mportant because they are "ribald" or
coarse, is perfectly unjust. The pamphlets had an enormous sale, and
Woolston's notoriety is illustrated by the anecdote of the "jolly young
woman" who met him walking abroad and accosted him with "You old rogue,
are you not hanged yet?" Mr. Woolston answered, "Good woman, I know you
not; pray what have I done to offend you?" "You have writ against my
Saviour," she said; "what would become of my poor sinful soul if it was
not for my dear Saviour?"

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 wisdo