  While Spinoza’s views on right and law were generally met with contempt, his views on the freedom to philosophize [libertas philosophandi] provoked a more balanced reaction. The doctrine had its critics (see e.g., Israel 2010, 81–2), but it also had its admirers, perhaps including some of the most prominent early-modern tolerationists. Bayle, Locke, and Toland, for instance, were familiar with Spinoza’s defense and likely found some inspiration in it, even while they denied deep acquaintance (Locke) or situated themselves as critics (Bayle and Toland). Toland’s use in Pantheisticon of the same epigram from the opening of Tacitus’ Histories—“rare are the happy times when we may think what we wish and say what we think [rara temporum felicitas ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet]”– that Spinoza draws from in the title of TTP, Ch. 20 indicates an affinity between the two thinkers on matters of freedom of speech and thought (for more on the use of this epigram in the 17th and 18th centuries, see Paul Russell 2010, Ch. 7),