107 



TOLAND, JOHN. 



TOLAND, JOHN. 



108 



have had tho favour of a visit from him. I now understand, as I 

 intimated to you, that he was born in this country, but tbat he hath 

 been a great while abroad, and bis education was for some time under 

 the great Le Clero. But that for which I can never honour him too 

 much is his acquaintance and friendship to you, and the respect which 

 on all occasions he expresses for you. I propose a great deal of satis- 

 faction in his conversation I take him to be a candid free-thinker, 

 and a good scholar. But thera is a violent sort of spirit that reigns 

 here, which begins already to show itself against him, and I believe 

 will increase daily ; for I find the clergy alarmed to a mighty degree 

 against him; and last Sunday he had his welcome to this city, 

 in hearing himself harangued against out of the pulpit by a 

 prelate of this county." (Locke's 'Works,' vol. viii. p. 405, 8vo, 

 ed. 1799.) Toland appears to have become acquainted with Locke; 

 and this acquaintance he made the most of in conversation at Dublin. 

 In Locke's reply to the Bishop of Worcester, who, in defending the 

 doctrine of the Trinity against Toland, had connected Locke with 

 him, he showed that he did not reciprocate in an equal degree Toland's 

 friendship and esteem for him. Mr. Molyneux wrote of him after- 

 wards, May 27, 1697 : " Truly, to be free, I do not think his manage- 

 ment, since he came into this city, has been so prudent. He has raised 

 against him the clamour of all parties, and this not so much by his 

 difference in opinion, as by his unreasonable way of discoursing, pro- 

 pagating, and maintaining it. ... Mr. Toland also takes here a 

 great liberty on all occasions, to vouch yonr patronage and friendship, 

 which makes many that rail at him rail also at you. I believe you will 

 not approve of this, as f:ir.as I am able to judge, by your shaking him 

 off, in your letter to the Bishop of Worcester" (p. 421). And Locke, 

 on June 15, wrote what is worth quoting for itaelf, as well as for the 

 opinion implied of Toland : ''As to' the gentleman to whom you think 

 my friendly admonishments may be of advantage for his conduct 

 hereafter, I must tell you that he is a man to whom I never wrote in 

 iny life, and I think I shall not now begin ; and as to his conduct, it is 

 what I never so much as spoke to him of : that is a liberty to be taken 

 only with friends and intimates, for whose conduct one is mightily 

 concerned, and in whose affairs one interests himself. I cannot but 

 wish well to all men of parts and learning, and bo ready to afford 

 thein all the civilities and good offices in my power; but there must 

 be other qualities to bring me to a friendship, and unite me in those 

 stricter ties of concern ; for I put a great deal of difference between 

 those Whom I thus receive into my heart and affection and those 

 whom I receive into my chamber, and do not treat them with a 

 perfect strangeness " (p. 425). Pecuniary difficulties arid persecu- 

 tions together obliged Toland to leave Ireland in a very short time. 

 The parliament at Dublin voted that the book should be burnt by the 

 common hangman. Mr. Molyneux gives an account of his departure 

 in another letter written to Locke. 



Ho went to London, and, nothing daunted, published 'An Apology 

 for Mr. Toland, in a Letter from himself to a Member of the House 

 of Commons in Ireland, written the day before his book was resolved 

 to be burnt by the Committee of Religion : to which is prefixed a 

 Narrative containing the occasion of the said Letter.' He now 

 devoted himself very vigorously to book-making of all sorts, in politics, 

 theology, literature : showing always, even in the pamphlets which 

 the mere passing occasions called forth, a degree of genius and erudi- 

 tion deserving of a better fate than his Very scanty and precarious 

 earnings. He published in 1698 a pamphlet, just after the Peace of 

 Ryswick, when there arose the question what forces should be kept 

 on foot, entitled, ' The Militia Reformed, or an easy scheme of fur- 

 nishing England with a constant Land Force, capable to prevent or 

 to subdue any foreign power, and to maintain perpetual quiet at 

 home, without endangering the public liberty ; ' and in the same year 

 his ' Life of Miltou,' which Was prefixed to ' Milton's Prose Work?,' 

 in 3 vols. folio. Then came, in 1699, the ' Amyntor, or a Defence of 

 Milton's Life,' in answer to a criticism of Dr. Blackall, bishop of 

 Exeter, on some incidental remarks made by him in his ' Life of 

 Milton' on the genuineness of some parts of Scripture. There 

 followed in rapid succession his editions of Holles's 'Memoirs,' and of 

 Harrington's Works, with a life of Harrington prefixed ; ' Clito,' a 

 poem on the force of eloquence ; ' Anglia, Libera, of the Limitation 

 and Succession of the Crown of England explained and asserted,' and 

 other political pamphlets. The 'Anglia Libera' was published in 

 1701, on the passing of the act which settled the crown on the Princess 

 Sophia of Hanover and her heirs, after the death of William, and of 

 Anne without issue ; and Toland Went over to Hanover and managed 

 to get presented to the electress by the Earl of Macclesfield, who had 

 been s-.-nt on a special mission to carry the act to the electress, and then 

 prci-euted his 'Anglia Libera' to her with his own hands. He after- 

 wards stayed in Hanover for some short time, and went from thence 

 to the court of Berlin, acting at these courts apparently as a sort of 

 political agent, and making the most of the recommendations which 

 he carried from the EngLsh government to extend his reputation for 

 literature and learning. He won the good opinion both of the Princess 

 Sophia and of the Queen of Prussia ; they both courted his conversa- 

 tion, and afterwards his correspondence. On the occasion of his first 

 visit to Berlin he held a theological discussion with Beausobrc in the 

 presence of the queen, who acted as a sort of moderator, and closed 

 it, on observing that the disputants were beginning to lose their 



temper. His letters to Serena, published in 1704, were addressed to 

 the queen of Prussia. 



In 1702, in an interval of his residence abroad, he published 

 ' Vindicus Liberius, or Mr. Toland's Defence of himself against the 

 Lower House of Convocation and others.' In this work his opinions 

 have assumed a very subdued tone, which is perhaps to be accounted 

 for in a great measure by the prospect of political advancement which 

 seemed to be opening for him. " Being now arrived to years that will 

 not wholly excuse inconsiderateness in resolving, or precipitance in 

 acting, I firmly hope that my persuasion and practice will show me to 

 be a true Christian, that my due conformity to the public worship 

 may prove me to be a good churchman, and that my untainted loyalty 

 to King William will argue me to be a staunch commonwealth's man." 

 Subsequent theological works showed this to have been a moderation 

 merely assumed for the time. 



The mask of orthodoxy was thrown off in a pamphlet which he 

 published in 1705, in the title of which he did not scruple to designate 

 himself a Pantheist : ' Socinianism truly stated, being an example of 

 fair dealing in theological controversies ; to which is prefixed Indif- 

 ference in disputes recommended by a Pantheist to an orthodox friend.' 

 But he was now enjoying the zealous patronage of Harley, afterwards 

 earl of Oxford, who had in the previous year become secretary of state, 

 and he probably thought he could again afford to be a free-thinker. 

 Harley employed him to write several political pamphlets, and sent 

 him abroad again in 1707, to Germany and Holland. The nature of 

 his connection with Harley may be gathered from the following extract 

 from one of his ' Memorials to the Earl of Oxford,' which are printed 

 in a posthumous collection of his pieces written at a time when the 

 zeal of his patron had cooled : " I laid an honester scheme of serving 

 my country, your lordship, and myself; for seeing it was neither con- 

 venient for you nor a thing at all desired by me, that I should appear 

 in any public post, I sincerely proposed, as occasions should offer, to 

 communicate to your lordship my observations on the temper of the 

 ministry, the dispositions of the people, the condition of our enemies 

 or allies abroad, and what I might think most expedient in every con- 

 juncture ; which advice you were to follow in whole, or in part, or 

 not at all, as your own superior wisdom should direct. . . . As 

 much as I thought myself fit, or was thought so by others, for such 

 general observations, so much have I ever abhorred, my lord, those 

 particular observers we call spies ; but I despise the calumny no less 

 than I detest the thing." (vol. ii. p. 223.) Tolaud was abroad on this 

 occasion for about three years, acting as a sort of political spy for 

 Harley, though he disavowed the name, and eking out his subsistence 

 by his pen, and apparently in any way that presented itself. He made 

 a trip from Holland to Vienna, commissioned by a wealthy banker to 

 procure for him from the imperial ministers the rank of a count of 

 the empire ; but he did not succeed in attaining the object of his 

 mission. He managed in Holland to ingratiate himself with Prince 

 Eugene, who was very jittentive and liberal to him. In the ' Memo- 

 rial" to the. Earl of Oxford, which has been before quoted, Toland 

 mysteriously connects this prince with his mission to Vienna, and 

 cunningly tries to give this foolish journey a character of great dignity 

 and honour. " My impenetrable negociation at Vienna, hid under the 

 pretecce of curiosity, was not only applauded by the prince that 

 employed me, but also proportiouably rewarded " (p. 225). In due 

 time he quarrelled with Harley, and then wrote pamphlets against 

 him. Asa Whig pamphleteer, he had the honour of Swift's notice in 

 ' Toland's Letter to Dismal.' 



The principal publications of Toland which remain to be mentioned 

 are the following, with the dates of their appearance : a volume pub- 

 lished at the Hague in 1709, containing two Latin essays, with the titles 

 'Adeisida?mon, sue Titus Livius, b, Superstitione Vindicates,' and 

 ' Origines Judaicfe, seu Strabonis de Moyse et Religione Judiaca His- 

 toria breviter illustrata ; ' ' The Art of Restoring, or the Piety and 

 Probity of General Monk in bringing about the last Restoration, evi- 

 denced from his own Authentic Letters, with a just account of Sir 

 Roger, who runs the parallel as far as he can' (by Sir Roger was 

 meant the Earl of Oxford, his former patron, who was then plotting 

 the restoration of the Pretender) ; and ' A Collection of Letters by 

 General Monk, relating to the Restoration of the Royal Family,' both 

 published in 1714 : ' Reasons for Naturalising the Jews in Great 

 Britain and Ireland, on the same footing with all other nations, with a 

 Defence of the Jews against all Vulgar Prejudices in all Countries,' 

 published in 1714 ; 'The State Anatomy of Great Britain, containing 

 a particular account of its several Interests and Parties, their bent 

 and genius, and what each of them, with all the rest of Europe, may 

 hope or fear from the reign and family of King George,' which work 

 called forth several answers, that led Toland to publish a second part; 

 ' Nazarenua, or Jewish Gentile, or Mahometan Christianity, containing 

 the History of the Antient Gospel of Barnabas, and the Modern 

 Gospel of the Mahometans, attributed to the same Apostle, this last 

 gospel being now first made known among Christians : also the 

 original plan of Christianity, occasionally explained in the Nazarenes, 

 whereby divers controversies about this divine (but highly perverted) 

 institution may be happily terminated ; with the relation of an Irish 

 manuscript of the four gospels, as likewise a summary of the antient 

 Irish Christianity, and the reality of the Kelclees (an order of lay 

 religious), against the two last bishops of Worcester,' which appeared 



