[60] Tindal (1653–1733) was the son of a clergyman, and in 1678 was elected a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. From 1685 to 1688 he was a Roman Catholic. Under William III he wrote three works on points of political freedom—one, 1698, on The Liberty of the Press. His Rights of the Christian Church, anonymously published in 1706, a defence of Erastianism, made a great sensation, and was prosecuted—only to be reprinted. His later Defence of the Rights of the Christian Church was in 1710, by order of the House of Commons, burned by the common hangman. [↑]
[61] Middleton’s Works, 2nd ed. 1755, iii, 50–56. [↑]
[62] Tindal (Voltaire tells) regarded Pope as devoid of genius and imagination, and so trebly earned his place in the Dunciad. [↑]
[63] A Layman’s Faith.... “By a Freethinker and a Christian,” 1732. [↑]
[64] Title-page of Rev. Elisha Smith’s Cure of Deism, 1st ed. 1736; 3rd ed. 1740. [↑]
[65] Le Moine, Dissertation historique sur les écrits de Woolston, sa condemnation, etc. pp. 29–31, cited by Salchi, Lettres sur le Déisme, 1759, p. 67 sq. [↑]
[66] Lettre sur les auteurs Anglais, as cited. Voltaire tells that, when a she-bigot one day spat in Woolston’s face, he calmly remarked: “It was so that the Jews treated your God.” Another story reads like a carefully-improved version of the foregoing. A woman is said to have accosted him as a scoundrel, and asked him why he was not yet hanged. On his asking her grounds for such an accost, she replied: “You have writ against my Saviour. What would become of my poor sinful soul if it was not for my dear Saviour—my Saviour who died for such wicked sinners as I am.” Life of Mr. Woolston, prefixed to a reprint of his collected Discourses, 1733, p. 27. Cp. Salchi, p. 78. [↑]
[67] Life cited, pp. 22, 26, 29. [↑]
[68] An Historical Defence of the Trustees of Lady Hewley’s Foundations, by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, 1834, pp. 17, 35; The History, Opinions, and present legal position of the English Presbyterians, 1834, pp. 18, 29; Skeats, History of the Free Churches of England, ed. Miall, p. 240. [↑]
[69] Hunter, as cited, p. 17; History of the Presbyterians, as cited, p. 19; Fletcher, History of Independency, 1862, iv, 266–67. [↑]