d it was dangerous to
be seen conversing with him. A jury who confessed they could not
comprehend a page of his book, condemned it to be burned. Toland now
felt a tenderness for his person; and the humane Molyneux, the friend
of Locke, while he censures the imprudent vanity of our author, gladly
witnessed the flight of "the poor gentleman." But South, indignant at
our English moderation in his own controversy with Sherlock on some
doctrinal points of the Trinity, congratulates the Archbishop of
Dublin on the Irish persecution; and equally witty and intolerant, he
writes on Toland, "Your Parliament presently sent him packing, and
without the help of a _fagot_, soon made the kingdom _too hot_ for
him."

Toland was accused of an intention to found a sect, as South
calls them, of "Mahometan-Christians." Many were stigmatised as
_Tolandists_; but the disciples of a man who never procured for
their prophet a bit of dinner or a new wig, for he was frequently
wanting both, were not to be feared as enthusiasts. The persecution
from the church only rankled in the breast of Toland, and excited
unextinguishable revenge.

He now breathed awhile from the bonfire of theology; and our _Janus_
turned his political face. He edited Milton's voluminous politics, and
Harrington's fantastical "Oceana," and, as his "Christianity not
Mysterious" had stamped his religion with something worse than heresy,
so in politics he was branded as a Commonwealth's-man. Toland had
evidently strong nerves; for him opposition produced controversy,
which he loved, and controversy produced books, by which he lived.

But let it not be imagined that Toland affected to be considered as no
Christian, or avowed himself as a Republican. "Civil and religious
toleration" (he says) "have been the two main objects of all my
writings." He declares himself to be only a primitive Christian, and a
pure Whig. But an author must not be permitted to understand himself
so much more clearly than he has enabled his readers to do. His
mysterious conduct may be detected in his want of moral integrity.

He had the art of explaining away his own words, as in his first
controversy about the word _mystery_ in religion, and he exults in his
artifice; for, in a letter, where he is soliciting the minister for
employment, he says:--"The church is much exasperated against me; yet
as that is the heaviest article, so it is undoubtedly the easiest
conquered, and I know _the infallible met