Matthew, a well-known English writer, was the son of the Rev. John Tindal of Beer-Ferris in Devonshire, and was born about the year 1657. He studied first at Lincoln College, Oxford, but afterwards removed to Exeter College, and finally was elected to a fellowship at All Souls, which he retained to his death. In 1685 he was created LL.D., and soon after went over to the Church of Rome, at that time fashionable in the court of James II. In 1688, however, he reverted to the Church of England, according to his own account some months before the Revolution. After the Revolution he became an advocate, and sat as judge in the Court of Delegates, with a pension from the crown of £200 per annum. He also published several pamphlets in favour of government and the liberty of the press; but the first work of his that attracted general attention was a volume entitled—The Rights of the Christian Church asserted against the Romish and all other Priests who claim an independent power over it, 1706. This work involved him in a violent controversy with the high church party, and replies to it were published by William Wotton, Dr. Hickes, and others. A Defence of his work was published by Tindal in 1707, and a few months later A Second Defence; both of which he republished with additions in 1709. This and the following year he issued several pamphlets against the church; and from that time down to 1730, when his last great work appeared, he appears to have been principally taken up with politics. His Christianity as old as the Creation; or the Gospel—a republication of the Religion of Nature, is the work by which he is now chiefly remembered. As its title implies, it is an attempt to show that Christianity, properly understood, has always existed in the world; and that it contains nothing that human reason was not capable of discovering; thus denying the necessity of a revelation, and implying that no revelation had ever been made by God to man. The book made much noise, and called forth various replies from Conybeare, Foster, Chapman, Leland, Waterland, &c. Tindal vindicated himself in some later writings, but his health soon after began to give way, and he died on 16th August 1733. He left in manuscript a second volume of his Christianity as old as the Creation, the preface to which has been published.

Nicholas, the nephew of the preceding, was born in 1687, and educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he took the degree of A.M. in 1713. He afterwards became a fellow of Trinity College, and obtained several preferments in the church. In 1738 he was appointed chaplain of Greenwich Hospital; and here he died on the 27th of June 1774, at the age of eighty-seven. He was the author or translator of several works, but is chiefly remembered for his translation and continuation of Rapin's History of England.