Matthew Tindal (1657 - 16 August 1733) was an eminent English deist author. His works, highly influential at the dawn of the Enlightenment, caused great controversy and challenged the Christian consensus of his time. (...) Between the early 1690s and his death in 1733, Tindal made major contributions in various areas. As Deputy Judge Advocate of the Fleet he had a large influence on the case law on piracy, such as his contributions to the 1693?1694 trial of John Golden.[3] His timely pamphlet on the freedom of the press was hugely influential in the ending of the legal requirement that all publications be licensed before being printed. His book Rights of the Christian Church had an immense impact on church/state relations and on the growth of freethinking. Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation (1730) was the ultimate statement of the deist understanding of Christianity and was highly influential in England and on the Continent. Wikipedia