 Higgins was a follower of John Toland; although Toland had lived in an era when "deism" and "theism" were interchangeable, Higgins wrote during the 1820s and 1830s, a period several generations later when deism was popular and became distinct from theism.When coining "Pandeism", Higgins showed his awareness of the similarity between Pandeism and pantheism by directly contrasting his Pandeism with Toland's pantheism