By friend and foe alike Tindal seems to have been regarded as the chief exponent of Deism.  Skelton in his ‘Deism revealed’ (published in 1748) says that ’Tindal is the great apostle of Deism who has gathered together the whole strength of the party, and his book is become the bible of all Deistical readers.’  Warburton places him at the head of his party, classifying the Deists, ’from the mighty author of “Christianity as old as the Creation,” to the drunken, blaspheming cobbler who wrote against Jesus and the Resurrection.’[156] The subsequent writers on the Deistical side took their cue from Tindal, thus showing the estimation in which his book was held by his own party.

Tindal was in many respects fitted for the position which he occupied.  He was an old man when he wrote his great work, and had observed and taken an interest in the whole course of the Deistical controversy for more than forty years.  He had himself passed through many phases of religion, having been a pupil of Hickes the Nonjuror, at Lincoln College, Oxford, then a Roman Catholic, then a Low Churchman, and finally, to use his own designation of himself, ‘a Christian Deist.’  He had, no doubt, carefully studied the various writings of the Deists and their opponents, and had detected the weak points of all.  His book is written in a comparatively temperate spirit, and the subject is treated with great thoroughness and ability.  Still it has many drawbacks, even from a literary point of view.  It is written in the wearisome form of dialogue, and the writer falls into that error to which all controversial writers in dialogue are peculiarly liable.  When a man has to slay giants of his own creation, he is sorely tempted to make his giants no stronger than dwarfs.  To this temptation Tindal yielded.  His defender of orthodoxy is so very weak, that a victory over him is no great achievement.  Again, there is a want of order and lucidity in his book, and not sufficient precision in his definitions.  But the worst fault of all is the unfairness of his quotations, both from the Bible and other books.

Perhaps one reason why, in spite of these defects, the book exercised so vast an influence is, that the minds of many who sympathised with the destructive process employed by preceding Deists may have begun to yearn for something more constructive.  They might ask themselves, ’What then is our religion to be?  And Tindal answers the question after a fashion.  ’It is to be the religion of nature, and an expurgated Christianity in so far as it agrees with the religion of nature.’  The answer is a somewhat vague one, but better than none, and as such may have been welcomed.  This, however, is mere conjecture.

Deism, as we have seen, had now reached its zenith; henceforth its history is the history of a rapid decline.  Tindal did not live to complete his work; but after his death it was taken up by far feebler hands.