TOLAND, John. — The most notable of the English deists (Collins, Tindal, Morgan), born at Redcastle near Londonderry (Ireland) on 30 Nov. 1670, died at Putney near London on 11 March 1722. From a Catholic family, he converted to the Anglican faith at the age of sixteen. He studied at the Universities of Glasgow (1687) and Edinburgh (1690).
His principal work is Christianity not mysterious (1st ed., anonymous, Oxford 1696). In the preface he states: “after I had been brought up from the cradle in the grossest superstitions and idolatry (the Catholic religion), it pleased God that my reason and men who had made use of their reason should be the instruments of my conversion.” For him, who opposed the authority of the pope as much as that of the Protestant clergy, the choice lay between the clear doctrine of Christ and the complicated doctrines of the theologians. Where Locke in The Reasonableness of Christianity aimed to show that Christianity is reasonable, Toland’s aim was to show that nothing contrary to reason, or above reason, can form part of Christian doctrine. In the Letters to Serena (Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Prussia) he combats the Cartesian concept of matter as something inert: movement is as essential and original a property of matter as extension and solidity. These ideas are further developed in the Pantheisticon sive formula celebrandae sodalitatis Socraticae (1720), which describes imaginary gatherings of men of all nations, free from prejudice, who identify God with the creative and ordering force of the universe. Toland’s aspiration to live “free from cares as from ambitions, always with a book in hand or in mind” was much opposed by religious and political controversy. The sincere freethinker (“a candid freethinker”), as he is called by Molesworth, Locke’s friend, was made to appear as a dangerous enemy of Church and State.
Among his numerous other writings are to be noted: Amyntor or a defence of Milton's life (1699); Clito, a Poem on the force of eloquence (1700); Vindicius Liberius (an apology of his conduct and principles in matters of politics and religion); Socinianism truly stated (1705); Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile and Mahometan Christianity (1718); Tetradydmius (1720).