Hi Eric, I don't know where this fits with TLP as earlier advocates understood it, but for More the spirits and the bodies are at least both extended, which gives them some likeness. Indeed I suppose mind-body 'likeness' in More's system is the sort of thing that leads to the notion of More as 'materialistic' (I'm thinking of Henry's discussion, http://www.jstor.org/stable/751295). Also, on 'Platonizing' and mind-body sympathy, I notice the first example in the OED entry on 'sympathy': "[1579 J. Jones Arte preseruing Bodie & Soule Ep. Ded. sig. Aivv, Plato also testifieth suche a Sympathia to be betweene the bodye and the soule, that if either exceede the meane, the one suffereth with the other.]" Stewart

It seems a shame to object to such a nice connection. But leaving aside some of the ways in which this is speculative, Toland and Smith seem to me to be talking about two different loves. Smith is concerned with the desire to "perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system". Meanwhile, the person Toland discusses in LTS 4.6 feels the love of some particular system because it is their own invention, not because it is beautifully structured. True, in both cases there's a love that gets in the way of a better goal, but that sort of explanation is far more broadly shared.

Toland is fascinating, but I'm curious whether you think he was doing something distinctive for the time. For instance, talk about "how the versions of the doctrine most familiar to us are promoted by Greek poets, priests, and philosophers as well as politicians prying on fearful and credulous people" is quite similar to things Hobbes says about various religious and philosophical view. (Maybe I'm really I'm curious about where you might draw the line between genealogy and other sorts of historical explanations.)