John Toland was an English deist, philosopher, diplomat, political controversialist, secular and biblical scholar, and linguist. Christened "Janus Junius" in the Roman Catholic Church, Toland later took the name of John. He was born near Londonderry, Ireland, possibly of partial French extraction. At the age of sixteen he ran away from school to become a Protestant Whig. In 1687 he turned up at Glasgow University and in 1690 was awarded an MA at Edinburgh University. For two years he studied at the University of Leiden under Friedrich Spanheim the younger, and in 1694 he settled at Oxford for some time to carry on research in the Bodleian Library. "The Character you bear in Oxford," he was informed by a correspondent, "is this; that you are a man of fine parts, great learning, and little religion."

The stream of books and pamphlets, mostly anonymous or pseudonymous, that followed...