The early eighteenth-century Deist scholar John Toland used the murder of Hypatia as the basis for the anti-Catholic tract, Hypatia: Or the History of a most beautiful, most vertuous, most learned, and every way accomplish'd Lady; who was torn to pieces by the Clergy of Alexandria, to gratify the pride, emulation, and cruelty of their Archbishop, commonly, but undeservedly, stil'd St. Cyril. In order to portray Hypatia's death in the worst possible light, Toland changed the story and invented elements not found in any of the ancient sources. In 1721, Thomas Lewis wrote a response defending Cyril entitled The History of Hypatia, a most Impudent School-Mistress of Alexandria: Murder'd and torn to Pieces by the Populace, in Defence of Saint Cyril and the Alexandrian Clergy from the Aspersions of Mr. Toland. Lewis rejected Damascius's account as unreliable out of hand on account of the fact that its author was "a heathen" and then proceeded to argue that Socrates Scholasticus was "a Puritan", who was consistently biased against Cyril.