Born in Ireland, in 1669, of Roman Catholic parents, but became a zealous opponent of that faith before he was sixteen; after which he finished his education at Glasgow and Edinburgh; he retired to study at Leyden, where he formed the acquaintance of Leibnitz and other learned men. His first book, published in 1696, and entitled “Christianity not Mysterious,” was met by the strongest denunciation from the pulpit, was “presented” by the grand jury of Middlesex, and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman by the Parliament of Ireland. He was henceforth driven for employ to literature; and in 1699 was engaged by the Duke of Newcastle to edit the “Memoirs of Denzil, Lord Hollis;” and afterwards by the Earl of Oxford on a new edition of Harrington’s “Oceana.” He then visited the courts of Berlin and Hanover. He published many works on politics and religion, the latter all remarkable for their deistical tendencies, and died in March, 1722.

Personal

  If his exceeding great value of himself do not deprive the world of that usefulness that his parts, if rightly conducted, might be of, I shall be very glad.—The hopes young men give of what use they will make of their parts is, to me, the encouragement of being concerned for them; but, if vanity increases with age, I always fear whither it will lead a man.

  The name of Toland is more familiar than his character, yet his literary portrait has great singularity; he must be classed among the “Authors by Profession,” an honour secured by near fifty publications; and we shall discover that he aimed to combine with the literary character one peculiarly his own. With higher talents and more learning than have been conceded to him, there ran in his mind an original vein of thinking. Yet his whole life exhibits in how small a degree great intellectual powers, when scattered through all the forms which Vanity suggests, will contribute to an author’s social comforts, or raise him in public esteem. Toland was fruitful in his productions, and still more so in his projects; yet it is mortifying to estimate the result of all the intense activity of the life of an author of genius, which terminates in being placed among these Calamities…. He was so confirmed an author, that he never published one book without promising another. He refers to others in MS.; and some of his most curious works are posthumous. He was a great artificer of title pages, covering them with a promising luxuriance; and in this way recommended his works to the booksellers. He had an odd taste for running inscriptions of whimsical crabbed terms; the gold-dust of erudition to gild over a title.

  From his earliest days Toland was a mere waif and stray, hanging loose upon society, retiring at intervals into the profoundest recesses of Grub Street, emerging again by fits to scandalise the whole respectable world, and then once more sinking back into tenfold obscurity. His career is made pathetic by his incessant efforts to clutch at various supports, which always gave way as he grasped them. The illegitimate son, as it was said, probably out of mere malice, of an Irish priest, he became a convert to Protestantism at sixteen, and was supported by certain dissenters at Glasgow, Leyden, and Oxford. He repaid their generosity by acquiring a considerable amount of learning, and then by suddenly firing “Christianity not Mysterious” in their faces. It was a luckless performance so far as his temporal interests were concerned. The Grand Jury of Middlesex presented it as a nuisance; the uproar which it excited followed him to Dublin; there for a time he braved the storm, and was foolish enough to maintain his opinions at “coffee-houses and public tables;” whereas infidelity, till a much later period, was, like hair-powder, an acknowledged perquisite of the aristocracy. Poor Toland fell into debt; it became dangerous to speak to him; and as South triumphantly declared, whilst wishing that English zeal were equally warm, “the (Irish) parliament, to their immortal honour, sent him packing, and, without the help of a faggot, soon made the kingdom too hot to hold him.”

General

  His “Christianity not Mysterious,” 1696, caused none the less excitement than its quarrel with orthodoxy was chiefly concerning the word “mysterious.” He accepted the Bible theory of the origin of sin, only labouring to make out that there was nothing mysterious about it. He did not repudiate miracles; he only held that there was nothing mysterious in an all-powerful Being breaking through the order of nature. Professor Ferrier styles him “but a poor writer,” and charges him with “dulness, pedantry, vanity, and indiscretion.”

  His works were never collected, and are now forgotten.

  Toland was evidently a man of remarkable versatility and acuteness, and his first book struck the keynote of the long discussions as to the relation between the religion of nature and the accepted doctrines. He showed also an acute perception of the importance of historical inquiries into the origin of creeds, though his precarious circumstances prevented him from carrying out continuous studies. His contemporaries held that vanity led him to a rash exposition of crude guesses. Allowance must be made for the unfortunate circumstances which compelled him to make a living in the ambiguous position of a half-recognised political agent and a hack-author dependent upon the patronage of men in power. Some of his writings were respectfully criticised by Leibnitz, and he was in intercourse with some of the ablest men of his time. He is generally noticed along with Collins and Tindal as the object of the contempt of respectable divines, but deserved real credit as a pioneer of freethought. He had read widely and knew many languages, including Irish, which he had learned in his infancy (see his “History of the Druids”), and some of the Teutonic languages.