esolating feuds as had always
rent Christendom, proves that "the best religion has had the
misfortune to have the worst priests." "'Tis an amazing thing to
consider that, though Christ and His Apostles inculcated nothing
so much as universal charity, and enjoined their disciples to
treat, not only one another, notwithstanding their differences,
but even Jews and Gentiles, with all the kindness imaginable, yet
that their pretended successors should make it their business to
teach such doctrines as destroy all love and friendship among
people of different persuasions; and that with so good success
that never did mortals hate, abhor, and damn one another more
heartily, or are readier to do one another more mischief, than
the different sects of Christians." "If in the time of that wise
heathen Ammianus Marcellinus, the Christians bore such hatred to
one another that, as he complains, no beasts were such deadly
enemies to men as the more savage Christians were generally to
one another, what would he, if now alive, say of them?" etc. "The
custom of sacrificing men among the heathens was owing to their
priests, especially the Druids. . . . And the sacrificing of
Christians upon account of their religious tenets (for which
millions have suffered) was introduced for no other reason than
that the clergy, who took upon them to be the sole judges of
religion, might, without control, impose what selfish doctrines
they pleased." Of the High Church clergy he wittily observes:
"Some say that their lives might serve for a very good rule, if
men would act quite contrary to them; for then there is no
Christian virtue which they could fail of observing."

If Tindal wished to madden the clergy, he certainly succeeded,
for the pulpits raged and thundered against his book. But the
only sermon to which he responded was Dr. Wotton's printed
Visitation sermon preached before the Bishop of Lincoln; and his
_Defence of the Rights of the Christian Church_ (55 pages) was
burnt in company with the larger work. It contained the "Letter
from a Country Attorney to a Country Parson concerning the Rights
of the Church," and the philosopher Le Clerc's appreciative
reference to Tindal's work in his _Bibliotheque Choisie_.

Nevertheless, Queen Anne had given Tindal a present of L500 for
his book, and told him that she believed he had banished Popery
beyond a possibility of its return. Tindal himself, it should be
said, had become a Roman Catholic under J