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Life
b. 30 Nov. 1970, Inishowen, Co. Donegal, [var. 1699]; prob. b. as Seán Ó Tuathhalláin; also pseud. John Roberts in the period 1710-22]; baptised by his own account Janus Junius, a Catholic, and supposedly illegitimate son of Derry priest; established early notoreity by disputing with a local priest; became Presbyterian at 15 [var. 16]; ed. Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Leiden [Leyden]; at Glasgow he manned barricades against the Jacobites and received a certificate as ‘ane true Protestant and loyal subject’; MA, Edinburgh Univ., 1691 [var. 1690]; attended Leiden, and became acquainted with Huguenots; studied at the Franciscan College in Prague; |
he met Edward Lhuyd at Oxford; thought to have collaborated with Dermod O’Connor in his translation of Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Eirinn; started the ‘Deist Controversy’ with the publication of his Christianity not Mysterious (1696), the second edition appearing under his own name; elicited many answers in Ireland incl. those from Edward Synge and Swift, who called him the ‘great Oracle of anti-Christians’ and denominated him both a Catholic priest and the son of a priest in An Argument against Abolishing the Christian Religion (1708), satirising his writings extensively in A Tale of a Tub (1704); |
Dr. Peter Browne (FTCD), being invited to reply by Narcissus Marsh, condemned Toland as ‘an inveterate enemy of revealed religion’; Toland returned to Ireland in 1697, supposedly in hope of preferment; associated with the patronage of Robert Molesworth, a lifelong friend, and the Presbyterian Commonwealth circle associated with Wood St. Church (estab. in Dublin by Cromwell); caused resentment through his quarrelsome behaviour as well as his doctrines, and his constant boasting of the friendship of Locke; became acquainted with Molyneux in Dublin, who reported his imprudence in letters to Locke; |
fled before arrest, his Christianity being burned in Dublin by order of the House of Commons [var. Grand Jury]; Life of Milton (1698); edited The Oceana of James Harrington (1700); coins term ‘West Britain’ in his Limitations for the next Foreign Successor, or A New Saxon Race (1701); travelled to Berlin and ed. Milton’s prose works (Berlin 1702), included in party that carried the Act of Succession to Hanover, effecting succession of English crown to Sophia, wife of Elector of Hanover and mother of George I, to the exclusion of Catholic candidates, later writing in in its defence (1710); |
issued Letter to Serena (1704), to Sophie Charlotte [Sophia] Queen of Prussia; coined term ‘pantheist’ in that writing, reiterating in it the title of Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist (1705); impoverished by South Sea Bubble, and buried in pauper’s grave in Putney; he was the object of Locke’s coinage, ‘free-thinker’; castigated by French bishop as illegitimate; issued Reasons for Naturalising the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland (1714); issued The Probability of the Speedy and Final Destruction of the Pope (1718), infl. by Giordano Bruno’s Spaccio de la Beastia Trionfante (Eng. trans. 1713), which was favoured by Thomas Leslie Birch and other Presbyterians in Ulster; |
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issued Pantheisticon sive Foruma Celebrandae Sodalitatis Socraticae (1720; trans. 1751), the manual for a civic religion, with liturgy along Freemason lines; first to employ the terms West Britain, South Britain, and North Britain for Ireland, England, and Scotland; accused by Thomas Sullevane of orchestrating Dermod O’Connor’s specious translation of Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Eirinn (History of Ireland), in prefatory notice to Memoirs of the Marquis of Clanricarde (1722); his posthumous History of the Celtic Religion and Learning Containing an Account of the Druids (1726) argued that the Celtic Church was Protestants in its opposition to Rome, and condemned the Bull Laudabiliter; |
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his will and literary estate executed Pierre Desmaizeaux, who called it ‘a ridiculous story’ that Toland was a belated supporter of Cromwell’s policy in Ireland in his ‘Memoir of Toland’, attached to Collection of Several Pieces (1726); biographised as Irish in Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Irish Worthies, Vol. II (1821, pp.594-690); a copy of Christianity Not Mysterious annotated by Archbishop Marsh is held in Marsh’s Library, St Patrick’s Close, Dublin; kept a copy of Lucretius’s De rerum natura about him in the room where he died; there is an inscribed copy of Pantheisticon in the Queen’s University Library, having been donated by the Belfast First Presbyterian Church. RR CAB ODNB PI DIB DIW OCEL FDA OCIL |
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Works| [Selected] |
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Also issued edition of James Harrington’s Oceana, rep. in Dublin in 1737. |
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| Modern reprints |
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See also Patrick Kelly, ‘A Pamphlet Attributed to John Toland and an Unpublished Reply by Archbishop William King, in Topoi, 4 (1985), pp.81-90. |
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Bibliographical details
L’Ecclésiologie de John Toland: I. Introduction II. L’histoire du texte anglais III. La situation du manuscrit de Rouen IV. Les autorités et l’autorisation V. La réduction nominaliste de l’ecclesia VI. Des chrétiens sans Église à lÉglise sans chrétiens VII. La réduction politique de l’ordination VIII. L’ecclésiologie républicaine IX. L’ecclésiologie non-conformiste X. Conclusion XI. Note sur l’édition XII. Bibliographie THE PRIMITIVE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH Chapter 1. The occasion and argument of the work Chapter 2 Of the Christian religion Chapter 3. Of the Church, and the distinctions thereof Chapter 4 Of synods and councils Chapter 5. Of the marks of the true Church Chapter 6. Of ordination, and the various orders of priests Chapter 7. Of the religious teachers instituted by Christ. LA CONSTITUTION PRIMITIVE DE L’ÉGLISE CHRÉTIENNE Chapitre 1. L’occasion et l’argument de l’ouvrage Chapitre 2. De la religion chrétienne Chapitre 3. De l’Église et de ses distinctions Chapitre 4 Des synodes et des conciles Chapitre 5. Des marques de la vraie Église Chapitre 6 De l’ordination et des différents ordres de prêtres Chapitre 7. Des personnes commises par Christ pour prêcher la religion Appendice 1. Extrait de Mangoneutes Appendice 2. Titre et sommaire de Priesthood without Priestcraft Index des références aux Écritures Index des noms.
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Criticism
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See also Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealth Man (Harvard UP 1959); Margaret Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment (London: Allen & Unwin 1981); Jürgen Schneider and Ralf Sotscheck, Ireland: Eine Bibliographie selbständiger deutschsprachiger (Verlag Georg Büchner Buchhandlung 1989), pp.276-78. |
| Note, David Berman has also written about Toland in Gordon Stein, ed., in The Encyclopedia of Unbelief (NY Prometheus Books q.d.). |
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Commentary
See infra.
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Quotations
See infra.
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References
See infra.
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Notes
Portrait: The only known portrait of Toland appears in U. G. Thorschmid, Versuch einer Vollstandige Englandiche Freydenker-Bibliothek (1766), Vol. 3; rep. in Stephen H. Daniel, John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind. It came from Volume 3 of . This is the only known portrait of John Toland. Interestingly, it shows him holding a copy of Pantheisticon.
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More Tolands: A John Toland is listed as a “married taxable” in the Pennsylvania Archive (Robinson Twa III, 22, 767) and also appears onthe 1784 tax list. He was a private in Capt. Thomas Rankin’s company of militia July 8-1782 (Pa Archives, VI, 2, 145). In the 1790 census John Toland is in Strabane (Penn.) with one son and one daughter listed as children and also appears on the 1793 tax list for Strabane. In 1785 he was granted 400 acres on King's Creek in what is now Hancock Co. [...]. (Summary of information on The Toland Family of Washington, given in the “Raymond M. Bell Anthology” [link])
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Pantheism defined: In 1710 Toland offered a definition of his term pantheism in a letter to Leibniz where he referred to ‘the pantheistic opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe’ [14th Feb 1710].
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