John Toland (30 November 1670 – 11 March
1722) was an Irish rationalist philosopher
and freethinker, and occasional satirist,
who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on
political philosophy and philosophy of religion,
which are early expressions of the philosophy
of the Age of Enlightenment.
Born in Ireland, he was educated at the universities
of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leiden and Oxford and
was influenced by the philosophy of John Locke.
His first, and best known work, was Christianity
not Mysterious (1696).
== Biography ==
Very little is known of Toland's early life.
He was born in Ardagh on the Inishowen Peninsula,
a predominantly Catholic and Irish-speaking
region in northwestern Ireland.
His parents are unknown.
He would later write that he had been baptised
Janus Junius, a play on his name that recalled
both the Roman two-faced god Janus and Junius
Brutus, reputed founder of the Roman republic.
According to his biographer Pierre des Maizeaux,
he adopted the name John as a schoolboy with
the encouragement of his school teacher.Having
formally converted from Catholicism to Protestantism
at the age of 16, Toland got a scholarship
to study theology at the University of Glasgow.
In 1690, at age 19, the University of Edinburgh
conferred a master's degree on him.
He then got a scholarship to spend two years
studying at University of Leiden in Holland,
and subsequently nearly two years at Oxford
in England (1694–95).
The Leiden scholarship had been provided by
wealthy English Dissenters, who hoped Toland
would go on to become a minister for Dissenters.
In Toland's first book Christianity not Mysterious
(1696), he argued that the divine revelation
of the Bible contains no true mysteries; rather,
all the dogmas of the faith can be understood
and demonstrated by properly trained reason
from natural principles.
For this argument he was prosecuted by a grand
jury in London.
As he was a subject of the Kingdom of Ireland,
members of the Parliament of Ireland proposed
that he should be burnt at the stake, and
in his absence three copies of the book were
burnt by the public hangman in Dublin as the
content was contrary to the core doctrines
of the Church of Ireland.
Toland bitterly compared the Protestant legislators
to "Popish Inquisitors who performed that
Execution on the Book, when they could not
seize the Author, whom they had destined to
the Flames".After his departure from Oxford
Toland resided in London for most of the rest
of his life, but was also a somewhat frequent
visitor to the European continent, particularly
Germany and the Netherlands.
He lived on the Continent from 1707 to 1710.
Toland died in Putney on 10 March 1722.
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica says of
him that at his death in London at age 51
"he died... as he had lived, in great poverty,
in the midst of his books, with his pen in
his hand."
Just before he died, he composed his own epitaph:
"He was an assertor of liberty, a lover of
all sorts of learning ... but no man’s follower
or dependent.
Nor could frowns or fortune bend him to decline
from the ways he had chosen."Very shortly
after his death a lengthy biography of Toland
was written by Pierre des Maizeaux.
== Political thought ==
John Toland was the first person called a
freethinker (by Bishop Berkeley) and went
on to write over a hundred books in various
domains but mostly dedicated to criticising
ecclesiastical institutions.
A great deal of his intellectual activity
was dedicated to writing political tracts
in support of the Whig cause.
Many scholars know him for his role as either
the biographer or editor of notable republicans
from the mid-17th century such as James Harrington,
Algernon Sidney and John Milton.
His works "Anglia Libera" and "State Anatomy"
are prosaic expressions of an English republicanism
which reconciles itself with constitutional
monarchy.
After Christianity Not Mysterious, Toland's
views became gradually more radical.
His opposition to hierarchy in the church
also led to opposition to hierarchy in the
state; bishops and kings, in other words,
were as bad as each other, and monarchy had
no God-given sanction as a form of government.
In his 1704 Letters to Serena – in which
he used the expression 'pantheism' – he
carefully analyses the manner by which truth
is arrived at, and why people are prone to
forms of 'false consciousness.'
In politics his most radical proposition was
that liberty was a defining characteristic
of what it means to be human.
Political institutions should be designed
to guarantee freedom, not simply to establish
order.
For Toland, reason and tolerance were the
twin pillars of the good society.
This was Whiggism at its most intellectually
refined, the very antithesis of the Tory belief
in sacred authority in both church and state.
Toland's belief in the need for perfect equality
among free-born citizens was extended to the
Jewish community, tolerated, but still outsiders
in early 18th century England.
In his 1714 Reasons for Naturalising the Jews
he was the first to advocate full citizenship
and equal rights for Jewish people.
Toland's world was not all detached intellectual
speculation, though.
There was also an incendiary element to his
political pamphleteering, and he was not beyond
whipping up some of the baser anti-Catholic
sentiments of the day in his attacks on the
Jacobites.
=== Literary hoax "The Treatise of the Three
Imposters" ===
He also produced some highly controversial
polemics, including the Treatise of the Three
Impostors, in which Christianity, Judaism
and Islam are all condemned as the three great
political frauds.
The Treatise of the Three Imposters was rumoured
to exist in manuscript form since the Middle
Ages and excoriated throughout all of Europe.
It is now thought that the work did not exist.
Toland claimed to have a personal copy of
the manuscript which he passed to the circle
of Jean Rousset in France.
Rumours that it was then translated into French
were taken seriously by some: however, not
by Voltaire who issued a satirical reply.
=== Editions of republican radicals of the
1650s ===
His republican sympathies were also evidenced
by his editing of the writings of some of
the great radicals of the 1650s, including
James Harrington, Algernon Sydney, Edmund
Ludlow and John Milton.
In his support for the Hanoverian monarchy
he somewhat moderated his republican sentiments;
though his ideal kingship was one that would
work towards achieving civic virtue and social
harmony, a 'just liberty' and the 'preservation
and improvement of our reason.'
But George I and the oligarchy behind Walpole
were about as far from Toland's ideal as it
is possible to get.
In many ways he was thus a man born both too
late and too early.
== Contributions to natural philosophy ==
Toland influenced Baron d'Holbach's ideas
about physical motion.
In his Letters to Serena, Toland claimed that
rest, or absence of motion, is not merely
relative.
Actually, for Toland, rest is a special case
of motion.
When there is a conflict of forces, the body
that is apparently at rest is influenced by
as much activity and passivity as it would
be if it were moving.
== Religious thought ==
Toland identified himself as a pantheist in
his publication Socinianism Truly Stated,
by a pantheist in 1705.
At the time when he wrote Christianity not
Mysterious he was careful to distinguish himself
from both sceptical atheists and orthodox
theologians.
After having formulated a stricter version
of Locke's epistemological rationalism, Toland
then goes on to show that there are no facts
or doctrines from the Bible which are not
perfectly plain, intelligible and reasonable,
being neither contrary to reason nor incomprehensible
to it.
All revelation is human revelation; that which
is not rendered understandable is to be rejected
as gibberish.
However, David Berman has argued for an atheistic
reading of Toland, demonstrating contradictions
between Christianity not Mysterious and Toland's
Two Essays (London, 1695).
Berman's reading of Toland and Charles Blount
attempts to show that Toland deliberately
obscured his real atheism so as to avoid prosecution
whilst attempting to subliminally influence
unknowing readers, specifically by creating
contradictions in his work which can only
be resolved by reducing Toland's God to a
pantheistic one, and realising that such a
non-providential God is, for Blount, Toland
and Colins, "...no God, or as good as no God...In
short, the God of theism is blictri for Toland;
only the determined material God of pantheism
exists, and he (or it) is really no God."After
his Christianity not Mysterious, Toland's
"Letters to Serena" constitute his major contribution
to philosophy.
In the first three letters, he develops a
historical account of the rise of superstition
arguing that human reason cannot ever fully
liberate itself from prejudices.
In the last two letters, he founds a metaphysical
materialism grounded in a critique of monist
substantialism.
Later on, we find Toland continuing his critique
of church government in Nazarenus which was
first more fully developed in his "Primitive
Constitution of the Christian Church", a clandestine
writing in circulation by 1705.
The first book of "Nazarenus" calls attention
to the right of the Ebionites to a place in
the early church.
The thrust of his argument was to push to
the very limits the applicability of canonical
scripture to establish institutionalised religion.
Later works of special importance include
Tetradymus wherein can be found Clidophorus,
a historical study of the distinction between
esoteric and exoteric philosophies.
His Pantheisticon, sive formula celebrandae
sodalitatis socraticae (Pantheisticon, or
the Form of Celebrating the Socratic Society),
of which he printed a few copies for private
circulation only, gave great offence as a
sort of liturgic service made up of passages
from pagan authors, in imitation of the Church
of England liturgy.
The title also was in those days alarming,
and still more so the mystery which the author
threw around the question how far such societies
of pantheists actually existed.
The term "pantheism" was used by Toland to
describe the philosophy of Spinoza.
Toland was famous for distinguishing exoteric
philosophy—what one says publicly about
religion—from esoteric philosophy—what
one confides to trusted friends.
In 2007 Fouke's Philosophy and Theology in
a Burlesque Mode: John Toland and the Way
of Paradox presented an analysis of Toland's
'exoteric strategy' of speaking as others
speak, but with a different meaning.
He argues that Toland's philosophy and theology
had little to do with positive expression
of beliefs, and that his philosophical aim
was not to develop an epistemology, a true
metaphysical system, an ideal form of governance,
or the basis of ethical obligation, but to
find ways to participate in the discourses
of others while undermining those discourses
from within.
Fouke traces Toland's practices to Shaftesbury's
conception of a comic or 'derisory' mode of
philosophising aimed at exposing pedantry,
imposture, dogmatism, and folly.
== Influence and legacy ==
Toland was a man not of his time; one who
advocated principles of virtue in duty, principles
that had little place in the England of Robert
Walpole, governed by cynicism and self-interest.
His intellectual reputation, moreover, was
subsequently eclipsed by the likes of John
Locke and David Hume, and still more by Montesquieu
and the French radical thinkers.
Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution
in France wrote dismissively of Toland and
his fellows: "Who, born within the last 40
years, has read one word of Collins, and Toland,
and Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and that
whole race who called themselves Freethinkers?"
Still, in Christianity not Mysterious, the
book for which he is best known, Toland laid
down a challenge not just to the authority
of the established church, but to all inherited
and unquestioned authority.
It was thus as radical politically and philosophically,
as it was theologically.
Of his influence, humanities professor Robert
Pattison wrote: "Two centuries earlier the
establishment would have burned him as a heretic;
two centuries later it would have made him
a professor of comparative religion in a California
university.
In the rational Protestant climate of early
18th-century Britain, he was merely ignored
to death."However, Toland managed to find
success after his death: Thomas Hollis, the
great 18th century book collector and editor,
commissioned the London bookseller Andrew
Millar to publish works advocating republican
government - a list of titles which included
Toland's work in 1760
