If a theological subject be well handled by a layman, it is better received than if it came from a divine; and that for reasons obvious enough, which, although of little weight in themselves, will ever have a great deal with mankind.

But, when books are written with ill intentions, to advance dangerous opinions, or destroy foundations; it may be then of real use to know from what quarter they come, and go a good way towards their confutation.  For instance, if any man should write a book against the lawfulness of punishing felony with death; and, upon enquiry, the author should be found in Newgate under condemnation for robbing a house; his arguments would not very unjustly lose much of their force, from the circumstances he lay under.  So, when Milton writ his book of divorces, it was presently rejected as an occasional treatise; because every body knew, he had a shrew for his wife.  Neither can there be any reason imagined, why he might not, after he was blind, have writ another upon the danger and inconvenience of eyes.  But, it is a piece of logic which will hardly pass on the world; that because one man hath a sore nose, therefore all the town should put plasters upon theirs.  So, if this treatise about the rights of the church should prove to be the work of a man steady in his principles, of exact morals, and profound learning, a true lover of his country, and a hater of Christianity, as what he really believes to be a cheat upon mankind, whom he would undeceive purely for their good; it might be apt to check unwary men, even of good dispositions towards religion.  But if it be found the production of a man soured with age and misfortunes, together with the consciousness of past miscarriages; of one, who, in hopes of preferment, was reconciled to the Popish religion;[1] of one wholly prostitute in life and principles, and only an enemy to religion, because it condemns them:  In this case, and this last I find is the universal opinion, he is like to have few proselytes, beside those, who, from a sense of their vicious lives, require to be perpetually supplied by such amusements as this; which serve to flatter their wishes, and debase their understandings.

[Footnote 1:  Dr. Matthew Tindal became a convert to the Romish religion during the reign of James II.  What share interest had in his conversion may be easily imagined; but it is uncertain whether it was the disappointment of his expectations, or conviction, that, in 1687, induced him to reconcile himself to the Church of England, and become a decided favourer of those doctrines which produced the Revolution.  He often sat as a judge in the Court of Delegates, but did not practise much as an advocate in Doctor’s Commons.  His chief means of support was a pension from government of L200.  Tindal died in 1733, three years after publication of his grand deistical work, “Christianity as Old as the Creation.”  His effects, amounting to L2,000 and upwards, were appropriated by the noted Eustace Budgell, to the prejudice of the heir at law, under a will attended with circumstances of great suspicion. [T.  S.]]