Logo DBNL
De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 44 (2012)

De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 44

(2012)– [tijdschrift] Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Scriptieprijs 2010
‘I will utter dark sayings of old’:
John Toland, pantheism and pathos of secrecy1
Mara van der Lugt

This paper examines the themes of pantheism and secrecy in the writings of the Irish philosopher John Toland (1670-1722), especially ‘Clidophorus’ and Pantheisticon (1720). Although several scholars have read these works as containing a theory of dissimulation and a key for reading Toland, this paper argues that it is unwarranted to draw hermeneutical principles from Toland's own writings, which sometimes manifest a pathos of secrecy that surpasses the need for concealment. If this element of pathos is indeed active in Toland's works, it is suggested that his case demonstrates a necessity for greater caution in the interpretation of early modern philosophical texts.


illustratie

Introduction

It is a matter widely debated in the history of philosophy whether the question of dissimulation is pertinent for the more controversial philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century: the question, that is, whether authors concealed the most radical aspects or imphcations of their thought in layers of strategy and ambiguity, in order to confuse and, if possible, escape the censoring powers of Church or State.2 Ever since the publication of Leo Strauss's seminal Persecution and the Art of Writing, hermeneutical wars have been waged on this topic, and the Straussian methods have been many times contested or amended, and alternatives proposed, most famously by Quentin Skinner in his Meaning and Understanding.3 The outcome was an increasing polarisation of interpretations and lack of consensus among interpreters. Although the Skinnerians have gradually come to outnumber the followers of

Strauss, recent years have seen a resurgence of hermeneutical activity among mainly Francophone neo-Straussians, who, while distancing themselves from Strauss's all-too-straightforward methodology, have attempted to map out a deeper and subtler theory of the effects of persecution on art d'écrire, one that incorporates Skinner's method of contextualisation.4 These hermeneutical perspectives have then been eagerly applied to the cases of hotly disputed early modern philosophers such as Bayle, Shaftesbury and Vanini. The interpretative problem remains how to read such authors and masters of ambiguity: should we take them at their word when they explicitly protest their orthodoxy, or should we ‘read between the lines’ and prioritise the context of persecution?5 Should we read these authors as we would read their more orthodox contemporaries, naïvely as it were, or should we employ a hermeneutics of suspicion and tease out ways of reading them by studying the way in which they read others (‘lire Bayle avec Bayle’)?6

Fortunately, some such contested philosophers appear not only to have been aware of this problem of readership, but to have decided to help their struggling readers along the way: by musing on the topic of dissimulation and suggesting rules and guidelines for how to read dissimulating authors in general, they appear to be implying that we apply these rules to them. One of the most eagerly cited texts on dissimulation by a possible dissimulator is the enigmatic essay ‘Clidophorus’ published in 1720 by the Irish philosopher John Toland (1670-1722) as part of his volume Tetradymus.7 Toland, a published philosophical and political polemicist as well as coffee house controversialist, had spent most of his writing career in Oxford and London, and by 1720 was widely notorious in England and Europe for the heterodox tendencies displayed in his many publications on religion. He had made his name as a freethinker by radicalising Lockean epistemology and redirecting it towards an ultrarational demystified version of Christianity in Christianity not Mysterious (1696); after which he cast doubt on the authenticity of the Scriptural canon in a textual line stretching from Amyntor (1699) to Nazarenus (1718); and combined a shatte-

ring critique of religious superstition with a puzzling defence of philosophical pantheism in the Letters to Serena (1704).8

However, if his contemporaries were quick to detect signs of irreligion or even atheism behind his words, Toland denied such charges, and in each of these controversial works gave either a religious profession or some ‘saving’ reference to Christianity - expressions that tended not to be taken very seriously, whether by Toland's adversaries or by historians today. Furthermore, Toland himself made matters more complex in the last years of his life by publishing ‘Clidophorus’ and the equally mysterious Latin treatise Pantheisticon in 1720: texts which, together, would anchor his reputation in the centuries to come as an author who took care to hide himself, a pantheist in disguise. In ‘Clidophorus’, literally meaning ‘Keybearer’, Toland explores the dual practice of public dissimulation and private transparency in ancient authors, and in a curious proto-Straussian move suggests a method of interpretation, a ‘key’ for reading them, which must be drawn from the texts themselves. Ever more suggestively, Toland mentions that the practice of dissimulation is still alive in modern times, so that the reader is led to believe that the ‘key’ borne in ‘Clidophorus’ is not so much intended to open up the dissimulating texts from ancients and moderns in general, as it is to unlock the works of Toland in particular. Following Toland's hints, several authors have taken up this key, and turned it.

In what follows, I will attempt to answer three questions. First, is it warranted to use ‘Clidophorus’ as a hermeneutical device for ‘reading Toland with Toland’; and as evidence that Toland dissimulated in the same way he presents ancient authors as having dissimulated? Second, what can Toland's case teach us about the possible costs and benefits, and the principal problems of any hermeneutics of dissimulation? And third, what can we make of John Toland, even if the ‘key’ borrowed from ‘Clidophorus’ fails? It is not possible here to examine Toland's biblical criticism and his devious deconstruction of the canon, though these constitute what are possibly the most radical elements of his writings, and the crucial moment in making them an oeuvre.9 Instead, I will here focus primarily on the themes of dissimulation and secrecy as they unfold in Toland's 1720 publications, and connect them to the theme of pantheism, while tracing each of these threads to his earlier works. I will begin with ‘Clidophorus’.

‘Clidophorus’ (1720)

The second of four articles in Tetradymus, ‘Clidophorus’ is essentially about a problem of communication.10 It opens as follows: ‘To know the Truth is one thing, to tell it to others is another thing: and as all men profess to admire the first, so few men practise the last as they ought’.11 In times and places where freedom of speech is curtailed to such an extent that no room is left ‘for the propagating of Truth, except at the expense of a man's life, or at least of his honor and imployments’, philosophers have no other choice but to dissimulate.12 Thus Toland, quoting an unnamed source, writes that the ancient philosophers were

constrain'd by this holy tyranny to make use of ‘a two-fold doctrine; the one Popular, accommodated to the Prejudices of the vulgar, and to the receiv'd customs or religions: the other Philosophical, conformable to the nature of things, and consequently to truth; which, with doors fast shut and under all other precautions, they communicated onely to friends of known probity, prudence, and capacity.’ These they generally call'd the Exoteric and Esoteric, or the External and Internal Doctrines.13

The exoteric doctrine was thus designed to conform to the notions of the crowd and the expectations of the censors; the esoteric, on the other hand, was hidden from the many and reserved for the few. According to Toland, the use of this distinction was regaining popularity in modern times, and he intends to show that it was ‘the common practice of all the antient Philosophers’.14 He traces it, first, to Parmenides, whose words meant something different ‘Exoterically’ and ‘Esoterically’; and to Pythagoras, who expressed himself ‘in a plain, perspicuous, and copious speech’ to the inner circle of mathematicians, but ‘in a perplext, obscure, and enigmatical manner’ to the common hearers.15 Aristotle and Plato are similarly represented, the latter's books being ‘full of the Exoteric and Esoteric distinction, which is the true key to his works’, so that one must take care to note when Plato is speaking ‘Exoterically and Vulgarly, or Esoterically and as a Philosopher’.16 The same duplicity of speech causes

Heraclitus’ obscurity, and here we may catch a glimpse of Toland's intention to provide a hermeneutical method for the reading of such texts:

The readers wanted a key, that might open ‘em a passage into his secret meaning: and such a key, that I may hint it en passant, is to be, for the most part, borrow'd by the skilful from the writers themselves.17

Having noted that the double doctrine was also remarked upon by Cicero, Toland argues that it is even functional in the Jewish and Christian religions. Moses, ‘the most illustrious Lawgiver of the Jews’, was often heard ‘to accommodate his words, when speaking of God himself, to the capacity and preconceiv'd opinions of the vulgar’, which eventually caused the fables and ‘palpable darkness’ in the rabbinic teachings, Kabbalah, and Talmud.18 Even Jesus spoke esoterically at times, as he ‘taught for the most part in parables’, and admonished the disciples not to cast pearls before swine.19 Toland provides other examples of ancient esotericism, and claims that many others can be given, since the practice was universal: ‘this distinction of Exoterical and Esoterical doctrines, was, as it were, the Catholic establishment of all nations; which shows that Universality is no infallible mark of Truth’.20

This universality, furthermore, pertained to time as well as space, for the use of the distinction was not unique to the ancients. Already in the preface to Tetradymus, Toland announced that ‘Clidophorus’ would hold up a mirror to the current age: ‘that they of our modern times may, in the history of former ages, behold their own pictures drawn to the life’.21 If the ancients had their tongues tied by priests and magistrates, Christian sects are now embroiled in a vicious circle of mutual persecution: ‘they heartily plague each other with fines and incapacities, with exile, imprisonment’, and even death; ‘till Persecution ends at length in the Inquisition, as the utmost perfection of this hellish Oeconomy of faith. For this reason, ‘there is no discovering, at least no declaring of Truth in most places, but at the hazard of a man's reputation, imployment, or life’, and such circumstances ‘cannot fail to beget the woful effects of insincerity, dissimulation, gross ignorance, and licentious barbarity’.22

The intolerant practices of ‘ambitious Priests, supported by their property

the Mob’, thus produce a set of ‘necessary cautions’ among the philosophically minded: they are forced to use ‘shiftings, ambiguities, equivocations, and hypocrisy in all its shapes’ to convey their thoughts. As an example of such dissimulation, Toland points to the seventeenth-century natural philosopher Claude Bérigard of Pisa, who had expressed some controversial ideas on religion in his Circulus Pisanus, yet had included a ‘bounceing compliment to Mother Church’ as a precaution. ‘I doubt not, for my part’, says Toland, ‘but he made use of the Exoteric and Esoteric distinction, to save his bacon, as we say’.23 Later on, Toland stresses again how the distinction is ‘as much now in use as ever’, though it is ‘not so openly and professedly approv'd’ among the moderns as among the ancients.24 The problem with this continued covert practice is, of course, that it is ‘difficult to know when any man declares his real sentiments of things’. Politically, the solution lies in religious toleration and freedom of speech, which were crucial themes in Toland's thought:

Let all men freely speak what they think, without being ever branded or punish'd but for wicked practises, and leaving their speculative opinions to be confuted or approv'd by whoever pleases: then you are sure to hear the whole truth, and till then but very scantily, or obscurely, if at all.25

Until this freedom is secured, people will continue to profess doctrines without believing them, human weakness being such that they would ‘preferr their repose, fame, or preferments, before speaking of Truth’. For the time being, however, some clarity can be afforded through the following hermeneutical rule:

When a man maintains what's commonly believ'd, or professes what's publicly injoin'd, it is not always a sure rule that he speaks what he thinks: but when he seriously maintains the contrary of what's by law establish'd, and openly declares for what most others oppose, then there's a strong presumption that he utters his mind.26

This rule, which might be called ‘Toland's law’ and is surprisingly reminiscent of Strauss's rule for reading Spinoza, is not infallible, yet it is all that we may

hope for until ‘full and impartial Liberty obtains’.27 After mentioning one more example of esotericism, in the case of the fourth-century bishop Synesius of Cyrene, Toland closes ‘Clidophorus’ by concluding, in words that mirror the opening lines: ‘How hard it is to come at Truth your self, and how dangerous a thing to publish it to others’.28

‘Clidophorus’ foreshadowed

Looking back at Toland's previous works, it appears that his awareness of phenomena such as dissimulation, veiled speech and double doctrines dates from an early stage, though he evaluated them differently. The idea that ancient philosophers hid their teachings in obscurity goes back to Christianity not Mysterious, where Toland mentions how the world is

overstock'd with the Acroatick Discourses of Aristotle, with the Esoterick Doctrines of Pythagoras, and the Mysterious Jargon of the other Sects of Philosophers; for they all made high Pretences to some rare and wonderful Secrets not coramunicable to every one of the Learned, and never to any of the Vulgar.29

The examples of Aristotle and Pythagoras are repeated in ‘Clidophorus’, but there the esoteric practices of the ancients are represented as a way of protecting their very rational philosophical religion, which was hidden from the vulgar out of sheer necessity: in Christianity they are considered to be a way of covering up that which was ‘contradictory, incoherent, dubious, or incomprehensible’ in their teachings, which were kept secret because the ancients feared they would not be taken seriously if made explicit.30 That dissimulation has become a habit among the moderns as well, is apparent from Toland's remark that it ‘is now the most ordinary Practice in the World for such as would not be understood by every one, to agree upon a way of speaking peculiar to themselves’.31

The issue of dissimulation resurfaces in several other works, most prominently in the Letters to Serena (1704). In the first letter it is said that out in the world anyone who disagrees with the universal errors of prejudice is ‘gaz'd

on as a Monster’, and if we do happen to be ‘undeceiv'd’ in some matter, we dissimulate: ‘the prevailing Power of Interest will make us hypocritically (or, if you please, prudently) to pretend the contrary, for fear of losing our Fortunes, Quiet, Reputation, or Lives’. The problem with such dissimulation is that it confirms others in their prejudices, as we only know each other by our ‘outward Actions’, which then seem to be uncontroversial, so that nothing ever changes.32 Furthermore, in the second letter Toland mentions the distinction between an esoteric and exoteric philosophy for the first time in his oeuvre, though without using these terms: instead he says that most philosophers

had two sorts of Doctrins, the one internal and the other external, or the one private and the other publiek; the latter to be indifferently communicated to all the World, and the former only very cautiously to their best Friends, or to some few others capable of receiving it, and that wou'd not make any ill use of the same.33

As an instance of such dissimulation, Toland points to Pythagoras, who according to him did not believe his own doctrine of transmigration; likewise, many of the ancient poets secretly rejected their own descriptions of the afterlife.34 In the third letter, it is again noted that those among the ancients who had ‘better Notions’ about God and the universe rarely dared to speak out against popular conviction: for this reason ‘we find the Sentiments of some of 'em mighty fluctuating and obscure, principally occasion'd by the Persecution that was sure to attend the truth, or any attempt towards a general Reformation’.35

Whilst Toland's attitudes towards dissimulation seem to shift from disapproval to admiration, it is clear that he was aware of the phenomenon throughout his career, and interested in the problems that it posed. Although his treatment of the topic was often subtly extended to apply to moderns as well as ancients, it was primarily connected to his considerations of ancient philosophers. It is interesting, then, that both threads of dissimulation and ancient philosophy come together, not only in ‘Clidophorus’, but in the same year's Pantheisticon.

Pantheisticon (1720)

One of the few works Toland wrote in Latin, its preface pseudonymously signed ‘Janus Junius Eoganesius’, Pantheisticon is perhaps the obscurest of Toland's publications.36 As Pierre Des Maizeaux remarks, Toland ‘seems to have been sensible, that he had too much indulg'd his loose imagination; for he got it printed secretly, at his own charge, and but a few copies, which he distributed with a view of receiving some presents for them’.37 Breaking his long-standing habits of provoking public controversy by publishing for a wide audience of readers, and of circulating his scribal texts across Europe, Toland distributed Pantheisticon carefully and selectively. As the project of a ‘Formula, sive Liturgia Philosophica’ is mentioned in the 1712 correspondence between Toland and Hohendorf, the final publication probably resulted from one of Toland's long term research activities.38 However, though elements of Pantheisticon can be linked to Toland's other works, certain aspects of its content, style and structure set it apart from the rest of his oeuvre.

Continuity with ‘Clidophorus’ is shown primarily by the similar treatment of the dissimulation theme. Mentions of secrecy and esotericism occur throughout the trilogically structured Pantheisticon, but most of all in its third section, entitled ‘A short Dissertation upon a Two-fold Philosophy of the Pantheists’ (I will quote from the 1751 English translation).39 Here it is said that the pantheists, who are assigned the leading role in Pantheisticon, are known for

embracing two Doctrines, the one External or popular, adjusted in some Measure to the Prejudices of the People, or to Doctrines publickly authorised for true; the other Internal or philosophical, altogether conformable to the Nature of Things, and therefore to Truth itself: And moreover for proposing this secret Philosophy, naked and entire, unmasked, and without any tedious Circumstance of Words, in the Recesses of a private Chamber, to Men only of consummate Probity and Prudence.40

Though translated differently, this is the very passage quoted by Toland in the first section of ‘Clidophorus’: the works to his mind were so intimately connected that he quietly quoted himself.41 In Pantheisticon, this double doctrine is explicitly linked to the pantheists, who concealed their philosophy from the prejudiced vulgar, and adopted the following rule of thumb: ‘that one Thing should be in the Heart, and in a private Meeting; and another Thing Abroad, and in public Assemblies’. This practical maxim, says Toland, ‘has often been greatly in Vogue, and practised not by the Antients alone’: it is, in fact, ‘more in Use among the Moderns, although they profess it is less allowed’.42

Later on, the maxim is developed into a threefold guideline for the pantheists. First, the pantheists will not ‘run counter to the received Theology, that in philosophical Matters swerves from Truth’, but ‘neither shall he be altogether Silent, when a proper Occasion presents itself’. Second, there are some matters that ‘the Pantheist can with Safety disclose’, and these he will not keep to himself, but ‘voluntarily communicate’ to others, though never ‘without a due Caution’. Third, as to ‘the more sacred Dogms, regarding either the Nature of God, or of the Soul’, these the pantheist shall meditate upon ‘in the Silence of his Heart’, and none but kindred spirits will be allowed to partake in his ‘Esoterics’. Though some outsiders may dislike such secrecy, the pantheists ‘shall not be more open, ‘till they are at full Liberty to think as they please, and speak as they think’.43

The distinction between ‘External, or popular and depraved’ and ‘Internal, or pure and genuine’ philosophy is also brought up in the first section of Pantheisticon, as is the pantheists' opinion that ‘in indifferent Matters, nothing is more prudent than the old Saying, “We must talk with the People, and think with Philosophers”’.44 However, if the third section examines the secretive structure of pantheist societies, the first hones in on the content of their secrets. Entitled ‘A Discourse upon the Antient and Modern Societies of the Learned’, it draws a line from ‘those Societies that were frequently instituted among the Greeks and Romans, either for the Pleasure or Instruction of the Mind’ to the ‘Socratic Societies’ that have risen in modern times.45 The latter consist

mostly of philosophers with a desire to ‘freely and impartially, in the Silence of all Prejudices, and with the greatest Sedateness of Mind, discuss and bring to a Scrutiny all things, as well sacred (as the saying is) as prophane’.46 They are usually styled ‘Pantheists’ because of their specific ‘Opinion concerning God and the Universe’, and their views concerning ‘the Cause and Origin of Things’ are best expressed by the dictum from ‘Linus, the most antient, most authentic, and revered Oracle of mysterious Science’, that ‘All Things are from the Whole, and the Whole is from all Things’,47

It is not simply the discussion of esoteric and exoteric doctrines in Pantheisticon that ties it so closely to ‘Clidophorus’: it is also the connection made between esotericism and pantheism, between a specific mode and content of communication.48 In ‘Clidophorus’, wherever Toland detects the use of the esoteric/exoteric- distinction, especially by the ancients, the esoteric doctrine pertains to a form of pantheism.49 Toland's pantheist explorations are discussed in detail elsewhere, but even broad strokes can demonstrate why these works are so suggestive: ‘Clidophorus’, the more publicly available book, points directly towards the more obscure Pantheisticon, which in turns harks back to ‘Clidophorus’ and develops some of its latent themes.50 Furthermore, Pantheisticon's eclectic mixture of ancient and modern influences can be traced back to earlier moments in his oeuvre: for instance, to his long-standing interests in Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and especially Giordano Bruno.51 Again, this implies a latent coherence in Toland's oeuvre if read backwards from Pantheisticon and ‘Clidophorus’, which both approach the Renaissance theme of a prisca theologia in positing a covert yet continuous tradition between certain ancient philosophers and ‘modern’ pantheists, such as, presumably, Toland himself.52

If the ‘ancient’ strain in Toland's thought can be connected to his apparently later interest in pantheism, it would appear that he had in fact been flirting with varieties of pantheism from an early stage. Other indications of such a court-

ship can be seen in Toland's use of the pseudonym ‘Pantheist’ and ‘Pantheus’ upon two occasions prior to the exposition of pantheism in Pantheisticon. The first appears in Toland's anonymous publication Socinianism truly Stated (1705), which contains a translated essay by Le Clerc, and prefixed to this an introductory tract by Toland, entitled ‘Indifference in Disputes: Recommended by a Pantheist to an Orthodox Friend’. The second time Toland used the pseudonym was in the 1708-10 letters and treatises to Eugene and Hohendorf in Vienna, which, as he writes in the preface to Nazarenus, he ‘sent by the post under the feign'd name of Pantheus’, though he also signed his name to them.53 It is not difficult to see, in the light of such continued pantheist innuendo as displayed in these and other works, why Toland has been considered, by several commentators, to have been a closet pantheist from early on.

Furthermore, certain moments in both ‘Clidophorus’ and Pantheisticon will redirect the attentive reader to the Letters to Serena. For instance, the reinterpretation of Pythagoras as a secret Heraclitean pantheist in both works can also be found in the second letter, where it is said that ‘Pythagoras himself did not believe the Transmigration which has made him so famous to Posterity; for in the internal or secret Doctrin he meant no more than the eternal Revolution of Forms in Matter’.54 In the fourth letter Toland claims to refute Spinoza's philosophical system on the basis that it does not define motion, and launches his own counter-metaphysics in the fifth letter, where we find Pantheisticon's pantheism foreshadowed in Heraclitean passages such as the following: ‘All the Parts of the Universe are in this constant Motion of destroying and begetting, of begetting and destroying’; all particles are ‘alive in a perpetual Flux like a River’, and none ‘are ty'd to any one Figure or Form’.55 Life and death are interwoven through this ‘incessant riverlike Flowing and Transpiration of Matter’ between humans, animals, plants, and all other bodies, which ‘have bin all resolv'd into one another by numberless and ceasless Revolutions, so that nothing is more certain than that every material Thing is all Things, and that all Things are but one’.56 This, in the framework of Pantheisticon, is pantheism proper.

To recapitulate: not only does ‘Clidophorus’ point to Pantheisticon and vice versa, but both gesture back to previous works, especially the Letters to Serena of sixteen years earlier, thus creating the suggestion of a single coher-

ent project, carefully dissimulated and only partially revealed at the end of his life, when Toland had little left to lose. In his final works, it is Toland himself who opens the interpretative question of how to untangle the knots and paradoxes of his earlier writings: it is Toland who confronts us with the problem of how Toland must be read. Taking this into account, it is unsurprising that several historians have embraced the hermeneutical rule that can be drawn from ‘Clidophorus’ and are tempted to adopt the language of keys. According to Laurent Jaffro, Toland ‘a complaisamment publié sa théorie de l'art d'écrire, dans Clidophorus, invitant par là meme le lecteur à pratiquer un art de lire inédit’; and Pierre Lurbe suggests that if we follow ‘le conseil de lecture que nous donne Toland lui-même, il ne devrait pas être trop difficile de trouver la “clé” (et Clidophorus n'est-il pas, justement, 1e porteur de clé?)’ for understanding him.57 Most drastically, David Berman presents Toland as one of the masters of ‘the Art of Theological Lying’, and contends that his so-called deism, as well as that of Collins and Blount, is in fact the dissimulated outcome of a ‘deep, covert atheism’.58 The key of ‘Clidophorus’ firmly in hand, Berman claims to unlock the ambiguous passages in works such as the Letters to Serena and concludes that, whereas Christianity not Mysterious ‘may be described as deistic, the Letters are pantheistic’.59 Similarly, ‘Clidophorus’ is identified by Robert Rees Evans as ‘a latterday key to Toland's entire previous literary production’, and Toland is accordingly said to have become a ‘private pantheist’ after 1704.60

A meeting of the pantheists

However, is an interest in pantheism enough to make one a pantheist? In Toland's case, there are three reasons to question such an inference. First, it should be remembered that Toland enjoyed cloaking himself, his name and his authorial personas in mystery, which resulted in his eager use of a variety of pseudonyms, from ‘Pantheus’ to ‘Adeisidaemon’ and ‘Philogathus’, even on occasions when anonymity would have been a sufficient veil.61 Consequently, it is unclear whether his admittedly suggestive donning of the title ‘pantheist’

should be read as a quasi-theological profession, or rather as an act of playful provocation, which so often was Toland's game. Second, the connection between Pantheisticon and the last two of the Letters to Serena is less straightforward than is often assumed. Though pantheist allusions are all but ubiquitous in the fifth letter, Toland does strongly criticise a specific variety of pantheism, which he attributes to the Cambridge mathematician Joseph Raphson (1648-1715), who coined the terms ‘pantheus’ and ‘pantheismus’ in 1697.62 Since the views ascribed to Raphson in the Letters appear to correspond with Toland's general conception of pantheism, Toland's criticism of Raphson, in the words of Ann Thomson, ‘rather undermines his definition of his own position as pantheism’.63

The same could be said for Toland's criticism of Spinoza, which sits strangely with other moments in his writings where Spinozism is not contrasted but equated with pantheism.64 Even in the Letters Raphson's views are not clearly distinguished from those of Spinoza, and in Origines Judaicae (1709) when Toland comments positively upon Strabo's claim that ‘Moses was a Pantheist’, as he had taught that God and Nature were one and the same, he adds: ‘or, to speak with the moderns, a Spinozist’.65 Similarly, in a passage in his posthumous biblical catalogue, Toland mentions a Gnostic Gospel of Eve, in which she receives a pantheist message from God; and he wittily remarks that ‘Eve, as we may see, was a great Spinosist’.66 Not only, then, are the boundaries between Raphsonism, Spinozism and other versions of pantheism vaguely drawn, but Toland's attitude to each of them remains unclear and open to interpretation.

Third, and most importantly, there is something problematic about the

format of Pantheisticon itself: more specifically, about the second and main section of the book, which is entitled The Form of Celebrating the Socratic-Society, and describes the formal structure according to which the meetings of the modern pantheists are organised. In a dialogical role-play between the president and the brethren of the pantheist society, or a ‘pantheist liturgy’ that, according to Stephen Daniel, ‘parodied the liturgies of institutional religions’,67 the essentials of the pantheists' doctrines are repeated, the ancients venerated and the vulgar scorned; while the toasts grow evermore lavish.68 The general tone can be sensed in the following fragment, in which the respondents answer to the president's reading of a passage from Cato:

Resp.: Let Socrates and Plato be praised, And Marcus Cato, and Marcus Cicero,
Pres.: Let us discuss every Thing seriously, And fill up the Chasms of Discourse with diverting Stories.
Resp.: Wittily, modestly, facetiously.
Pres.: Let us search out, diligently, the Causes of Things, that we might live pleasantly, and die peaceably.69

Scholars tend to gloss over part two of Pantheisticon or dismiss it as an eccentricity - with the notable exception of Margaret Jacob, who read it as a ‘Masonic ritual’ and connected it to an enigmatic manuscript found in Toland's papers, written by Prosper Marchand, which reports a secretive meeting of the ‘Knights of Jubilation’ held in The Hague, 1710.70 Jacob then used this and other material as crucial evidence for the existence of secret masonic societies in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, to one of which Toland

supposedly belonged.71 And in fact the first part of Pantheisticon does suggest that pantheists abounded in Europe and held closed meetings:

Many of them are to be met with in Paris, in Venice also, in all the Cities of Holland, especially at Amsterdam, and some (which is suprising) in the very Court of Rome, but particularly, and before all other Places, they abound in London, and have placed there the See, and, as it were, the Citadel of their Sect. ... The Pantheists, as I intimated, instituted moderate and honest Banquets ... to bring together Friends, and relish the Sweets of conversation.72

However, although the pantheist ‘liturgy’ is initially presented as a descriptive rather than merely prescriptive text,73 in the final pages of the book Toland himself waters down the impression that he is describing the practice of actual pantheist societies, suggesting instead that such societies are ‘probable’ even if they do not exist, and hinting that his liturgy is ‘a Mixture of Truth and Falshood’.74 On these and other grounds, Jacob's attempt to connect Toland to actual masonic networks has been questioned and criticised by a number of scholars, and it has been argued that even if Toland ‘was interested in establishing a social network for the clandestine exchange of ideas’, it would be ‘conjecture’ to count him among the Masons: it is more likely that Toland's representations of pantheist societies were at the very least exaggerated, partly parodie, and possibly fantastical.75

But if Jacob drew too many consequences from the second part of Pantheisticon, perhaps some of her critics drew too few: for if the ‘liturgie’ section is infused with sardonic Tolandian twists, what does this say about the work as a whole? Scholars such as Daniel and Giuntini, while attentive to the tongue-in-cheek momenti in the liturgy, have nevertheless upheld the ‘seriousness’ of its arguments, and claimed that Pantheisticon ‘represents the conclusive moment’ of Toland's activity.76 But how seriously are we to take a text that qua content

pretends to expound a deep metaphysical doctrine, yet qua form is, at least in part, strongly anomalous when compared to Toland's other philosophical works? (Indeed, it appears that Toland alluded to Pantheisticon as ‘a philosophical Romance’ in his preface to Tetradymus).77 I would argue that there is reason to take not only Toland's references to modern pantheist societies with a pinch of salt, but also his references to himself as a secret pantheist. We do know, from Pantheisticon and other works, that Toland was intrigued by themes of pantheism and secrecy, but he may also have been tempted to represent himself as more occult, esotericist and authoritative than he was. In the end, perhaps, the charge that he secretly (or not so secretly) desired to be the leader of a sect, which was imputed to him by Peter Browne in the earliest years of his career and which Toland himself imputed to Spinoza, was not so far from the truth.78

Pathos of secrecy

If we are to question Toland's allusions to factual Socratic societies as well as his self-stylisation as a pantheist, what consequences does this have for ‘Clidophorus’, a work that was not only published in the same year, but broached the very same topics: pantheism and secrecy? Are we still warranted in reading ‘Clidophorus’, with Berman and others, as a confession that Toland was dissimulating? Perhaps not, or not entirely. There is in fact another possible reason for the prominent theme of secrecy in Toland's late works - one that is not quite incompatible with the thesis that Toland was dissimulating, but does complicate it.

It should be remembered that although Toland toyed with varieties of concealment throughout his oeuvre, in his earlier writings he had consistently criticised textual obscurity and praised clarity, and in his poetic excursion of 1700 entitled Clito or ‘Key’, which supposedly contained the ‘Scheme of his Studies’, he made no allusions to either secrecy or dissimulation. As to the hermeneutical key presented in ‘Clidophorus’, in two of his earlier works Toland expressed a contrary view.79 At the end of the second part of Amyntor (1699), he criticised the overly suspicious hermeneutics of readers who ‘never fail

of finding in the Writings of their Adversary, not what is there, but what they have a mind should be so’, because they are determined ‘to discover the hidden Poyson of every Word’.80 Likewise, in Vindicius Liberius (1702), Toland warned against those critics who are eager to accuse their opponents ‘of impious or seditious Designs, who suspect the plainest Apologies they can make, and discover a hidden Poison in their words even when they are of their own prescribing’. Here he proposed a hermeneutical guideline that is the opposite of ‘Toland's law’ in ‘Clidophorus’. When pondering a person's words, even if their views are different from our own, we are

oblig'd to make the most candid Construction of their Designs, and if their words admit of a double Sense, (which is hard to be always avoided in any Language) we ought to allow the fairest Interpretation of their Meaning.81

As Daniel notes, it was only towards the end of his life that ‘Toland grew more interested in secretive matters’ and devoted himself to exploring the themes of esotericism and dissimulation.82 Driving this newfound fascination, I suggest, was something else besides considerations of persecution and freedom of expression: Toland was getting carried away with the pathos of secrecy that is tangible in both ‘Clidophorus’ and Pantheisticon. These works were finalised during a lonely time for Toland: by 1720 he was all but destitute, financially ruined by his speculations in the South Sea Company, and out of touch with the political powers that had financed many of his publications and intellectual journeys to the continent, so that he was now dependent on the support of his long-time friend Robert Molesworth until Toland's death in 1722.83 Charmed by the idea of a hidden ancient wisdom, of disguised philosophers only revealing themselves in secret societies of friends, Toland unfolded the Renaissance idea of a philosophia perennis that connected his own thought to that of the ancients, as well as a social pantheism that hypothetically linked him to the likeminded: to freethinkers that were, like him, excluded from the straight-thinking mainframe of society.

This rather idiosyncratic taste for secrecy goes back to Toland's other writ-

ings, where his many tricks, identities and guises clearly demonstrate that the Irishman liked his ambiguities, but it reaches its epitome in the final years: for instance in the enigmatic epitaph that Toland wrote a few days before his death, which says that ‘he's frequently to rise himself again / Yet never to be the same Toland more’, and ends with the words, ‘If you would know more of him / Search his Writings’.84 The same pathos can be sensed throughout the pages of Pantheisticon, and especially ‘Clidophorus’, where the aura of secrecy is doubly installed by its evocative Greek title and the pregnant biblical epigraph, in Hebrew, on the titlepage of Tetradymus: ‘I will utter dark sayings of old’.85 Although similar hints and allusions to a secret, deeper part of Toland's identity have been taken completely seriously by some scholars, it is also possible that Toland was weaving veils for himself mainly in order to try them on, and donning layers that suggest more concealment than is there.

Problems of interpretation

This brings us back to my first question of interpretation: are we warranted in drawing from works such as ‘Clidophorus’ and Pantheisticon the hermeneutical key for reading them? If my hypothesis that Toland's dalliance with esoteric pantheism was motivated strongly, if not exclusively, by a pathos of secrecy is correct, the answer must be no: we should be wary of reading too deeply between the lines of such texts, where Toland's motives for dissimulating were perhaps less straightforward than some have assumed. Even more unwarranted would be to reduce the entirety of Toland's oeuvre to the elusive pages of ‘Clidophorus’ and Pantheisticon. To give priority to the hermeneutical instructions in ‘Clidophorus’ as an all-round interpretative key would amount to a forceful intervention in the readings of Toland's other work. It would mean that the broad range of creative ambiguities and textual techniques in Toland's writings could be reduced unequivocally to instances of full-blown dissimulation. Toland's supposed later identity as a covert pantheist would, so to speak, be cut from the pages of Pantheisticon with the scissors borrowed from ‘Clidophorus’, and pasted onto the covers of books such as Christianity not Mysterious and Letters to Serena.

I believe we should be careful in using any such ‘key’ to unlock Toland's

oeuvre - even if it is Toland himself who poses as the ‘Keybearer’. It should be remembered that Toland is in many ways an untrustworthy writer: he is continually trying to fool, trick and deceive his readers, for instance in the continued references to non-existent works, the unfulfilled promises to publish books that would never see the light of day, the acts of creative plagiarism and manipulative citation, and the (quasi-)promotion of a forgery as the authentic ‘Gospel of Barnabas’.86 Throughout his works, Toland appears to be giving us every reason not to trust him at first sight: why then should we place our faith entirely in the cryptic, suggestive but ultimately inconclusive passages of ‘Clidophorus’ and Pantheisticon?

Reading Toland thus enables us to give some answers, however incomplete, to my second question: what can Toland's case tell us about the principal problems involved in the interpretation of possibly dissimulating texts? First, that it is dangerous to draw a hermeneutical key from one work by an author to unlock his entire oeuvre, since it makes wider understanding dependent upon a single and ever fallible interpretative move. To decide beforehand to let one of the parts of Toland's oeuvre determine the interpretation of the whole, is to decide on a certain interpretation from the start, and thereby to close the hermeneutical circle before it has been opened. Second, it is not necessarily warranted to found a method of interpretation upon the way in which the author under consideration (such as Toland, Bayle, Spinoza) read others. It is indeed possible that an author's reading and writing practices are connected, but it is also possible that they are not; and we cannot decide this prior to reading them: prior to interpretation itself. Reading Toland with Toland, or Bayle with Bayle, can only ever be the end of interpretation, never the starting point, for in order to read with authors, we must know what it means to be ‘with’ them.

Third, if it is true that Toland was inspired mainly by pathos of secrecy rather than considerations of persecution, this might equally hold for other authors suspected of dissimulation. Part of the attraction of dissimulating texts is that the perceived need to avoid persecution can lead to fascinatingly original and creative ways of writing: if current historians reading these texts are engrossed and enticed by such manoeuvres, as they often appear to be, perhaps their authors were as well. It is possible that the strategies and ambiguities of dissimulation, though born as creatures of necessity, in the work of some authors grew to be an end in itself, rather than a mere means to avoid persecution: that ‘the original compulsory secrecy’, as Koselleck said of Masonic

lodges, ‘hypostatised itself’ and ‘yielded to a trend towards mystification’.87 For Toland, I believe this was the case; it remains an open but important question whether there were others of his kind. If we do factor in the possibility of pathos of secrecy, we must henceforth beware of reading too much into dissimulative strategies when they have been affected by such pathos, whether intentionally or not.

In my opinion the best (though never infallible) way of reading where dissimulation may be involved, is a ‘two-eyed’, a bifocal approach, in which the suspicious or clidophoric eye is moderated by one that trusts the author at his word, and believes in order to understand.88 The dangers of a ‘one-eyed’ reading - with either a too naïve or a too suspicious eye - are principal dangers when dealing with dissimulative texts, which simply do not allow definitive explanation. A hermeneutics of dissimulation of any integrity is therefore destined to revolve around an open question; to go back and forth between belief and doubt, understanding and confusion; to read with two eyes rather than one eye between the lines. And now and then, it might be necessary to suspect one's suspicion even when it is warranted: to consider the possibility that an author is not quite dissimulating in the Straussian sense, but employing secrecy for secrecy's sake.

Conclusion: the true Toland?

If this was true for Toland, it is not to say that he was not a pantheist, or that he did not dissimulate - for he was, and he did. As far as pantheism is concerned, although there are reasons to take Pantheisticon less than seriously, Toland's long-standing interests in (pseudo/proto)-pantheist philosophy, which can be traced to his first publication, the Two Essays (1695), also bear the marks of sincerity.89 That Toland was not merely flirting with these ways of thinking, but committed to them, is confirmed by his philosophical view on death, which rises unsurprisingly in Pantheisticon,90 yet is prepared in earlier writings such as Letters to Serena and Clito, where he writes that

 
Death is only to begin to be
 
Som other thing, which endless change shall see;
 
(Then why should men to dy have so great fear?
 
Tho nought's Immortal, all Eternal are)91

Since in his final letters to Robert Molesworth, written in the weeks before his death, Toland uttered no hope for Christian redemption or for another life, merely noting in Stoic tones that he knows the end is near, it appears that his philosophical mortalist views on life and death were also personal ones, which he may have taken to his grave.92 As for ‘dis/simulation’, if we define this as authorial hiding-revealing of oneself, Toland was undoubtedly dissimulating, in that he actively cultivated the impression that he had something to hide, and subtly presented his readers with keys for reading him.93 However, the terms ‘dissimulation’ and ‘art of writing’ usually carry connotations of grave necessity in the light of possible persecution, and hence they do not cover the strategic devices handled by a Toland. Of course there were limits to what a philosopher might say and write: Toland himself could not return to Ireland after the condemnation of Christianity not Mysterious in 1697, the same year that saw the execution of blasphemist Thomas Aikenhead in Scotland.94 But whatever practical reasons the Irish philosopher had for choosing concealment, we must also take into account the playful and ‘pathetic’ aspects of his secretive pantheism: in playing hide-and-seek with his readers Toland was having fun as well, and presenting himself as hiding more than he actually was. The image of Toland structurally toning down or concealing his more controversial thoughts does not match his defining character as a provocateur, one who liked publicity, whether positive or negative. Throughout his career, Toland seems to have been aware that to gain and retain an audience, it does not suffice merely to state a controversial message, lest it scare off the reader whose mind is still structured by tradition, or - even worse - lest it bore him. Toland used his pseudonyms, quips, ploys, and guises to ensure a minimum level of self-

protection in his writings, but also to entice his readers with his provocative edge, to impress his peers with his diversity, and to irritate scholars and clerics with his elusiveness.

An essential point in this context was made by Justin Champion, who warned against prioritising the private Toland over the public Toland.95 Looking back at Toland's philosophical practices, an image rises of a man who was, first and foremost, a public writer, who tailored his work for a number of specific audiences, and shaped his thoughts in public or semi-public environments: in coffee-houses, libraries, and on paper within a community of well-read correspondents. There were indeed differences in what and how Toland chose to communicate to the diverse recipients of his scribal and published works, but in his manifestation of heterodox ideas he was uncommonly bold and reluctant to keep them to himself: Toland's personality was one that naturally sought an audience for his philosophical productions; he was not one for private thought. As Champion points out it should be remembered that Pantheisticon itself was in fact a published, public, and indeed ‘exoteric’ work; the same could be said of ‘Clidophorus’.96 The selective distribution of Pantheisticon appears to have done more to trigger the curiosity of the Republic of Letters than to subdue it; and so the air of secrecy surrounding the work should perhaps not be mistaken for camouflage.97 Mystery sold then as it does now, and Toland's self-fashioning as a man of paradoxes and enigmas was arguably one of his most successful methods of publicising his works, which did not contain many secrets, for all that they were soaked in secrecy.

To return to the third question I posed at the outset, ‘what are we to make of John Toland?’, I believe to have shown that Toland's undeniable attachment to both pantheism and secrecy was of a more idiosyncratic character and at least partly motivated by different reasons than is sometimes assumed: his case, therefore, has in a way become more complicated, not less so. To some extent, then, the question of the true Toland is destined to remain ambiguous, due to the slippery side of his personality in print. At best we can say that he was a strategic writer and provocateur par excellence, who used his clair-obscur

techniques mainly to deliver his message, rather than to hide it, and who developed into an increasingly audacious, subversive, and heterodox thinker, whose playful pantheism was at the same time ‘deadly’ serious. He may have veiled himself in secrecy, but again, these veils are not to be taken too literally: more than anything, Toland wanted to be read.

About the author:

Mara van der Lugt (1986) completed a Master in Philosophy and a Research Master in Early Modern Intellectual History at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2010, focusing especially on questions of interpretation and dissimulation in early modern philosophers. She was awarded the Professor Bruins Prize for best Research Master student at Erasmus University in the year 2010, and received the annual Thesis Award of the Werkgroep 18e Eeuw for her extended thesis on John Toland, entitled The true Toland? Inquiry into the Religious Writings of an Irreligious Mind. Based at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, she is currently pursuing a DPhil in History on the seventeenth-century French philosopher Pierre Bayle and his Dictionnaire historique et critique. E-mail: Mara.vanderlugt@ccc.ox.ac.uk.

Bibliography:

Miguel Benítez, La face cachée des lumières. Recherches sur les manuscrits philosophiquesclandestins de l'âge classique (Paris and Oxford 1996).
Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, ‘Les chevaliers de la jubilation: maçonnerie ou libertinage? Apropos de quelques publications de Margaret C. Jacob’, Quaerendo 13 (1983) 50-73, 124-148.
David Berman, ‘Deism, Immortality, and the Art of Theological Lying’, in: J.A. Leo Lemay (ed.), Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment: Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge (London and Toronto 1987) 61-78.
David Berman, ‘The Irish Freethinker’, in: Philip McGuinness, Alan Harrison & Richard Kearney (ed.), John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious: Text, Associated Works and Critical Essays (Dublin 1997) 223-230.
Bibliothèque Angloise, ou histoire littéraire de la grande Bretagne, Vol. VII (Amsterdam 1720).
Giancarlo Carabelli, Tolandiana: materiali bibliografici per lo studio dell'opera e della fortuna di John Toland (Firenze 1975).
E. Cattin, B. Frydman, L. Jafffo & A. Petit (ed.) Leo Strauss. Art d'écrire, politique, philosophie, texte de 1941 et études (Paris 2001).
Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, ‘L'art d'écrire des philosophes’, Critique 631 (1999) 959-980.
Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Dis/simulations: Jules-César Vanini, François La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Naudé, Louis Machon et Torquato Accetto. Religion, morale et politique au xviie siècle (Paris 2002).
Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft shaken: The Church of England and its Enemies, 1660-1730 (Cambridge 1992).
Justin Champion, ‘John Toland: The Politics of Pantheism’, Revue de synthèse, 2-3 (1995) 259-280.
Justin Champion, ‘Introduction’, in: John Toland, Nazarenus (Oxford 1999).
Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696-1722 (Manchester 2003).
Gavina Cherchi, Satira ed enigma: Due saggi sul Pantheisticon di John Toland (Lucca 1985). Gavina Cherchi, Pantheisticon: Eterodossia e dissimulazione nella filosofia di John Toland (Pisa 1990).
Stephen H. Daniel, John Toland, his Methods, Manners and Mind (Montreal and Kingston 1984).
Stephen H. Daniel, ‘Toland's Semantic Pantheism’, in: Philip McGuinness, Alan Harrison and Richard Kearney (eds.), John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious: Text, Associated Works and Critical Essays (Dublin 1997) 303-312.
Pierre Des Maizeaux, ‘Some Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. John Toland’, in: Pierre Des Maizeaux (eds.), A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Toland, Vol. I (London 1726).
Robert Rees Evans, Pantheisticon: The Career of John Toland (New York 1991).
G.C. Gibbs, ‘Review of Margaret Jacob's The Radical Enlightenment, The British Journal for the History of Science 17 (1984) 67-81.
Chiara Giuntini, Panteismo e Ideologia Repubblicana: John Toland (1670-1722) (Bologna 1979).
F.H. Heinemann, ‘John Toland and the Age of Enlightenment’, in: Review of English Studies, Vol. XX, 78 (1944) 125-146.
Manlio Iofrida and Onotrio Nicastro, ‘Introduzione’, in: John Toland, Pantheisticon (Pisa 1996), 14-124.
Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford 2002).
Margaret Jacob, ‘An Unpublished Record of a Masonic Lodge in England: 1710’, Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 22 (1970) 168-71.
Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689-1720 (Ithaca, NY 1976).
Margaret Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment (London and Sydney 1981).
Margaret Jacob, ‘The Knights of Jubilation - Masonic and Libertine’, Quaerendo 14 (1984) 63-75.
Margaret Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-century Europe (Oxford 1991).
Laurent Jaffro, ‘L'art de lire Toland’, Revue de synthèse, 2-3 (1995) 399-419.
Journal des Sçavans, Vol. LXXII (Amsterdam, July 1722).
Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (English translation: Cambridge, Mass. 1988; originally published 1959).
Mara van der Lugt, The true Toland? Inquiry into the religious writings of an irreligious mind, MA Thesis, Erasmus University Rotterdam 2010, http://oaithesis.eur.nl/ir/repub/asset/6883/The%20true%20Toland%20fmal%20version %20RM.pdf.
Pierre Lurbe, ‘Clidophorus et la question de la double philosophie’, Revue de synthèse, 2-3 (1995) 379-398.
Pierre Lurbe, ‘A Free-Thinker strikes back against his Detractors: John Toland's Vindicius Liberius and the 1701 Convocation Controversy’, in: G. Paganini, M. Benítez and J. Dybikowski (ed.), Scepticism, Clandestinity and Free-Thinking (Paris 2002) 257-268.
Pierre Lurbe, ‘Traduire, trahir, se trahir: le cas du Pantheisticon de John Toland’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 4 (2010) 233-242.
Gianluca Mori, Bayle philosophe (Paris 1999).
Gianluca Mori, ‘Persécution et art d'écrire: Strauss, Skinner et Pierre Bayle’, in: E. Cattin, B. Frydman, L. Jaffro & A. Petit (ed.) Leo Strauss. Art d'écrire, politique, philosophie, texte de 1941 et études (Paris 2001) 197-219.
Elmer Ellsworth Powell, Spinoza and religion: a study of Spinoza's metaphysics and of his Particular Utterances in Regard to Religion, with a View to Determining the Significance of his Thought for Religion and Incidentally his Personal Aattitude toward It (Chicago 1906).
Joseph Raphson, De spatio reali seu ente infinito, in: Analysis oequationum universalis (London 1702). [De spatio reali first published 1697].
Paul Ricoeur, Le conflit des interpretations (Paris 1969).
Quentin Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory 8:1 (1969) 3-53.
Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago and London 1988).
R.E. Sullivan, John Toland and the Deist Controversy: A Study in Adaptations
(Cambridge, Mass. 1982).
Ann Thomson, Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment (Oxford 2008).
John Toland [?], Two Essays Sent in a Letter from Oxford to a Nobleman in London (London 1695).
Toland, Christianity not Mysterious: or, a Treatise Shewing, that there is Nothing the Gospel contrary to Reason, nor above it (second edition, London 1702).
John Toland, An Apology for Mr. Toland, in relation to the Parliament of Ireland's ordering this Book to be Burnt, in: John Toland, Christianity not Mysterious (second edition, London 1702).
John Toland, Amyntor: Or, A Defence of Milton's Life (London 1699).
John Toland, Clito: A Poem on the Force of Eloquence (London 1700).
John Toland, Vindicius Liberius: Or, Mr. Toland's Defence of himself (London 1702).
John Toland, Letters to Serena (London 1704).
John Toland, ‘Indifference in Disputes: Recommended hy a Pantheist to an Orthodox Friend’, in: John Toland (ed.), Jean Le Clerc, Socinianism truly Stated; being an Example of fair Dealing in all Theological Controversys (London 1705).
John Toland, Origines Judaicae, attached to Adeisidaemon, sive Titus Livius, A Superstitione vindicatus (The Hague 1709).
John Toland to Baron von Hohendorf, manuscript letter dated 7 March 1711-1712, Add MS 4295 f. 19-20 in the British Library.
John Toland, Nazarenus: or, Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity (London 1718).
John Toland, Pantheisticon. Sive Formula Celebrandae Sodalitatis Socraticae (‘Cosmopoli’ 1720).
John Toland, Tetradymus [containing ‘Hodegus’, ‘Clidophorus’, ‘Hypatia’ and ‘Mangoneutes’] (London 1720).
John Toland to Barnham Goode, manuscript letter dated 30 Oct. 1720, Add MS 4295 f.39-40 in the British Library.
John Toland, manuscript epitaph ‘Here Lyeth John Toland’ (1722?), Add MS 4295 f.76 in the British Library.
John Toland, A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Toland, ed. Pierre Des Maizeaux (London 1726) 2 Vol.
John Toland, ‘A Catalogue of Books’, in: A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Toland, ed. Pierre Des Maizeaux (London 1726), Vol. I.
John Toland, Pantheisticon: Or, the Form of Celebrating the Socratic Society, anonymous English translation (London 1751).
John Toland, Pantheisticon, ed. Onotrio Nicastro & Manlio Iofrida (Pisa 1996).
Frederick Vaughan, ‘On “An Exchange on Strauss's Machiavelli”’, Political Theory 4:3 (1976) 371-372.
Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass. 1990).

Vorige Volgende

Over dit hoofdstuk/artikel

auteurs