As Andrew Lang (1887)[113] points out, in the sixth century B.C. Xenophanes complained that the gods were credited with the worst crimes, and other classical writers were shocked at the contradictions between the conception and ritual worship of the same god. In ancient Egypt the priests strove to shift the burden of absurdity and sacrilege from their own deities. It taxed the ingenuity of pious Brahmans to explain the myths which made Indra the slayer of a Brahman. Euhemerus (316 B.C.), in his philosophical romance, _Sacra Historica_, in rationalising the fables about the gods was regarded as an atheist. Certain writers like Plutarch (60 A.D.) and Porphyry (270 A.D.) made the ancient deities types of their own favourite doctrines, whatever these might happen to be. The early Christians had a good case against the heathen. Eusebius, in the _Præparatio Evangelica_, anticipating Andrew Lang himself, “ridiculed, with a good deal of humour, the old theories which resolved so many mythical heroes into the sun” (p. 20). “The physical interpreters,” said Eusebius, “do not even agree in their physical interpretations.” The light of the anthropological method had dawned on Eusebius. Many centuries later Spencer, Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (1630-93), had no other scheme in his mind in his erudite work on Hebrew ritual,[114] which he considered was but an expurgated adaptation of heathen customs. Fontenelle[115] explained the irrational element in myth as inherited from savagery. Footnote 113: 1899 ed., pp. 6, 7. Footnote 114: _De Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus_, 1732. Footnote 115: _De l’Origine des Fables: Œuvres_, Vol. III., 1758. The revival of learning made scholars acquainted with the religions not only of Greece and Rome, but of the nations with whom the Greeks and Romans had come in contact—Egyptians, Semites, Persians, and Indians. Travellers gave accounts of the religions they found in remote parts of the world, and missionaries reported on beliefs and customs of many nations. These were the sources from which were compiled the comprehensive works on religion, from Alexander Ross, _View of All the Religions in the World_, etc., 1652, to Dupuis, _Origine de tous les cultes ou Religion Universelle_, 1794. All heathen religions were believed to be based on sun and star worship. New vistas were opened up by the writings of De Brosses (1760), who investigated the beliefs of savage races and based all religion on “Fetishism.”