TOLAND, John (1670-1722), or Janus Junius, as his sponsors are said to have named him, usually described as a chief leader of the English deists, -was born November 30, 1670 or 1671, in the north of Ireland, near Londonderry. He was the son, perhaps illegitimate, of Catholic parents, and was brought up in their faith. But in his fifteenth year he became a zealous Protestant, and in 1687 he passed from the school at Redcastle to Glasgow university, recommended by the magistrates of Redcastle “for his affection to the Protestant religion.” Thus early in life he became “accustomed to examination and inquiry, and was taught not to captivate his understanding to any man or society.” After three years at Glasgow he entered the university of Edinburgh, taking his M.A. degree there June 30, 1690. He then spent a short time in some Protestant families in England, and with their assistance went to Leyden university, to qualify him for entering the Dissenting ministry. He spent about two years in Leyden, studying ecclesiastical history especially under the famous scholar Frederick Spanheim. At the expiration of that time he took up his abode, January 7, 1694, at Oxford, having good introductions to Creech, Mill, and others. Here he made large use of the Bodleian Library, and soon acquired the reputation of being “a man of fine parts, of great learning, and of little religion,” though there is no evidence to show that the last distinction was justly his due. His letters show that he then claimed to be a decided Christian, and that he was too orthodox to be classed with the Arians or the Socinians. At the same time the characteristic freedom and originality of his mind were displayed by his anticipation of subsequent doubts of the integrity of the book of Job, and the ...separation of the historical prologue and the speeches of Elihu from the original poem. While at Oxford he commenced the book which called him into notoriety, and became one of the standard “deistical writings ”—his Christianity not Mysterious. The book gave great offence, and several replies to it were immediately published. The author was prosecuted by the grand jury of Middlesex the year of its publication; and, when he attempted to settle in Dublin at the beginning of 1697, he was greeted with dangerous denunciations from the pulpits and elsewhere. He was soon prosecuted before the court of King’s Bench, and on September 9th his book was condemned by the Irish parliament to be burned and its author to be arrested. He escaped the latter part of the sentence by flight to England. The title and the philosophical principles of Toland’s book were singularly akin to those of Locke’s famous work, The Reasonableness of Christianity, published the year before; and Locke’s opponents seized the opportunity of fathering upon the philosopher the doctrines of his more heterodox and less guarded disciple. Thus Toland’s work became the occasion of the celebrated controversy between Stillingfleet and Locke, in which Locke takes pains to show the difference between his position and Toland’s. Toland’s next work of importance was his Life of Milton (1698), in which, in connexion with his exposure of the fictitious authorship of the Eikon Basilike, he found occasion to make reflexions on “the numerous supposititious pieces under the name of Christ and His apostles and other great persons.” This provoked the charge that he had called in question the genuineness of the New Testament writings, and he replied in his Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton , s Life (1699), to which he added a remarkable list of what are now called apocryphal New Testament writings. In his remarks he really opened up the great question of the history of the canon, towards the examination of which Stephen Nye, Jeremiah Jones, and Nathanael Lardner made in reply to him the first valuable contributions. The next year his Amyntor and Christianity not Mysterious were under discussion in both Houses of Convocation, and the Upper House declined to proceed against the author. 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 a defence of himself, and of the bishops for not prosecuting him, Vindicius Liberius (1702), and several political pamphlets. The next year he visited Hanover and Berlin, and was again graciously received by the electress and her daughter Sophia Charlotte, queen of Prussia. On his return to England (1704) he published Letters to Serena, and afterwards acknowledged that the queen of Prussia was intended by the pseudonym. In these letters he anticipated some of the speculations of modern materialism. The next year appeared his Account of Prussia and Hanover, of which Carlyle has made use in his Life of Frederick the Great. From 1707 to 1710 he is again on the Continent,—at Berlin, Hanover, Düsseldorf, Vienna, Prague, and The Hague, with very varying fortunes, but generally of an adverse character. In 1709 he published Adeisidaemon and Origines Judaicae (The Hague), in which, amongst other things, he maintained that the Jews were originally Egyptians, and that the true Mosaic institutions perished with Moses. This work provoked a number of replies from Continental theologians. In 1710 he returned to England, living chiefly in London and latterly at Putney, loving the country and his books, and subsisting precariously upon the earnings of his pen and the benevolence of his patrons. His literary projects were numerous (see the incomplete list in Mosheim); and the nobler traits of his warm Irish nature appear in his projected history of the ancient Celtic religion and his chivalrous advocacy of the naturalization of the Jews. The last of his theological works were Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity (1718), and Tetra-dymus (1720), a collection of essays on various subjects, in the first of which, “Hodegus,” he set the example subsequently followed by Reimarus and the rationalistic school in Germany, of interpreting the Old Testament miracles by the naturalistic method, maintaining, for instance, that the pillar of cloud and of fire of Exodus was a transported signal-fire. His last and most offensive book was his Pantheisticon (Cosmopoli, 1720). He died May 11, 1722, as he had lived, in great poverty, in the midst of his books, with his pen in his hand, and left behind him a characteristic Latin epitaph, in which he could justly claim to have been “veritatis propugnator, libertatis assertor.”
Toland is generally classed with the deists, but at the time when he wrote his first book, Christianity not Mysterious, he was decidedly opposed to deism, nor does Leland deal with that work as an exposition of deistical views. The design of the work was to show, by an appeal mainly to the tribunal of Scripture, that there are no facts or doctrines of the “gospel,” or “the Scriptures,” or “Christian revelation” which, when revealed, are not perfectly plain, intelligible, and reasonable, being neither contrary to reason nor incomprehensible to it. The work undoubtedly aimed a blow at some of the dogmas of later Christian times, but it claimed to be “a vindication of God’s revealed will against the most unjust imputations” which occasioned “so many deists and atheists.” Toland’s line of argument is to show that the supposition of the doctrines of the gospel being repugnant to clear and distinct ideas and common notions leads into absurdities and inevitable scepticism; that the proof of the Divinity of Scripture is its selfevidencing power; that, though men are dependent on Divine revelation for the knowledge of the most important truths, the truths must themselves be plain and intelligible when revealed; that all the doctrines, precepts, and miracles of the New Testament are perfectly intelligible and plain; that, though reason is disordered in the case of many men, the disorder is not in the faculty itself but in the use made of it; that in the New Testament “mystery” never means anything inconceivable in itself, but things naturally intelligible enough, which are either so veiled by figurative words or rites, or so lodged in God’s sole knowledge and decree, that they could not be discerned without special revelation; that no miracle of the gospel is contrary to reason, for they were all produced according to the laws of nature, though above its ordinary operations, which were therefore supernaturally assisted; that mysteries were first introduced into Christianity by the early admission into the church of Levitical ceremonies and heathen rites and mysteries, and especially by mixing up heathen philosophy with the simple religion of Christ. The work was intended to be the first of three discourses, in the second of which he was to attempt a particular and rational explanation of the reputed mysteries of the gospel, and in the third a demonstration of the verity of Divine revelation against atheists and all enemies of revealed religion. But, like so many other of his numerous projects, this failed of execution. After his Christianity not Mysterious and his Amyntor, Toland’s Nazarenus was of chief importance, as vailing attention to the right of the Ebionites to a place in the early church, though it altogether failed to establish his main argument or to put the question in the true light. His Pantheisticon, sive Formula celebrandae Sodalitatis Socraticae, of which he printed a few copies for private circulation only, gave great offence as a sort of liturgie service made up of passages from heathen authors, in imitation of the Church of England liturgy. The title also was in those days alarming, and still more so the mystery which the author threw round the question how far such societies of pantheists actually existed. Poor Toland had been outlawed by the churches of his day, and took a most imprudent delight in alarming and mystifying his persecutors. This and all his later works must be read from the point of view first suggested by Herder: “Who can refuse to see in Toland the man of wide reading and of clear intellect, and the earnest inquirer, although, as embittered by persecutions, with every fresh book he dipped his pen in a more biting acid?”
See Mosheim’s Vindici ae Antiquae Christianorum Disciplinae, 1st ed., 1720, 2d ed., 1722 (the life of Toland prefixed to the 2d edition of this essay gives still the best and most learned account we have of his life and writings); “Memoirs of the Life and writings of Mr John Toland,” by Des Maizeaux, prefixed to The Miscellaneous Works of Mr John Toland, in 2 vols., London, 1747; Leland’s View of the Principal Deistical Writers; Herder's Adrastea; Lechler ’ s Geschichte des englischen Deismus ; Isaac Disraeli’s Calamities of Authors; Theological Review, November 1864; Hunt's article in Contemporary Review, vol. viii., and his Religious Thought in England; Leslie Stephen’s History of English Thought in Eighteenth Century ; Cairns’s Cunningham Lectures for 1880. 0η Toland's relation to the subsequent Tübingen school, as presented in his Nazarenus, see Theological Review, Get., 1877; and on his relation to materialism, F. A. Lange's Geschichte des Materialismus.
[1,885 words — estimated reading time: 11 minutes]
TOLEDO, a province of Spain, in New Castile, is bounded on the N. by Avila and Madrid, on the E. by Cuenca, on the S. by Ciudad Real, and on the W. by Cáceres, and has an area of 5620 square miles. The surface is throughout lofty, and in a great part of its extent mountainous. Towards the centre, indeed, there are extensive plains or tablelands, but the whole of the south and east is occupied by the Montes de Toledo, which separate the waters of the Tagus on the north from those of the Guadiana on the south. These mountains are of no great height; and they were once densely covered with forests, which have now been almost entirely cut down, although there are still woods and groves of considerable extent on their lower slopes. Branches of this chain enclose the province on the east and west, and part of the range that stretches north of the Tagus approaches its north-western frontier. Toledo is well watered by the Tagus and its affluents,—the Tajuna, Jarama, Guadarrama, Alberche, and Tietar on the north, and the Algodor, Torcon, Pusa, Sangrera, and Cedron on the south. The Guadiana forms for a short distance the south-western frontier, and its tributary the Giguela waters the eastern part of the province. The country is rich in minerals, as yet almost entirely unworked, containing veins of gold, silver, lead, iron, quicksilver, copper, and tin. Coal, alum, cinnabar, &c., are also found. The soil produces com, pulse, potatoes, oil, wine, flax, oranges, lemons, chestnuts, and melons in fair abundance, but the trade in agricultural products is almost confined to the province itself. The number of sheep and goats is few, of horses and mules still less; while the only oxen are those used in agriculture. Bees and silkworms are kept in considerable number. Manufactures once ...flourished, but are now in a very low state,—silk and woollen cloth, earthenware, soap, oil, chocolates, wine, rough spirit {aguardiente), guitar strings, and arms being almost the only > articles made. The province is traversed by three lines of railway,— that of Madrid Seville-Cadiz in the east, Madrid-Toledo-Ciudad Real through the centre, and Madrid-Cáceres-Lisbon in the north. There are 12 partidos judiciales and 206 ayuntamientos; and three senators with eight deputies are returned to the cortes. The total population in 1885 was 332,000; the only towns with a population exceeding 10,000 are Toledo (20,251) and Talavera de la Reina (11,986). Some of the most brilliant fighting of the Peninsular War took place in Toledo and the neighbouring province of Cáceres, the battle of Talavera de la Reina being fought on the 27th and 28th of July 1809.
TOLEDO, the capital of the above province, and once of the whole of Spain, stands upon a circle of seven hills, 2400 feet above the sea, and washed on three sides by the Tagus. It is 37 miles west-south-west of Madrid. The river is spanned by two fine stone bridges,—the Alcántara, a Moorish bridge of a single arch, giving entrance to the city from the east, and the other, that of San Martin, from the west, while between them the river makes a sweep southwards. The place is enclosed on the land side by two walls, still in fairly perfect condition,—the inner one being built by King Wamba in the 7th century, the outer by Alfonso VI. in 1109. The gates are numerous and well preserved, the most noteworthy being the famous Puerta del So], the Puerta Visagra, and the Cambron. Some Roman remains (a circus, &c.) lie without the walls, on the plain to the north-west. The appearance of Toledo from a distance is imposing in the extreme, from its noble situation and the terraced lines of its buildings; but upon a nearer approach it reveals itself as dull and decayed enough, with little or no traffic in the streets, and a strange silence brooding over all its ways. The houses are large, massive, and gloomy, generally Moorish in style, of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, with a great central patio (courtyard), and yielding abundant traces of Arabic decoration. The principal public square is the Zocodover. It forms the favourite promenade, and from it the one fairly wide street of the city leads to the cathedral. The latter is the glory of Toledo, and one of the finest monuments of art in Spain. Built upon the site of an ancient mosque, and commenced in 1227, it was completed in 1492; and, though sacked over and over again,—finally by the French under La Houssaye in 1808,—it is still, with the exception, perhaps, of the cathedral of Seville, the richest and most magnificent foundation in the Peninsula. The exterior is unfortunately hidden to a great extent by mean surrounding buildings, but the fine western façade, with its two towers, one rising 325 feet, is effective. The interior is somewhat dwarfed in appearance by the immense width. It is 404 feet long by 204 feet broad, and is divided by 84 pillars into five naves, with central lantern and choir, and a complete series of side chapels. Most of these - latter are late additions, of the 15th and 16th centuries, and are very magnificent in detail. The 16th-century stained-glass windows, chiefly of Flemish work, are superb; and the treasury, reliquaries, and library, notwithstanding their repeated despoilings, are not unworthy of the see which styles itself the “first of all the Spains.” In the Muzarabic chapel the ritual known by that name is still performed daily. Within the precincts of the cathedral are interred the archbishops and cardinals Tenorio, Fonseca, Mendoza, Ximenez, the great constable Alvaro de Luna, and a long array of kings and heroes. The archbishop is primate of Spain, and has for suffragans Coria, Cuenca, Siguenza, and Palencia. Besides the cathedral Toledo still possesses a great number of fine churches and other religious buildings, together with numerous Moorish and Jewish monuments. The most important church is the 15th-century florid Gothic San Juan de los Reyes, built by Ferdinand and Isabella. The best Moorish work is to be found in the old J ewish synagogues of Santa Maria la Blanca and El Tránsito, in the mosques of Cristo de la Luz and Las Tornerias, in some private houses, and in the later churches of San Roman, Santo Tomé, Santiago, and Santa Leocadia. The patio and staircase of the hospital of Santa Cruz present some of the finest Renaissance work extant. Seen from afar, the Alcazar, or royal palace, is one of the most conspicuous features of the city. It stands upon a commanding position overlooking the Tagus, and was originally built by King Wamba, but has been repeatedly altered and pulled about. It was almost entirely rebuilt by Charles V. and Philip IL, under the architects Covarrubias and Herrera, and has lately been converted into a huge military academy. The city is provided with numerous elementary schools, a public library, museum, town-hall, and several large hospitals. The well-known manufactory of swords is about a mile to the north-west, beyond the Cambron gate. It is in excellent order, and produces blades as perfect as ever, but is no longer of great importance, employing only about 120 hands.
Toledo existed in the time of the Romans, who conquered it in 193 B.C. They strengthened the fortifications, and built an aqueduct to supply the place with water. By the Goths, who captured the city in 467 a.d., these works were kept up and improved; and, under the Moorish domination, from 714 to 1085, Toledo was second only to Cordova in rank and importance, with a population of 200,000 souls. Alfonso VI. of Castile and Leon recovered the stronghold in 1085; and under him and his successors it continued to flourish until the permanent establishment of the court at Madrid gave a deathblow to its prosperity. The population now is no more than 20,000.
TOLEDO, a city of the United States, the county seat of Lucas county, Ohio, is situated in 41° 40' N. lat. and 83° 33' W. long., chiefly upon a peninsula between the Maumee on the south and the Ottawa upon the north, just above their points of discharge into Maumee Bay, and 5 miles from Lake Erie. A small part of it, formerly known as Maumee City, lies south of the Maumee. Toledo includes an area of 21 ’ 5 square miles within its corporate limits. The bay and river form an excellent harbour and roadstead. The harbour is easily made and is well sheltered, and the bottom affords good holding ground. Besides being open to the navigation of the Great Lakes, Toledo is the terminus of the Miami and Erie Canal, connecting it with Cincinnati (184 miles distant). Seventeen railroad lines enter it, making it one of the principal railroad centres of the country. The site of Toledo and the surrounding country are very level, and only slightly elevated above Lake Erie. The soil is very productive, and is highly cultivated, being largely devoted to market gardening. There are three public parks, having a total area of 41 acres. The city is well sewered. Water is obtained by pumping. The city, which is divided into eight wards, had in 1880 a population of 50,137. The number is probably now (1887) not far from 65,000. In 1840, 1850, 1860, and 1870 respectively the population was returned at 1224, 3829, 13,768, and 31,584.
Besides its large commercial interests, as one of the principal ports upon the Great Lakes, and its importance as one of the leading railroad centres of the country, Toledo holds high rank as a manufacturing city. The capital invested in this class of industries in 1880 exceeded $5,500,000, and the products were valued at double this sum. They employed nearly 7000 persons, and paid in wages over two and a quarter millions of dollars. These industries are very varied in character, but consist largely in lumber manufactures, brewing, and iron and steel manufactures.
The first settlement within what are now the corporate limits of Toledo was made, shortly after the war of 1812, upon the south bank of the Maumee. North of the river no settlements were attempted until 1832, when the villages of Port Lawrence and Vistula were commenced in what is now the heart of the city. In the following year they were united under the present name. The city was incorporated in 1837. In 1852 it was made the county seat, and in 1874 its corporate limits were considerably enlarged.
[459 words — estimated reading time: 3 minutes]
