About the same time, Matthew Tindal (a Fellow of All Souls) attacked Revelation from a more general point of view.  In his Christianity as old as the Creation (1730) he undertook to show that the Bible as a revelation is superfluous, for it adds nothing to natural religion, which God revealed to man from the very first by the sole light of reason.  He argues that those who defend Revealed religion by its agreement with Natural religion, and thus set up a double government of reason and authority, fall between the two.  “It ’s an odd jumble,” he observes, “to prove the truth of a book by the truth

[145] of the doctrines it contains, and at the same time conclude those doctrines to be true because contained in that book.”  He goes on to criticize the Bible in detail.  In order to maintain its infallibility, without doing violence to reason, you have, when you find irrational statements, to torture them and depart from the literal sense.  Would you think that a Mohammedan was governed by his Koran, who on all occasions departed from the literal sense?  “Nay, would you not tell him that his inspired book fell infinitely short of Cicero’s uninspired writings, where there is no such occasion to recede from the letter?”

As to chronological and physical errors, which seemed to endanger the infallibility of the Scriptures, a bishop had met the argument by saying, reasonably enough, that in the Bible God speaks according to the conceptions of those to whom he speaks, and that it is not the business of Revelation to rectify their opinions in such matters.  Tindal made this rejoinder:—­

“Is there no difference between God’s not rectifying men’s sentiments in those matters and using himself such sentiments as needs be rectified; or between God’s not mending men’s logic and rhetoric where ’t is defective and using such himself; or between God’s

[146] not contradicting vulgar notions and confirming them by speaking according to them?  Can infinite wisdom despair of gaining or keeping people’s affections without having recourse to such mean acts?”

He exposes with considerable effect the monstrosity of the doctrine of exclusive salvation.  Must we not consider, he asks, whether one can be said to be sent as a Saviour of mankind, if he comes to shut Heaven’s gate against those to whom, before he came, it was open provided they followed the dictates of their reason?  He criticizes the inconsistency of the impartial and universal goodness of God, known to us by the light of nature, with acts committed by Jehovah or his prophets.  Take the cases in which the order of nature is violated to punish men for crimes of which they were not guilty, such as Elijah’s hindering rain from falling for three years and a half.  If God could break in upon the ordinary rules of his providence to punish the innocent for the guilty, we have no guarantee that if he deals thus with us in this life, he will not act in the same way in the life to come, “since if the eternal rules of justice are once broken how can we imagine any stop?” But the ideals of holiness and justice in the Old Testament are strange indeed.  The holier men