Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers: Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With The Freethinkers."Bradlaugh, Charles
Religion
Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers: Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With The Freethinkers."
Bradlaugh, Charles
Rationalists -- Biography
The following is a catalogue of the works of Toland, which have never
yet been published, and the works in which they are mentioned:--
1. The History of Socrates (in the Life of Harrington.)
2. Systems of Divinity Exploded. An Epistolary Dissertation.
(Christianity not Mysterious.)
3. The History of the Canon of the New Testament. (Nazarenus.)
4. Repubiica Mosaica. (Nazarenus.)
5. A Treatise Concerning Tradition. (Tetradymus.)
There were several other works, part of them written, which passed into
the hands of Lord Molesworth (we believe,) part of which were published
(the "History of the Druid" and also "Giordano Bruno;") but whether
they exist at the present time or not, we are unable to say.
There is also great difficulty in deciding as to the manner of Toland's
life; of this, however, we are certain, that he caused great opposition
in his own day, and he was patronised by able man. He edited an edition
of Lord Shaftesbury's Letters, and published a work of that noble Lord's
surreptitiously; he mingled amongst the German Courts, and appeared
on terms of equality with the _elite_ of the philosophers and the
aristocracy. The brief memoir prefaced to one of his works is an
epistolary document addressed to a noble Lord. His acquaintance with
Locke, Shaftesbury, Collins, Molesworth, and Molyneux, must have
proceed-. ed from other causes than his genius, or why was Toland
exalted when Mandeville, Chubb, and the brave Woolston are never so much
as alluded to? We consider that there is a strong probability that
he was wealthy--or at least possessed of a moderate competence. His
abilities were of a curious order. He seemed to be one of a school which
rose about his time to advocate Freethought, but shackled by a
dogma. His collegiate education gave him an early liking for the dead
languages, and he carried out the notion of the ancients, that the
exoteric or esoteric methods were still in force. From a careful
perusal of the works of the "Fathers," and the contemporary books of the
heathens, he fancied that all the superstitions in the world differed
but in degree--that religion was but the organic cause of superstition,
the arguments made for it by the philosophers to propitiate the vulgar.
This idea (in the main) was agreed to by Woolston, although his violent
"Discourses," which were addressed to the unlearned, contained within
them the germ of their intrinsic popularity. Yet even Woolston's works,
notwithstanding their bluff exterior, had something more within them
than what the people could appreciate, or even the present race of
Freethinkers can always understand; for underneath that unrivalled
vein of sarcasm, there was in every instance an esoteric view, which
comprehended the meaning by which the earlier Christians understood
the gospels, and rendered them on the same scale as the works of the
ancients. The renowned William Whiston was another who interpreted
Scripture in a similar manner. All those writers would have been
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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