Cet article traite de la sincérité de la foi chrétienne publique de John Toland (1670-1722) et la confronte à ses croyances privées peu orthodoxes : le public et le privé dans la pensée de Toland sont séparés depuis trop longtemps. L'une des conséquences de cette reconstruction des idées religieuses de Toland sera de suggérer que ses opinions religieuses (publiques ou privées) étaient intimement liées à un programme politique. La plupart des études historiques le concernant se sont penchées principalement sur les (...) aspects critiques de son attaque contre les intrigues sacerdotales du « papisme protestant » mais très peu de recherches ont été engagées sur l'idée de Toland comme « réformateur chrétien ». En explorant la définition précise que Toland donne du panthéisme et en la reliant à ses doctrines néostoïciennes sur la politique de la cité, le présent article propose une révision de la réflexion actuelle sur la signification de la vie publique de la foi chrétienne dans la polémique de la libre pensée. (shrink)

In late October 1688 John Locke wrote, as part of a continuing and lengthy correspondence, to his friend the French biblical critic, Nicholas Toinard. Replying to enquiries about Richard Simon’s recent work the Histoire Critique he noted, “as soon as I get hold of this new critique I shall read it through carefully to see what it is made of, though the columnar book that I should compare it with is not here. That book is carefully put away: for it (...) is the one out of all I possess that I am most anxious to preserve safe and sound.” The other book Locke was concerned to preserve was a critical harmony of the Scripture, possibly written by Toinard himself. His intention was to cross reference Simon’s philological criticisms of Scripture with the scholarly edition to verify the claims of the Frenchman’s scholarship. This process of reading shaped Locke’s convictions about religious truth. Even a casual trawl through Locke’s private letters would throw up many more examples of similar exchanges with learned men concerning the accuracy and authenticity of received Scripture. It is this picture of John Locke poring over the text of the New Testament and comparing the most up to date works of biblical criticism with the private critical researches of friends like Toinard, Le Clerc, and Newton, that should frame this contribution. Biblical criticism was an ambivalent enterprise, easily degenerating from piety to desecration. (shrink)

Este artículo explora el contexto intelectual y las fuentes eruditas de un manuscrito clandestino, que ha pasado inadvertido hasta la fecha, que en 1701 pertenecía a Charles Hornby y que incluía una versión de la obra polémica de Henry Stubbe Account of the rise and progress of Mahometanism, además de una traducción de los siete primeros capítulos de la obra en castellano de Muḥammmad Alguazir Apología contra la ley Cristiana. El artículo propone examinar cómo las polémicas islámicas anticristianas fueron encontradas, (...) utilizadas y cuestionadas, tanto por personajes librepensadores, como Stubbe y Toland, como por los estudiosos más ortodoxos. Para tal fin establece los distintos hábitos en la citación y utilización de la erudición “orientalista” que se emplearon entre 1650 y 1720, prestando especial atención a las grandes obras de Hotttinger y Pococke. El artículo argumenta que los librepensadores fueron perfectamente capaces de apropiarse de aspectos tanto de la erudición cristiana como de la teología islámica para sus fines antireligiosos. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 (2002) 545-546 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th Century Scotland Michael Hunter, editor. The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th Century Scotland. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2001. Pp. vii + 247. Cloth, $90.00. This is a superb collection of original materials (including a range of private correspondence, (...) scribal works, and printed texts) related to the "strange reports" of incidence of "second sight" in Scotland from the 1680s to the 1700s. The material includes literary exchanges between powerful figures in the Anglo-Scottish intellectual community like Robert Boyle, John Aubrey, Robert Kirk, John Frazer, and Samuel Pepys. All of these texts are edited with immaculate care and informative annotation. The lengthy introduction provides both intellectual context and a detailed bibliographical account. Collectively the texts reproduced here provide a comprehensive resource for the examination of attitudes to magic and the supernatural in the late seventeenth century. From these texts one can reconstruct the battle between "orthodox" Anglican defenders of a "spirit world" and the sceptical assault on its authenticity. This was a war of ideas with the victors hoping to fix the meaning and nature of second sight as either supportive or corrosive of the established ecclesiastical institutions. Was this phenomena an established "matter of fact" which proved the routines of nature and also the paranormal intervention of God? Or was it, as some sceptics argued, evidence of priestly fraud and manipulation? The debates over the meaning and significance of these transgressions of the ordinary course of nature vacillated between treating them as acts of God or the Devil, as manifest frauds or ignorant misunderstandings. As Michael Hunter argues in his introduction, men like Boyle focussed upon the issue of second sight because it was a less exotic and less controversial phenomenon than the more culturally unstable manifestations of witchcraft. Fundamental to the orthodox cultural project was the creation of an empirically robust form of knowledge that combined folklore, antiquarian erudition, and biblical exegesis to establish the reality and boundaries of the natural and the divine.Although Hunter establishes the "origins" of the interest as an intellectual spin off from Boyle's project for the "Protestantisation" of the Highlands, the core text reproduced here is Robert Kirk's The Secret Commonwealth. Kirk, educated in Edinburgh and St. Andrews, was minister of Aberfoyle and worked with Boyle on his Gaelic Bible after 1684. This scriptural labor brought him to London in the late 1680s and into an elite Anglican circle that included Edward Stillingfleet. The text edited here is based on the earliest surviving manuscript of the early 1690s which was compiled from earlier notes. It is clear that the work was circulated in the period only in scribal form: a partial version was first printed in 1815 and a complete text in 1964. As Hunter establishes by examining Kirk's overlooked student notebooks from the 1660s and 1670s, it is possible to reconstruct the eclectic intellectual culture that formed the background to the work—here Aristotelian texts mingled with more modern authors like Campanella and Descartes. These notebooks not only record Kirk's pastoral concerns and the spiritual health of his flock, they also register a range of more exotic interests in folkish charms and the various operations and manifestations of the "invisible powers." The discovery of a "kingdom of fairies," which was apparently comprehensible to certain individuals with second sight, was ideal material upon which Kirk was able to synchronize the findings of Holy Scripture and modern natural philosophy.As Hunter's elegant and effective introduction outlines, men like Kirk, Frazer, and later Martin Martin, deliberately mimicking the epistemological strategies of the London-based Royal Society, aimed to display matters of fact as a dispassionate means of responding to the cultural assault of the sceptical wits who dismissed stories of the "lychnobious" world as [End Page 545] idle fantasy or deliberate fraud. Although this work was learned, serious, and erudite, and in the... (shrink)

This book explores the life, thought and political commitments of the free-thinker John Toland (1670-1722). Studying both his private archive and published works, it illustrates how Toland moved in both subversive and elite political circles in England and abroad. It explores the connections between his republican political thought and his irreligious belief about Christian doctrine, the ecclesiastical establishment and divine revelation, arguing that far from being a marginal and insignificant figure, Toland counted queens, princes and government ministers as his friends (...) and political associates. In particular his intimate relationship with the Electress Sophia of Hanover saw him act as a court philosopher, but also as a powerful publicist for the Hanoverian succession. Overall the book illustrates how Toland's ideas and influence impacted upon English political life between the 1690s and the 1720s. (shrink)

(2000). 'Religion's Safe, with Priestcraft is the War': Augustan Anticlericalism and the Legacy of the English Revolution, 1660-1720. The European Legacy: Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 547-561.

Justin Champion - The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th Century Scotland - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 545-546 Book Review The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th Century Scotland Michael Hunter, editor. The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th Century Scotland. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2001. Pp. vii + 247. Cloth, $90.00. This is a superb collection of original (...) materials related to the "strange reports" of incidence of "second sight" in Scotland from the 1680s to the 1700s. The material includes literary exchanges between powerful figures in the Anglo-Scottish intellectual community. (shrink)

This paper investigates the later seventeenth reception of Grotius De Veritate , contextualising the presentation of editions with the various theological attempts to identify and defend a ‘reasonable’ religion. In particular it focuses on the intellectual relationships between the projects for a ‘non-mysterious’ Christianity advanced by John Toland, and the more sincere ambitions of the most learned editor of Grotius in the eighteenth century, Jean Leclerc. The major themes context the theological arguments and reception to changing conceptions of the power (...) and function of the established Church. (shrink)