TOLAND, JOHN (christened JANus JuNius) (167o-1722), English deist, was born on Nov. 3o, 1670, near Londonderry, Ireland. Brought up a Roman Catholic, in his sixteenth year he became a zealous Protestant. He studied at Glasgow, and then at Leiden under the famous scholar Friedrich Spanheim. He went in 1694 to Oxford where he began the book which made him famous—his Christianity not Mysterious (1696, anonymous; 2nd. ed. in the same year, with his name; 3rd ed., 1702, including an Apology for Mr. Toland). It gave great offence, and several replies were immediately published. The author was prosecuted by the grand jury of Middlesex; and, when he attempted to settle in Dublin at the beginning of 1697, he was denounced from the pulpit and elsewhere. His book having been condemned by the Irish parliament (Sept. 9, 1697) and an order issued for his arrest, Toland fled to England. The resemblance, both in title and in principles, of his book to Locke's Reasonableness of Christian ity, led to a prompt disavowal by Locke of the supposed identity of opinions, and subsequently to the famous controversy between Stillingfleet and Locke. Toland's next work of importance was his Life of Milton (1698), in which a reference to "the numerous suppositious pieces under the name of Christ and His apostles and other great persons," provoked the charge that he had called in question the genuineness of the New Testament writings. Toland replied in his Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton's Life (1699), he opened up the question of the history of the scriptural canon. In 1701 Toland spent a few weeks at Hanover as secretary to the embassy of the earl of Macclesfield, and was received with favour by the electress Sophia in acknowledgment of his book Anglia Libera, a defence of the Hanoverian succession. On his return from the Continent he published Vindicius Liberius (1702), in which he described Christianity not Mysterious as a youthful indiscretion. The next year he visited Hanover and Berlin, and
was again graciously received by the electress and her daughter Sophia Charlotte, queen of Prussia, the "Serena" of the Letters published on his return to England (1704). In two of these (A Letter to a Gentleman in Holland, and Motion essential to Matter), ostensibly an attack on Spinoza, he anticipated some of the speculations of modern materialism. The Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover (1705) was used by Carlyle in his Life of Frederick the Great. From 1707 to 1710 Toland lived in varying circumstances on the Continent. In 1709 he published (at The Hague) Adeisidaemon and Origines Judaicae. The last of his theological works were Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile and Mahometan Christianity (1718) in which he maintained that the early Christians were Jewish Christians observing the Mosaic law and that their successors were the Nazarenes or Ebionites after wards regarded as heretics by the Church.
His last book, Pantheisticon (172o), gave great offence. He died on March I I, 1722, in London, as he had lived, in great poverty, with his pen in his hand. The term "free-thinker" was first applied to Toland, who indeed uses it himself.
See Mosheim's Vindiciae antiquae christianorum disciplinae (1722), containing the most exhaustive account of Toland's life and writings; a Life of Toland (1722), by "one of his most intimate friends"; "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. John Toland," by Des Maizeaux, prefixed to The Miscellaneous Works of Mr. John Toland (London, 1747) ; and also G. Berthold, John Toland and der Monis mus der Gegenwart (1876).