1656. His father, it appears, was a clergyman, who held the living of Beer-Terres, presented to him by the University of Cambridge in the time of the Civil Wars. Young Matthew was educated at Oxford, where at twenty-eight he took the degree of LL.D. Matthew Tindal, LL.D., was early tossed about by the winds of doctrine. First he embraced Romanism: afterwards he became a Protestant. Then politics interested him, and he engaged in controversy on the side of William III. He was appointed Commissioner of a Court for Trying Foreigners. In 1693 he published an essay on the Law of Nations. When fifty-four, in 1710, he entered so vigorously into theological controversy, arising out of Trinitarian criticism, that his marked satire led to his books being condemned by the House of Commons, and burnt by the hangman. He resented this indignity by a spirited attack on the dominant priestly party in his 'High Church Catechism,' and he also wrote in defence of philosophical necessity. But his most notable work was the performance of his old age, his 'Christianity as Old as the Creation: or, the Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature.' This was produced in his seventy-third year. He was attacked in reply by Bishop Waterland. It is generally agreed that in point of good spirit and good temper, the Bishop was far inferior to the Deist. Dr. Conyers Middleton, says Thomas Cooper, in his brief sketch of Tindal, appeared in defence of Tindal in a 'Letter to Dr. Waterland,' whom he condemned for the shallowness of his answer to Tindal, and boldly and frankly admitted that the Freethinker was right in asserting that the Jews borrowed some of their ceremonies and customs from Egypt; that allegory was, in some cases, employed in the Scriptures, where common readers took the relation for fact; and, that the Scriptures are not of absolute and universal inspiration.' The following sentence, which will be found in this 'Letter' of Dr. Conyers Middleton, does honour to his name:-'If religion [Published Fortnightly.]

consists in depreciating moral duties and depressing natural reason; if the duty of it be to hate and persecute for a different way of thinking where the best and wisest have never agreed-then, I declare myself an infidel, and to have no share in that religion.'

Matthew Tindal died at his house in Coldbath Fields, of the stone, 1773, aged seventy-seven.* Rysbrach, the famous statuary, took a model of him. Tindal opens his great work thus:- The author makes no apology for writing on a subject of the last importance; and which, as far as I can find, has no where been so fully treated: he builds nothing on a thing so uncertain as tradition, which differs in most countries; and of which, in all countries, the bulk of mankind are incapable of judging; but thinks he has laid down such plain and evident rules, as may enable men of the meanest capacity, to distinguish between religion and superstition; and has represented the former in every part so beautiful, so amiable, and so strongly affecting, that they, who in the least reflect, must be highly in love with it; and easily perceive, that their duty and happiness are inseparable.'

The character of the performance will be seen from a few of the propositions he maintains:

That God, at all times, has given mankind sufficient means of knowing whatever he requires of them.

"That the religion of nature consists in observing those things, which our reason, by considering the nature of God and man, and the relation we stand in to him, and one another, demonstrates to be our duty; and that those things are plain; and likewise what they are.

"That the perfection and happiness of all rational beings, supreme as well as subordinate, consist in living up to the dictates of their nature.

"That God requires nothing for his own sake; no, not the worship we are to render him, nor the faith we are to have in him.

'That the not adhering to those notions reason dictates, concerning the nature of God, has been the occasion of all superstition, and those innumerable mischiefs, that mankind, on the account of religion, have done either to themselves, or one another.

'The bulk of mankind, by their reason, must be able to distinguish between religion and superstition; otherwise they can never extricate themselves from that superstition they chance to be educated in.'

Tindal deals with the question of the obscurity of Revelation in these terms, sufficiently salient to alarm the very proper divines of that day:'Had God, from time to time, spoken to all mankind in their several languages, and his words had miraculously conveyed the same ideas to all persons; yet he could not speak more plainly than he has done by the things themselves, and the relation which reason shows there is between them. Nay, since it is impossible in any book, or books, that a particular rule could be given for every case, we must even then have had recourse to the light of nature to teach us our duty in most cases; especially considering the numberless circumstances which attend us, and which, perpetually varying, may make the same actions, according as men are differently affected by them, either good or bad. And I may add, that most of the particular rules laid down in the gospel for our direction, are

Julian Hibbert gives 1656-7; Dr. Beard, 1656; Thomas Cooper, 1657, as the year of Tindal's birth. All agree that he died 1733 he was therefore seventy-six or seventy-seven at the time of his death.

spoken after such figurative a manner, that except we judge of their meaning, not merely by the letter, but by what the law of nature antecedently declares to be our duty, they are apt to lead us wrong. And if precepts relating to morality are delivered after an obscure manner, when they might have been delivered otherwise; what reason can you assign for its being so, but that infinite wisdom meant to refer us to that law for the explaining them? Sufficient instances of this nature I shall give you hereafter, though I must own, I cannot carry this point so far as a learned divine, who represents the Scriptures more obscure (which one would think impossible) than even the fathers. He tells us "that a certain author (viz., Flaccus Illyricus) has furnished us with one-and-fifty reasons for the obscurity of the Scriptures;" adding, "I think I may truly say that the writing of the prophets and apostles abound with tropes, and metaphors, types, and allegories, parables, and dark speeches; and are as much, nay, much more unintelligible in many places, than the writings of the ancients.' It is well this author, who talks of people being stark Bible-mad, stopped here; and did not with a celebrated wit* cry, "The truly illuminated books are the darkest of all." The writer above-mentioned supposes it impossible, that God's will should be fully revealed by books; "except," says he, "it might be said perhaps without a figure, that even the world itself could not contain the books which should be written." But with submission to this reverend person, I cannot help thinking, but that (such is the divine goodness) God's will is so clearly and fully manifested in the book of nature, that he who runs may read it.'

In the next extract we make, we find Tindal quoting two striking passages from Lord Shaftesbury, followed by an acute vindication of the integrity of the law of nature over the Scriptures:

'Had the heathen distinguished themselves by creeds made out of spite to one another, and mutually persecuted each other about the worship of their gods, they would soon have made the number of their votaries as few as the gods they worshipped; but we don't find (except in Egypt, that mother-land of superstition) they ever quarreled about their gods; though their gods sometimes quarreled, and fought about their votaries. By the universal liberty that was allowed by the ancients," Matters (as a noble author observes) were so balanced, that reason had fair play; learning and science flourished; wonderful was the harmony and temper which arose from these contrarieties. Thus superstition and enthusiasm were mildly treated; and being let alone, they never raged to that degree as to occasion bloodshed, wars, persecutions, and devastations; but a new sort of policy has made us leap the bounds of natural humanity, and out of a supernatural charity, has taught us the way of plaguing one another most devoutly. It has raised an antipathy, that no temporal interest could ever do, and entailed on us a mutual hatred to all eternity. And savage zeal, with meek and pious semblance, works dreadful massacre; and for heaven's sake (horrid pretence) makes desolate the earth." And further Shaftesbury observes, "The Jupiter of Strangers, was, among the ancients, one of the solemn characters of divinity, the peculiar attribute of the supreme deity; benign to mankind, and recommending universal love, mutual kindness, and benignity between the remotest and most unlike of the human race. Such was the ancient heathen charity and pious duty towards the whole of mankind; both those of different nations and different worship. But, good

* Dean Swift-Tale of a Tub.'

God! how different a character do bigots give us of the Deity, making him an unjust, cruel, and inconsistent Being; requiring all men to judge for themselves, and act according to their consciences; and yet authorising some among them to judge for others, and to punish them for not acting according to the consciences of those judges, though ever so much against their own. These bigots thought they were authorised to punish all those that differ with them in their religious worship, as God's enemies; but had they considered that God alone could discern men's hearts, and alone discover whether any, by conscientiously offering him a wrong worship, could become his enemies; and that infinite wisdom best knew how to proportion the punishment to the fault, as well as infinite power how to inflict it; they would, surely, have left it to God to judge for himself, in a cause which immediately related to himself; and where they were not so much as parties concerned, and as likely to be mistaken as those they would punish. Can one, without horror, think of men's breaking through all the rules of doing as they would be done unto, in order to set themselves up for standards of truth for God as well as man? Do not these impious wretches suppose, that God is not able to judge for himself; at least, not able to execute his own judgment? And that, therefore, he has recourse, forsooth, to their superior knowledge or power; and they are to revenge his injuries, root out his enemies, and restore his lost honour, though with the destruction of the better part of mankind? But, to do the propagators of these blasphemous notions justice, they do not throw this load of scandal on the law of nature; or so much as pretend from thence to authorise their execrable principles; but endeavour to support them by traditional religion; especially by mis-interpreted texts from the Old Testament; and thereby make, not only natural and revealed religion, but the Old and New Testament (the latter of which requires doing good both to Jews and Gentiles) contradict each other. But to return; if what the light of nature teaches us concerning the divine perfections, when duly attended to, is not only sufficient to hinder us from falling into superstition of any kind whatever; but, as I have already shown, demonstrates what God, from his infinite wisdom and goodness, can, or cannot command; how is it possible that the law of nature and grace can differ? How can it be conceived, that God's laws, whether internally, or externally revealed, are not at all times the same, when the author of them is, and has been immutably the same for ever?",

The following passage exhibits the judicious mixture of authority and argument for which our author is remarkable. The quotation is a good illustration of Tindal's best manner. He is replying to Dr. Samuel Clark:

'It cannot be imputed to any defect in the light of nature, that the pagan world ran into idolatry, but to their being entirely governed by priests, who pretended communication with their gods, and to have thence their revelations, which they imposed on the credulous as divine oracles: whereas the business of the Christian dispensation was to destroy all those traditional revelations; and restore, free from all idolatry, the true primitive, and natural religion, implanted in mankind from the creation. The Dr. [Clark] however, seems afraid, lest he had allowed too much to the light of nature, in relation to the discovery of our duty both to God and and not left room for revelation to make any addition; he therefore supposes, "there are some duties, which nature hints at only in general." But, if we cannot, without highly reflecting on the wisdom and goodness of God, suppose that he has not, at all times, given the whole rational

man;