I know there are some who would fain have it, that this discourse was written by a club of freethinkers, among whom the supposed author only came in for a share.  But, sure, we cannot judge so meanly of any party, without affronting the dignity of mankind.  If this be so, and if here be the product of all their quotas and contributions, we must needs allow, that freethinking is a most confined and limited talent.  It is true indeed, the whole discourse seemeth to be a motley, inconsistent composition, made up of various shreds of equal fineness, although of different colours.  It is a bundle of incoherent maxims and assertions, that frequently destroy one another.  But still there is the same flatness of thought and style; the same weak advances towards wit and raillery; the same petulancy and pertness of spirit; the same train of superficial reading; the same thread of threadbare quotations:  the same affectation of forming general rules upon false and scanty premises.  And, lastly, the same rapid venom sprinkled over the whole; which, like the dying impotent bite of a trodden benumbed snake, may be nauseous and offensive, but cannot be very dangerous.

And, indeed, I am so far from thinking this libel to be born of several fathers, that it hath been the wonder of several others, as well as myself; how it was possible for any man, who appeareth to have gone the common circle of academical education;[2] who hath taken so universal a liberty, and hath so entirely laid aside all regards, not only of Christianity, but common truth and justice; one who is dead to all sense of shame, and seemeth to be past the getting or losing a reputation, should, with so many advantages, and upon so unlimited a subject, come out with so poor, so jejune a production.  Should we pity or be amazed at so perverse a talent, which, instead of qualifying an author to give a new turn to old matter, disposeth him quite contrary to talk in an old beaten trivial manner upon topics wholly new.  To make so many sallies into pedantry without a call, upon a subject the most alien, and in the very moments he is declaiming against it, and in an age too, where it is so violently exploded, especially among those readers he proposeth to entertain.

[Footnote 2:  See note, p. 9, where it will be seen that Tindal was an Oxford man. [T.S.]]

I know it will be said, that this is only to talk in the common style of an answerer; but I have not so little policy.  If there were any hope of reputation or merit from such victory, I should be apt like others to cry up the courage and conduct of an enemy.  Whereas to detect the weakness, the malice, the sophistry, the falsehood, the ignorance of such a writer, requireth little more than to rank his perfections in such an order, and place them in such a light, that the commonest reader may form a judgment of them.