For Parliament thus to constitute itself Defender of the Faith was not merely to trespass on the office of the Crown, but to sin against the more sacred right of common sense itself. We cannot be surprised, therefore, since the English Parliament sinned in this way (as it does to this day in a minor degree), that the Irish Parliament should have sinned equally, as it did about the same time, in the case of a book whose title far more suggested heresy than its contents substantiated it. I refer to Toland's _Christianity not Mysterious_ (1696), which was burnt by the hangman before the Parliament House Gate at Dublin, and in the open street before the Town-House, by order of the Committee of Religion of the Irish House of Commons, one member even going so far as to advocate the burning of Toland himself. It is difficult now to understand the extreme excitement caused by Toland's book, seeing that it was evidently written in the interests of Christianity, and would now be read without emotion by the most orthodox. It was only the superstructure, not the foundation, that Toland attacked; his whole contention being that Christianity, rightly understood, contained nothing mysterious or inconsistent with reason, but that all ideas of this sort, and most of its rites, had been aftergrowths, borrowed from Paganism, in that compromise between the new and old religion which constituted the world's Christianisation.[150:1] Although this fact is now generally admitted, Toland puts the case so well that it is best to give his own words:-- "The Christians," he says, "were careful to remove all obstacles lying in the way of the Gentiles. They thought the most effectual way of gaining them over to their side was by compounding the matter, which led them to unwarrantable compliances, till at length they likewise set up for mysteries. Yet not having the least precedent for any ceremonies from the Gospel, excepting Baptism and the Supper, they strangely disguised and transformed these by adding to them the pagan mystic rites. They administered them with the strictest secrecy; and to be inferior to their adversaries in no circumstance, they permitted none to assist at them but such as were antecedently prepared or initiated." The parallel Toland proceeds to draw is extremely instructive, and could only be improved on in our own day by tracing both Pagan and Christian rites to their antecedent origins in India. What he says also of the Fathers would be nowadays assented to by all who have ever had the curiosity to look into their writings; namely, "that they were as injudicious, violent, and factious as other men; that they were, for the greatest part, very credulous and superstitious in religion, as well as pitifully ignorant and superficial in the minutest punctilios of literature."