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John Toland war ein irischer Freidenker der Aufklärung.

Als Sohn katholischer Eltern konvertierte Toland 1687 zum Protestantismus. Er studierte in Glasgow, Edinburgh und Leiden Theologie und Philosophie. 1696 veröffentlichte der frühe Aufklärer seine Schrift Christianity not Mysterious, in der er im Anschluss an John Locke darlegte, dass das Christentum mit menschlicher Vernunft zu erfassen sei. Das Werk wurde 1697 in Dublin öffentlich verbrannt. Sein Autor flüchtete nach London. Dort veröffentlichte er 1699 eine Gesamtausgabe einschließlich einer Biografie des bekannten, aber ebenfalls umstrittenen Dichters John Milton, was wiederum auf Anfeindungen stieß. Dagegen wehrte er sich mit seiner Schrift Amyntor.

1701 bereiste er die deutschen Länder, traf Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover und Königin Sophie Charlotte von Preußen, denen er sich sehr verbunden fühlte. An Sophie von Preußen waren seine Letters to Serena 1704 gerichtet. Die Welt sieht er nun als göttlich an, den Glauben an eine individuelle Unsterblichkeit lehnt er ab. Damit vertrat er pantheistische Ideen. 1709 bereiste er abermals Deutschland und Holland und veröffentlichte Adeisidaemon. Sehr viel später folgte Nazarenus, or jewish, gentile and mohametan christianity und schließlich zwei Jahre später das Werk Pantheisticon. Wikipedia  

✵ 30. November 1670 – 11. März 1722
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John Toland: Zitate auf Englisch

“I hold nothing as an article of my Religion, but what the highest evidence forced me to embrace.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

“That the sacred name of religion which sounds nothing but sanctity, peace and integrity should be so universally abused to patronize ambition, impiety and contention! And that what is our highest interest perfectly to understand, should (for reasons afterward to be laid open) both be maintained to be obscure, and very industriously made so!”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

“If we make a just computation, and take in the primitive martyrs with the Prophets and Apostles themselves, the professed defenders of Truth, only for Truth's sake, will be found to be a small handful with respect to the numerous partisans of error.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

“Since Religion is calculated for reasonable Creatures, 'tis Conviction and not Authority that should bear Weight with them.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

“Revelation was not a necessitating motive of assent, but a means of information. We should not confound the way whereby we come to the knowledge of a thing with the grounds we have to believe it.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Section II: That the Doctrines of the Gospel are not contrary to Reason, Chapter 2

“Such is the deplorable condition of our age, that a man dares not openly and directly own what he thinks of divine matters, though it be never so true and beneficial, if it but very slightly differs from what is received by any party, or that is established by law.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

“I hope to make it appear, that the use of reason in religion is not so dangerous as commonly represented.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

“As for acquiescing in what a man understands not, or cannot reconcile to his reason, they know best the fruits of it that practice it. For my part, I'm a stranger to it, and cannot reconcile myself to such a principle. On the contrary, I am pretty sure he pretends in vain to convince the judgment, who explains not the nature of the thing. A man may give his verbal assent to he knows not what, out of fear, superstition, indifference, interest, and the like feeble and unfair motives: but as long as he conceives not what he believes, he cannot sincerely acquiesce in it, and remains deprived of all solid satisfaction. … But he that comprehends a thing, is as sure of it as if he were himself the author.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Section II: That the Doctrines of the Gospel are not contrary to Reason, Chapter 1

“They are not the articles of the East or West, Orthodox or Arian, Protestant or Papist, considered as such, that I trouble myself about, but those of Jesus Christ and his Apostles.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

“Nay, it has come to this, that Truth meets no where with stronger opposition, than from many of those that raise the loudest cry about it, and would be taken for no less than the only dispensers of the favors and oracles of Heaven. If any has the firmness to touch the minutest thing that brings them Gain or Credit, he's presently pursued with the hue and cry of Heresy.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

“Not only a few men, but oftentimes whole societies, whilst they consider things but very superficially, set such a value upon certain sounds, as if they were the real essence of all religion. … And yet, as I hinted now, they either signify nothing, or have been invented by some leading men to make plain things obscure.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

“The best method, I think, of communicating to others the Truth, is that by which a Man has learnt it himself.”

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John Toland buch Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

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