TO'LAND, Jorix (1670-1722). A deistical writer. Ile was born near the village of Red castle, in the County of Londonderry. Ireland. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic, hut in his sixteenth year was a Protestant. He entered the University of Glasgow in 1687, but removed to that of Edinburgh, where he took the degree of master of arts in 1690. Thence he passed to Leyden. where he entered upon theological stud ies. On his return to England he resided for some time at Oxford, where he was already looked upon as a free-thinker. Christianity :Cot Mysterious, which he published in London in 1096. and in which he fully avowed his princi ples, created a sensation in the theological world. In the following year Toland returned to Ireland, but his book was burned by order the Irish Parliament. Finding it neces sary to flee from Ireland, Toland returned to London. where he published a defense against this judgment of the Irish Parliament; but he soon afterwards turned his pen from theological to political and literary subjects. A pamphlet
entitled Anglia Libera (1701), on the succession of the House of Brunswick, led to his being re ceived with favor by the Princess Sophia at the Court of Hanover, and to his sent on a kind of political mission to some of the German courts. In 1705 he outstripped the boldness of his former opinions, openly avowing himself a pantheist. In this course he was emboldened by the patronage of Harley, in whose service he had engaged as a political pamphleteer, and by whom he was sent abroad to Holland and Germany in 1707. He returned to England in 1710: and hav ing forfeited the favor of his patron. or at least haying separated from him (1714), he engaged as a partisan pamphleteer on the side of parley's adversaries. His after-life was that of a liter ary adventurer, and was checkered by every variety of literary conflict and pecuniary strug gle.