Tindal, Matthew

views updated May 11 2018

Tindal, Matthew (1655–1733). One of the leading deists of the early 18th cent., Tindal came from Devon and attended Lincoln College, Oxford. In 1678 he obtained a fellowship at All Souls. After a brief flirtation with catholicism during the reign of James II, he moved into a low-church Erastian position and his book The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted (1706) scandalized high churchmen. Its sequel A Defence of the Rights of the Christian Church (1709) was burned by order of the House of Commons in 1710. His most celebrated work came out in 1730. In Christianity as Old as Creation, Tindal argued the case for natural religion. Though frequently accused of free thinking, he retained his fellowship at All Souls until his death.

J. A. Cannon

About this article

Matthew Tindal

All Sources -
Updated Aug 24 2016 About encyclopedia.com content Print Topic