ysteries. 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."

Toland was only twenty-six when he published his first book, but,
to judge from the correspondence between Locke and Molyneux, he
was vain and indiscreet. "He has raised against him," says the
latter from Dublin (May 27th, 1697), "the clamours of all
parties; and this not so much by his difference in opinion as by
his unseasonable way of discoursing, propagating, and maintaining
it." Again (September 11th, 1697): "Mr. T. is at last driven out
of the kingdom; the poor gentleman, by his imprudent management,
had raised such an universal outcry that it was even dangerous
for a man to have been known once to converse with him. This made
all men wary of reputation decline seeing him; insomuch that at
last he wanted a meal's meat (as I am told), and none would admit
him to their tables. The little stock of money which he brought
into the country being exhausted, he fell to borrowing from any
one that would lend him half-a-crown, and ran in debt for his
wigs, clothes, and lodging." Then when the Parliament ordered him
to be taken into custody, and to be prosecuted, he very wisely
fled the country, suffering only a temporary rebuff, and writing
many other books, political and religious, none of which ever
attained the distinction of his first.

But it was in the struggle between the Church and Dissent that
the party-spirit of Queen Anne's reign chiefly manifested itself
in the burning of books. No one fought for the cause of Dissent
with greater energy or greater