Il rapporto tra religione naturale e religione civile nel pensiero di John Toland

John Toland’s reflection upon religion is twofold. As a deist, his interest was in determining the tenets of natural religion ; as a republican thinker, he argued for the necessity of an established form of religion. In spite of this apparent contradiction, it is possible to trace the link between these two kinds of religion taking into consideration the aims Toland assigned them, namely virtue. The article explores Toland’s natural religion, distinguishing its axiological side (which determines its features) from the historical one (which makes its comparison with the other religions possible). Then, it deals with the three religion – Paganism, Hebraism, and Christianity – Toland comprised in a historical cycle he sketched in the Parallèle. The analysis of the different ways religion and politics interact on each other allow to draw a taxonomy of the different kinds of civic religion it is possible to find in Toland’s reflection, although only one of them he considered suitable.