YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

THE EMPEROR JULIAN.

THE EMPEROK, JULIAN

HIS GENEEATION.

AN HISTORICAL PICTURE,

AUGUSTUS NEANDER, D. D.,
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN.

TRANSLATED BY
G. V. COX, M. A.,
ESQUIRE BEDELL IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

"AvSrpe-iros iravr&iropos H-iropas. — Sophoc.
"Si> Si fraptrev, tlrel ^eiov yevhs iarl Pp6rourt.

NEW-YORK:
J. C. RIKER, 129 FULTON-STREET.
1850.

G-N-d ¦39-3- Yr-.

~ftj

CONTENTS.

SECTION I.
Christianity in relation to the Age in which it first appeared
and was propagated,  17
SECTION II.
Julian's Education and the Formation of his Character, till his
elevation to the Imperial Throne,  71
SECTION III.
Julian's View of Religion and Philosophy in general; his
View of Christianity resulting therefrom ; and the means
by which he endeavored, as Emperor, to realize his Reli
gious Ideas  93
SECTION IV.
The Condition of the Christian Church at the time of the
Emperor Julian, and the treatment it received at his hands, 134
Appendix,  • • • 165

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The history of Julian, at all times striking, has been
lately brought into revived notice. Public attention
has been invited to his name in more than one recent
publication. Strauss has made use of Julian's charac
ter as a vehicle for an elaborate jeu-d'esprit against
the King of Prussia. (See the Edinburgh Review for
July, 1848.) And Macaulay, in his History of Eng
land, vol. ii. p. 104, has given us an earlier specimen
of that sort of wit, in a learned parallel between Julian
and James II., by a priest of the Church of England
' named Johnson.
It cannot then, be unseasonable to present to the
public, in an English dress, Dr. Neander's monograph,
which was first recommended to my notice by Nie-
buhr's praise. (See his Correspondence, vol. ii. p.
161.) This little work was published as long ago as 1812,
and much of it has since been incorporated in Nean
der's General History of the Christian Religion and
Church. The reader will see for himself that though
the writer does justice to the ambitious grandeur of

Vlll TRANSLATOR S PREFACE.
Julian's enterprise (to restore the Old Worship), he
does not praise it, but rather accounts for its short
lived success from the character of the age as well as
the qualities of the man. He may write con amore of
the hero of his book, his love of learning, his courage,
his moral purity, &c, but he is not to be classed (as in
the Edinburgh Review) among his " warmest defend
ers," except against contemporaneous calumnies and
subsequent exaggerations. The impiety and folly of
his attempt, his vanity and long-practised hypocrisy,
are nowhere more strongly delineated. To me he has
always been, and still is, " Julian the Apostate ;" and
notwithstanding the toleration he professed, his short
reign was long enough to show that he was in a fair
way to become Julian the Persecutor. I will only add
one hint to the English reader, who, thanks to the
soundness of our Theology, may look with suspicion
upon even the best of German Theologians ; this hint
is suggested by the title of the Work, viz., that the
spirit of Julian's age, rather than the history of Julian
himself, is the real subject of the book here translated.
Instead therefore of any farther remarks of my
own, I will give the reader a specimen of the mode in
which Julian's character has been handled by a distin
guished Theologian of our own Church, Bishop War-
burton, whose writings are now more celebrated than
read. It is scarcely necessary to refer to Gibbon
whose account of Julian (vol. iv. ch. 23, 4), with the

translator's preface. ix
usual allowance for sneers and sarcasm, is on the whole
tolerably fair.
To the extract from Warburton, I prefix, in lieu of
a portrait, a graphic delineation of Julian by his co-
temporary, Gregory Nazianzen (which I translate
from Professor UUmann's Life of Gregory), together
with a few touches from his own pencil and that of
Ammianus.

Extract translated from Professor Ullmann's " Life ef Gregory
Nazianzen," p. 36.
At Athens, Gregory formed an acquaintance (of a very remarka
ble character, and one which subsequently gave him no pleasure)
with the nephew of the Emperor Constantius, the prince Julian,
who afterwards succeeded to the throne, and played a short but ex
traordinary part in the drama of the world's history. This prince
was then (a. d. 355) resident there, by the permission of his jealous
uncle, for the purpose of pursuing his studies. A singular predilec
tion for paganism and pagan mysteries, which flourished particularly
in that city, already displayed itself in Julian. He was as strongly
attracted to the rhetorical and philosophical advocates of heathenism,
as they in their turn (as well as all the admirers of the old religion)
directed their attention, with hopeful expectation, to the young and
distinguished member of the imperial family. Gregory, therefore,
who acknowledges that he by no means possessed a quick-sighted-
ness in discerning character, had yet no difficulty even then in an
ticipating the very worst in Julian. He calls upon those who were
with him at that time at Athens, to testify that soon after he had he-
come acquainted with Julian, he had uttered those words, " How

X TRANSLATOR S PREFACE.
great an evil is the Roman empire here training up !"* What it was
which caused Gregory to judge so severely of the young man,f he
has himself informed us, in a perhaps somewhat exaggerated picture
of Julian's demeanor and external appearance : " I was led to be
come a prophetf (he says) by the restlessness of his behavior, and
the exaggerated tone of his animation. It also appeared to me to be
no good sign, that his neck was not strongly set on his shoulders ;
that those shoulders often moved convulsively ; that his eye fre
quently glanced round timidly and rolled as if in phrenzy ; and that
his feet were never in a state of repose. As little was I pleased
with his nose, which breathed pride and contempt ; with the ridicu
lous distortions of his face, which yet indicated the same pride ; his
loud, immoderate laughter ; the nodding and shaking of his head
without any reason ; his hesitating speech, interrupted by the act of
breathing ; his abrupt, unmeaning questions, and his answers not at
all better, but often self-contradictory, and given without any scien
tific arrangement."} If we allow for that which gave to the pen of
* OXov Kcrndv f] 'P aipaiav rp.ipei.
t His junior only by six years.
t See Gregory's Orat. v. 23 and 24, pp. 161, 2.
§ It is not uninteresting to compare with the above what Julian him
self tells ns of his own external appearance. He evidently tried much,
especially as Emperor, to keep up a peculiar exhibition of himself, and was
fond of uniting the unpolished severity of a Cynic with the dignified bear
ing of an ancient hero. With self-satisfied complacency he speaks (in
his Misopogon, p. 338, seq.) of his bristly hair, his manly breast, and his
long, shaggy beard, while he still censures Nature for not having given
him a handsomer countenance. Nay, he does not hesitate to speak in
terms of commendation of his ink-stained hands, his long nails, and even
of the minute inhabitants which dwelt in the wilderness of his beard !
Ammianus, Marcellinus (xxv. 4) gives a much more agreeable de
scription of him than he does of himself: " Mediocris erat staturae, ca-
pillis, tanquam pexisset, mollibus, hirsuta barba in acutum desinente ves-
titus, venustate oculorum mieantium flagrans, qui mentis ejus angustias
indicabant, superciliis decoris et naso rectissimo, ore paullo majore, labro

TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XI
this delineator so powerful an aversion, we have still remaining the
picture of a restless, fiery-tempered man, of a mind incessantly active
and excited; of one who was haughty in the conscious feeling -of
power, but yet externally practising dissimulation ; while there was
wanting to his great natural abilities that suitable education which
would have regulated and directed them to a right object.
Extract from Bishop War-burton's " Julian."
(Quarto Edition of his Works, vol. iv. p. 374.)
There was a time when the powers of this world were all op
posed to the progress of the Gospel. The first attempt upon Chris
tianity was such as was most natural to this power, the suppressing
it by brutal force ; and the subjection of the whole civilized world to
the despotic will of one blind persecutor gave that force its utmost
moment. But this method of attack required a comprehensive know
ledge of human nature, and of the doctrines to be suppressed.
Few of the persecuting emperors had either. M. Antoninus had
the one ; Julian only, who closed the scene, had both. Till his time
the sole engine was simple force. Julian was the first who got
enough acquainted with the Gospel to apply such arms against it as
must have ended in its ruin, had it been nothing more than what he
affected to think it, a human invention. And here we shall be forced
to confess, that Providence seems to have raised up this extraordi-
inferiore demisso, opima et incurva cervice, humeris vastis et latis, ab ipso
capite usque unguium summitates lineamentorum recta compage, unde
viribus valebat et cursu." — In another passage Ammianus mentions some
peculiarities which agree better with Gregory's description : " Levioris
ingenii,  linguas fusions et admodum raro silentis."
N. B. UUmann here, and even Neander in his history, speak of Julian
as nephew instead of cousin to Constantius, as Gibbon and Warburton
describe him. Julian's father, called Julius Constantius, was brother to
Constantine, and uncle to Constantius the Emperor; who being Constan-
tine's son, was therefore Julian's cousin.

Xll TRANSLATOR S PREFACE.
nary man on set purpose to do the last honors to the religion of Je
sus ; to show the world what human power, with all its advantages
united, was able to oppose to its establishment. For we find in this
emperor all the great qualities that a projector could conceive, or an
adversary would require, to secure success to so daring an opposition.
He was eloquent and liberal ; artful, insinuating, and indefatigable ;
which, joined to a severe temperance, an affected love of justice, and
a courage superior to all trials, first gained him the affections, and,
soon after, the peaceable possession of the whole empire.
He was bred up in the Christian religion from his infancy : and
was obliged to profess it (or at least to disguise his passion for pa
ganism) to the time he assumed the purple.* His aversion to his
uncle Constantine and his cousin Constantius, for the cruelties ex
ercised on his family, had prejudiced him against the Christian reli
gion : and his attachment to some Platonic sophists, who had been
employed in his education, gave him as violent a bias towards Pa
ganism. He was ambitious ; and Paganism, in some of its theurgic
rites, had flattered and encouraged his views of the diadem. He was
vain, which made him aspire to the glory of re-establishing the an
cient rites : he was extremely knowing, and fond of Grecian litera
ture ; the very soul of which, in his opinion, was the old theology :
but above all, notwithstanding a considerable mixture of enthusiasm,
his superstition was excessive, and what nothing but the blood of
hecatombs could appease.
With these dispositions he came to the empire, and consequently
with a determined purpose of subverting the Christian, and restoring
the Pagan worship. His predecessors had left him the repeated ex
perience of the inefficacy of downright force. The virtue of theirs/
Christians then rendered this effort fruitless ; the numbers of the

* A rudimentis pueritiae primis inclinatus erat erga numinum cultum.
paulatimque desiderio rei flagrabat. — Am. Marcel. L. xxii. c. 5.

TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XIII
present would now have made it dangerous. He found it necessary
therefore to change his ground ; his knowledge of human nature
furnished him with arms ; and his knowledge of the faith he had
abandoned, enabled him to direct those arms to most advantage.
He began with re-establishing Paganism by law, and granting a
full liberty of conscience to the Christians. Yet notwithstanding,
his own historian* assures us, he put on this mask of moderation and
equity, for no other purpose than to inflame the dissensions of the
Church. And his subsequent conduct, fully justifies the historian's
observation. He then fined and banished such of the more popular clergy as
had abused their power, either in exciting the people to burn and de
stroy pagan temples, or to commit violence on an opposite sect.
And it cannot be denied that their turbulent and insolent manners
deserved all the severity of his justice.
He proceeded to revoke those immunities, honors and reve
nues, which his uncle and cousin had granted to the clergy. He
disqualified the Christian laity for bearing office in the state. But
his most illiberal treatment of the Christians, was his forbidding the
professors who were of that religion, to teach humanity and the sci
ences, in the public*- schools. His more immediate design in this,
was to hinder the youth from taking impressions to the disadvantage
of Paganism : his remote view, to deprive Christianity of the support
of human literature. Not content with this, he endeavored even to
destroy what was already written in defence of Christianity. With
this view he wrote to Ecdicius, the governor of Egypt, and to Por
phyry the treasurer-general, to collect up and send to him the library
of George, Bishop of Alexandria, who for his cruelty and tyranny
had been torn in pieces by the people.

* It is not thought necessary to quote here the authorities which
Warburton faithfully subjoins to his assertions.

XIV TRANSLATOR S PREFACE.
Nay, to such a length did his aversion to the name of Christ
carry him, as to decree by a public edict that his followers should no
longer be called Christians, but Galileans. A man so transported
by a train of the most ungoverned passions, we may well suppose,
would stop at no means, how low and vile soever, to carry on his
projects. His letters afford us an instance of one so dishonorable,
that no testimony but his own could make it credible. Titus, Bishop
of Bostra, and his clergy, in an address presented to Julian, acquaint
him with their care in keeping the flock committed to them (then
equal in number to the Pagans) in due obedience to the laws. The
return Julian makes for this act of duty, is to acquaint the people of
Bostra, that their Bishop was become their delator ; that he had rep
resented them as prone to sedition, and even capable of the last ex
cesses, but that he and his clergy kept them in order. For this
crime therefore, which he calls the taking to himself the merit of the
people's good behavior, he advises them to expel the Bishop from
their city.
On pretence that the Arian church of Edessa was too rich, and
had not used the Valentinians with temper, he seized on every thing
belonging to it, and divided the plunder amongst his soldiers. And,
to add the bitterness of contumely to his injustice, he told them he
did it to ease them of their burthens, that they might proceed more
lightly, and with less impediment in their journey to heaven.
But Socrates, the historian, tells us, that he imposed a tax or
tribute, proportioned to every man's circumstances, on all who would
not sacrifice. This was persecution in form ; and yet it did not stop
here, but proceeded to still greater extremities. Though he did not
persecute to death by laws, that being directly contrary to his edicts
of toleration, which he had with so much ostentation and frequency
repeated : yet he connived at the fury of the people, and the bru
tality of the governors of provinces, who, during his short reign,
brought many martyrs to the stake. For he put such into govern-

;

) ]

TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XV
ments whose inhumanity and blind zeal for their country supersti
tions were most distinguished. And when tlie suffering Churches
presented their complaints to him, he dismissed them with cruel
scoffs ; telling them, their religion directed them to suffer without
murmuring. So that we have little reason to doubt what the an
cients say of his declared intentions (had he returned victorious from
the Persian war), to subject the whole Christian world to the hon-
ester persecution of fire and sword.*
* For the account of the failure of the attempt to rebuild the Temple
at Jerusalem and the apparently miraculous, certainly providential, cir
cumstances of that failure, the reader is referred to the lengthened and
ingenious argument of Bishop Warburton (in loco citato).

THE

EMPEROR JULIAN.

SECTION I.

CHRISTIANITY EST RELATION TO THE AGE IN WHICH IT FIRST
APPEARED AND WAS PROPAGATED.

God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the
face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed,
and the bounds of their habitation ; that they should seek the Lord,
if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far
from every one of us : for in him we live, and move, and have our
being. — Acts xvii. 26-28.

No new epoch is wont to commence in the history of
mankind without having been previously announced
by some signs or other ; no truth, deeply affecting the
life of men, has ever been widely spread, which individ
ual witnesses, in their struggle with the age that was
not yet ripe for it, have not expressed. So also, on the
2

18 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
other side, it comes to pass, that individuals attempt to
bring back a state of things which is no longer adapted
to human society. They set themselves afresh and
with great energy to give expression to that which can
no longer retain its dominion over men. The old and
the new are thus displayed in lively contrast and oppo
sition to each other, and the discovery is made, how
little it is in the power of an individual to create any
thing, and how little an individual can avail in a con
test with Providence, guiding and fashioning the spirit
of the times according to its own everlasting decrees.
We see an example of this in the Emperor Julian.
Inasmuch as he endeavored to make that improved
form which polytheism had assumed before its final fall,
the dominant religion, and opposed it to Christianity,
we must speak, first of all, of the causes through which
the ancient polytheistic religion again acquired new
strength ; of the relative position in which it stood to
Christianity ; of the opposition which it made thereto,
and of the victory achieved against it, for which the
change in the human mind had prepared the way.
The Apostle Paul says, that God left the Gentiles
to themselves for a definite time to seek after God by
their own strength ; and, certainly (since " in him we
live, and move, and have our being") men every where
felt and found a divine power, as soon as they awoke
from their rude and brutal condition, and arrived at the

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 19
perception of an unknown God. But to this higher
feeling and aspiration there was opposed, both exter
nally and internally, a lower and heterogeneous nature.
Endued therefore with an understanding that wished
to comprehend and seek after unity and clearness, and
not content with that mere feeling, man strove to jus
tify and excuse himself for bringing the higher, godlike
world (in spite of mutual opposition) into union with
the heterogeneous lower world ; thinking thus to get
rid of the opposition.*
Now after the human understanding had finished
its first career, and had exhausted itself in various
attempts^ to deduce a higher and a lower from one
common principle, and to explain the supposed pro
cess, it began to survey the structures it had raised.'
At once man became conscious that all these systems
rested upon an hypothesis, and that there was no com
mon criterion whereby to test the various systems that
stood in opposition to each other, — none, at least, that
was not in its turn an hypothesis, and, as such, opposed
to other different hypotheses.
This was expressly announced by Skepticism,
as it was exhibited before and after the appear
ance of Christianity ; " The skeptic," says Sextus
Empiricus,f " who compared together the different
theories of men in order to find out a criterion
* See Appendix I. t Hypotypos, Lib, I. c. 12.

20 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
whereby jo test them, and so to attain to peace of
mind, perceived that by their mutual antagonism they
maintained a reciprocal counterpoise ; and thus, for
want of the required criterion, he withheld his de
cision altogether." While Skepticism, in this manner,
endeavored to make, the human understanding itself
destroy its own varied attempts to arrive at an objec
tive certainty, it referred man back to that which
subsists independently of all exposition (viz. the im
mediate sphere of experience and life), as the highest ,
point to which he could with safety ascend. For its
efforts were not directed against Nature and the im
pressions, simply and in themselves, made by her upon
men, nor yet against any appearances of the bodily or
spiritual world ; but only against the judgments and
opinions of the understanding respecting those ap
pearances, as far as they affected to be any thing
more than a subjective expression of individual feel
ing, or laid claim to a discovery of objective truth.
It took good heed, in combating one species of dogma
tism, riot to fall into another of a negative kind, while
it sought to explain away that which claimed any
kind of power over men, independent of their various
notions. Its aim, on the contrary, was directed only against
the expositions of men, and therefore quite as much
against the negative dogmatism of unbelief in nature

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 21
and religion, as against the opposite positive dogma
tism in respect to both. Its object was to combat the
arrogance of the dogmatic philosopher.* It did not
maintain that the impossibility of arriving at objective
certainty originated in the nature of things, in and by'
themselves ; but that that uncertainty was the sub
jective impression made by the contemplation of hu
man systems and conceptions on the mind of the skep-
ticf philosopher. It raised its views so little above
what was subjective, that it did not so much as dare
to determine of itself, whether it would always be in
the same way of thinking, on account of the variable
ness of the human understanding, and its liability to
veer about in all directions. J
Sextus very happily compared this purely polemic
indication of skepticism with a ladder by which a
man ascends to a certain height, and after attaining
a footing there kicks it down again. § The only thing,
therefore, which the skeptic did not attempt to refute
was the subjective perception and consciousness of
each one ; though it was only by elevating this to the
rank of an objective universal impression, that his un-
* Tr_v -ixpmtTt'iav rCiv .oypaTiK&v. Sextus Empir.
t Hypotypos, Lib. i. u. 20.
X Aid to Tzoh.Tpo-n-ov dir&funil.ris blavoias. L. II. adv. Logic, p.
546, Ed. Fabric.
§ p. 547.

22 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
derstanding could grasp the idea; "for as no one can
convince him who rejoices that he does not rejoice, or
him who grieves that he does not grieve, so no one
can render his conviction doubtful who feels himself
convinced." The skeptic applied this not only to
nature, but also to that which alone concerns us at
present, viz., religion. He disputed, first of all, the
different expositions which philosophers gave of the
origin of divine worship among men, because they all
presupposed the idea of the Godhead, which never
theless served as one and the same foundation for all
the different notions of men.
" All men have one common, fundamental idea of
the Deity, as a happy, imperishable Being, raised above
all reach of evil ; and it is perfectly unreasonable to
assert that they could all by some accident have dis
covered these same properties, without being brought
thereto by a natural necessity." Now skepticism cer
tainly did not consider this idea (inherent as it is in
the human mind, and inexplicable in its origin) as an
irrefutable evidence of the being of a God ; but its
object was merely to demonstrate the impossibility of
explaining the source of the idea, in reply to the dif
ferent dogmatic systems ; while, on the other side, it
placed, over against each other, the different argu
ments for and against the being of a God, and showed
that they reciprocally destroyed each other, by demon-

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 23
strating the denial of the Deity to be attended with
the same difficulties. In this instance also it was only
combating the arrogance of the philosophic systems.
But where did the skeptic seek for a firm footing
in actual life, that he might not (to resume my former
illustration) hang floating in the air, after having at
length mounted to the highest round of his ladder, and
having thrown it away because he had no farther, need
of it ? Truly, he clung to that which, by his own
confession, was unassailable to him and preceded all
those opinions and systems, viz., the immediate expe
rience of common life. " That which causes man to
act without his willing it and by natural necessity,
does not admit of examination ; he follows the impres
sion and perceptions of the senses, and these, as such,
are matters of certainty to him. The act. of inquiry
does not commence till he asks, in respect .to some
object, whether these perceptions actually correspond
with things external to him. The skeptic, therefore,
like every one else, follows those impressions, and,
generally speaking, even the prevailing traditionary
notions concerning divine worship, though he can as
little explain their origin as he can that of the percep
tions of the senses ; nay, he presumes as little to pass
any objective sentence or judgment upon them."*
* Lib. i. Hypot. Cap. 11.

24 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
"The skeptic," says Sextus, "proceeds, probably,
the most securely of all philosophers, since, in accord
ance with the laws and regulations of his country, he
allows the existence of the gods, and observes every
thing that concerns their worship and the practice of
piety ; but he does not allow himself to be seduced
into the arrogance of philosophic investigation."* "So,
again," says the same representative of the skepticism
of that period,f " while we follow life as we find it,
we say that there are gods ; we honor them and be
lieve in their providential care, but we do so without
any definite meaning."
Undoubtedly the skeptic, in thus disclaiming all ex
press meaning, wished to secure a state of indolent re
pose,!}; and to comply with the impressions of actual
life only so far as was necessary, without allowing
himself to be disturbed by opinions relating to the
good and the evil of life.§ This lukewarmness, how
ever, could not be agreeable to the human mind, which
naturally seeks for something that will warm and fill
it ; and this irresolute love of repose was not suited
for the storms of life, especially in the frequently un
happy days of the government of the Roman emperors.
When skepticism had showed men in this way the
invalidity of their received opinions, and exposed to
* P- 560. t Lib. in. Cap. 1.
\ 'Arapa^ia. § Lib. I. Hypot. ... 12.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 25
them the contradiction that existed in the various
philosophical systems, they saw, on the other hand,
the ever-spreading fruit of theoretical and practical
unbelief in the prevailing immorality of actual life ;
they therefore clung in earnest, as to the only rule of
life, to the religion of their fathers, which for so many
generations had propagated itself independent of hu
man speculation, while it promoted and maintained
purity of manners and the well-being of the state.*
Minucius Felix, an apologist for Christianity in the
third century, introduces the heathen Ceecilius pleading
for the old religion. In order to recommend that reli
gion, he argues from the fruitless efforts of the most
celebrated philosophers* to discover any thing certain
respecting providence and the government of the uni
verse ; and from the contradiction in which these doc
trines stood to the realities of life; where we see only
Nature pursuing its appointed course without any re
gard to men, but do not see a providence discrimi
nating between good men and bad. " Since therefore
the impotency of human nature is so far removed from
the investigation of divine things, and since a fixed
destiny or an inscrutable nature appears to rule over
us, is it not (he asks) better and more dignified to re
ceive the teaching of our forefathers as the criterion
of truth ; to observe the religious rites that have been
* See Appendix II.
2*

26 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
handed down to us ; to worship the gods whom we
have been taught to fear before we were, well able to,
distinguish ; and, whilst we do so, to pronounce no
precise judgment concerning them, but believe the
account given by our fathers, who in times of igno
rance and soon after the commencement of the world
were even thought worthy to have the gods for their
rulers or their friends ?"
Listen again to a genuine description of the bene
ficial working of their religion, suggested by the feel
ing of a generation which had passed from fluctuating
doubt to a firm belief, and longed again for the temples
of their fathers : " The prophets, filled with the Deity
with whom they are most intimately connected, fore
tell the future, give us warnings of approaching dan
gers, remedies in sickness, hope in affliction, help in
distress, consolation in sudden . misfortunes. In our
sleep we see, hear, and acknowledge the gods whom
in the light of day we wickedly deny or offend by per
jury ; and therefore it is, that the unanimous convic
tion of all nations in regard to the immortal gods re
mains so fixed, though men's notions of religion are so
unsettled and the origin of religion uncertain. I have
no patience, then, with any one who is so puffed up
with a rash and mischievous impertinence as to strive
to explain away or render doubtful so ancient, so use
ful, and so salutary a religion."

THE AGE XN WHICH IT APPEARED. 27
A tone of mind like this must have made men more
sensible than ever to the claims of a new religion that
could satisfy all the spiritual wants of mankind, and
afford certain information as to the relation in which
God stands to men. But, on the other hand, it would
also excite a violent struggle for the old religion; since
even infidelity and immorality, and the decay of social
order, were attributed to the departure from a religious
system interwoven with all the relations of society
and hallowed by the duration of centuries. And to
what must this lead, but a falling off into fluctuating
uncertainty or a senseless dream ! — for what an act of
presumption must it have appeared, " that uneducated,
ignorant men, deficient even in the ordinary sources of
information, should presume to speak with any certainty
upon subjects the most important and exalted, above
which so many schools of philosophy had disputed
with each other for so many ages !"* For two things
are clear ; first, that the Gospel was first of all made
known to persons who most wanted divine instruc
tion ; and secondly, that Christianity differed from all
previous religions by a decided and clear communi
cation of religious knowledge.
Those very persons, however, who clung so fondly
to the ancient religion on the ground that it had
brought back again an acknowledged necessity of some
* Caecil. in Minue. Felix: work entitled Octavius,

28 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
link that should once more attach to heaven the fluc
tuating affections of man, these same persons (if they *
could but conquer their prejudices) must have been
the more accessible to a religion, which offered them
something more than an indistinct feeling of an inter
course with the gods, which gave them what they so
much wanted, such a clear and certain conviction of
the relation in which man stands to the Deity as can
set the heart at rest, and satisfy its yearnings. In fact,
as soon as Ceecilius heard those doctrines which are
most intelligible to the heart ("and which are more
easily apprehended than expressed in words"*), when
he heard 'them clearly propounded and developed, he
was convinced of the truth of Christianity, which he
had hitherto considered only through the medium of
preconceived opinions. Whether this conversation (in
Minucius Felix) was actually held, or was only the
assumed form in which the apologist clothed his argu
ments, at all events the occasion for. it arose from the
circumstances of the age, and it may so far serve for
a fair characteristic thereof.
One result of that adherence to the external reli
gion of their fathers (and this from the absence of any
living knowledge in connection with that worship, and
from the loss of all belief in any association with truth
and with heaven) was a great prevalence of supersti-
* Queb facilius est sentire quam dicere.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 29
tion ; for superstition is merely the recovery of the lost
feeling of man's relationship to God, active and ener
gizing in the inner man. Hence the seeking for God
every where in externals only ; hence the anxious fear
of God, whom man looks upon as a Being estranged
from him, always angry and vindictive ; hence the
eager search after all sorts of external* methods of
appeasing the Deity. ,
Thus, the men of that period, no longer trusting to
the sole power of the decayed religion of their fathers,
sought in the practices of foreign religions (which the
then active and general intercourse of the far-extended
Roman Empire helped to spread) all kinds of methods
for propitiating the Deity ; and those ' methods which
were the most strange gave them the greatest degree
of confidence. Let us listen to Plutarch's lively pic
ture of this sort of people in his time :f " When they
meet with any kind of misfortune they do not think
of looking for the cause in themselves, nor in the at
tendant circumstances; but always in the Deity, from
whom it came down as a penal infliction. They call
themselves not unfortunate, but god-hated men. Every
sickness, every loss of property,. every political calam
ity, is considered as a stroke aimed at them by a god,
or as an assault of some demon. They dare not, there-
* 'Ee.>ioepni7KcTii, will-worship, in its proper sense.
+ II. StwiSaip. u. 3.

30 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
fore, have recourse to any assistance, lest they should
appear to contend with God, or seem desirous of op
posing themselves to his punishment. The physician
is* rejected by the sick man, and the door of the
mourner is shut against the exhortation and consola
tions of the philosopher. ' Leave me,' (he would cry)
— ' me, that am accursed, me, the hated of gods and
demons, to suffer the full punishment of my wicked
ness.' The victim of superstition is seen sitting out
side his house, hung round with sordid rags, and often
times even rolling naked in the mire, in order to atone
for his sin in having eaten or drunk some forbidden
thing, or for having set his foot upon a path prohibited
by the Deity."
Let us imagine ther effect produced by the first
Christians, when they made known the power of the
Holy Ghost to men like these, encompa-ssed by a pe
culiar atmosphere which their own conceits had drawn
around them; when they announced to them (and
proved by deeds) that the name of Christ, combined
with faith, would deliver them from the dominion of
all evil ; when, by mighty works operating upon their
senses, they first of all destroyed the delusion that had
enveloped and rendered them inaccessible to all the
arguments of reason : and setting out from thence,
with simple words, preached to them the absurdity of
demon-worship, reconciliation with the living God,

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 31
and the power of faith to set them free. Let us listen
now to the words of St. Paul. (Col. ii. 20), addressed
to a society of persons among whom were to be found
many such converts to Christianity: "Wherefore,* if
ye be dead in Christ to the elements of the world, re
nounce such dogmas as if ye were still entangled in
the life of the world : Touch not this ; taste not,
handle not that ; for such conduct brings destruction
on him who presumes to use these things profanely —
as it is expressed in the ordinances and doctrines of
men. All this has, indeed, the appearance of a pecu
liar hidden wisdom, in an arbitrary will-worship, self-
humiliation, and bodily inflictions, but relates to nothing
essential, only to things merely external. Therefore,
if ye be risen with Christ, seek that which is above,
where Christ sitteth on. the right hand of God. Di
rect your thoughts to that which is above, not to that
which is earthly ; for ye are dead, and your life is
hidden with Christ in God." In this manner it was,
that not this or that particular kind of superstition was
refuted, but the very root thereof was at once des
troyed ; the heart and mind were raised from the visi
ble world of sense to the living God ; and men were
powerfully reminded of the indissoluble covenant into
which He had entered with them through Christ.
* It will be seen that I have here given St. Paul's language according
to the German iu Dr, Neander's book, not according to our own ver
sion. — Translator.

32 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
We have to notice yet another direction which
skepticism gave to the mind of men. Its efforts were
pointed (as we have already seen) against every hu
man opinion that laid claim to objective truth ; while,
on the other hand, it confessed its entire impotency
against that subjective conviction and feeling which
lay quite out ofits jurisdiction. Now this conviction,
unattainable to the grasp of skepticism, was courted
by distinguished men ; not merely that personal, sub
jective feeling, before which skepticism was made to
halt, but that which is to every man most properly
and inwardly his own ; and this, only because it is
founded upon the universal moral nature of man, or on
the general affinity of man's spirit to God, and lies be
yond all power of thought. Skepticism soon remarked
the inexplicability of one idea of the Godhead serving
as a foundation for the different religious systems of
such different men ; but as it it did not raise its views
above the personal, subjective conviction, it pursued
the matter no further. It inquired not whether this
idea were of that kind which would carry in itself the
proof of its reality, but placed it in that class of things
"which may become subjects of thought, without
gaining thereby any real existence, like the Centaurs
and Scylla." This inquiry, therefore, concerning the
idea of God, would necessarily lead men to discuss His

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 33
actual existence* Skepticism, however, neither went
deep enough, nor raised its views high enough to un
derstand that the idea ofthe Deity, as it exists "in man,
is itself an incontrovertible testimony to the divine
existence ; because man finds nothing, in the world in
which he lives, from whence this idea might have
been suggested to him (as he can find no figure of the
Centaur or Scylla, but constructs their form arbitrarily
from pre-existing parts), and therefore it -can only be
the immediate revelation of that Being, of whom it is
the living image in the soul of man.
" You say," says Jamblichus,f " that you concede
the existence of the Deity; that, however, is not a
correct expression ; since the acknowledgment of the
gods is an inherent impression, inseparably implanted
in us, co-operating with the actual efforts of the soul
in search of the Supreme Good, previous to- any judg
ment, or arbitrary decision, any thought or argumen
tation upon the subject."
As skepticism itself led men to seek for a higher
degree of certainty to which itself could not attain, so
that philosophical view, which proved man's exalted
origin (and the certainty of the higher order of things
for which he was formed) from the ideas that are in
herent in him, and which can find nothing adequate
to them in the whole creation, became, under the title
* Sextus Empiric, adv. Physic, p. 560. t I)e__Myster~-A\. 3.

34 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
of Platonism, the prevailing philosophy. Just as at
other times (for instance, at the epoch preceding the
Reformation) when fine-spun speculation detached
from actual life, and human ordinances that held cap
tive the hearts of men, had led to skepticism, supersti
tion arid infidelity, this better philosophy for a long
time again spread light* and warmth around.
Skepticism had endeavored to refute the different
systems of philosophy and religion by exposing their
versatility-]* and mutual contradiction ; but the Pla
tonic philosophy pursued the opposite direction. As it
had found the revelation of the Deity universal amongst
men, it considered the various systems of philosophy
and religion from this middle point, with the view of
discovering an inner harmony amidst the opposition of
forms, and of animating afresh, by means of that in
ternal revelation, the old traditionary religions from
which the living spirit had fled.
Thus Plutarch- (whom we may consider as the re
presentative of those distinguished men and of the
efforts made by them) found in all religions ancient
precepts of theosophists and lawgivers, that had come
down to poets and philosophers, and of which no one
knew the commencement or the author, though they
carried with them a strong power of conviction: J
* <&uk fntv6p£i,av lv atixprlpip t6tioi. t ilo^vrpoiria.
t De Isid. et Osirid. c. 23.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 35
" We do not believe that there are different gods in
different nations ; some barbarian and some Hellenic,
some Northern and others Southern ; but as sun, moon,
heaven, earth, and sea, are common to all, though ex
pressed by different names, so also one Reason orders
all things, and one Providence superintends all, though
different modes of divine worship, and various denon>
inations for the gods themselves may have been legally
established." These noble-minded men undertook the labor of
tracing out this manifestation of the Deity in the his
tory of nations, and they seized with fond enthusiasm
any thing which offered them a confirmation or ex
pression of the great idea with which their own minds
were filled. Man (they said) born for society and mu
tual intercourse, and so trained up to a habit of self-
dependence, is not content with comprehending the
revelation of the Most High within his own mind, but
feels a simultaneous impulse to connect it with a so
cial, spiritual life, in which every one who is awakened
to the true consciousness of his own capabilities, may
be drawn up from the earthly to a higher existence.
That, before all things, assumes with him a certain
and determinate existence, which yet does not ori
ginate, or appear to originate with him ; but which he
finds tojiave a perfect being of its own, independent
of him or his imaginings, and by means of which his

36 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
own higher intellectual consciousness is developed.
As language supplies him with impressions of certainty
for his lower life, that he does not " live in a world of
his own, like those who dream, but in a world which
is common to all,"* so will he attain to this certainty
in the intercourse of this higher world through a higher
language adapted for such a community. Without
these traces of a divine manifestation (not always of a
mere subjective kind, but existing independently of
men) the history of his species would appear nothing
but a circle left to itself, and revolving always within
itself. The sad consequences had been seen of a philo
sophy which acknowledged no divine revelation, but
explained away all religious traditions as the fictions
of poetry, and sought to exclude man from all connec
tion with heaven. Thus, for instance, Euemerus of
Messene derived all religious worship from, the fact,
that men, superior to the rude vulgar in wisdom or
strength, had, with the view of maintaining a higher
estimation among them, surrounded themselves with a
cloud of divinity, and were afterwards honored as
gods.f The Platonists, therefore, exerted themselves
in opposition to such low views, and tried to bring
back their cotemporaries " to the pious belief of their
fathers.""): * Heraclit. t Sextus Empir. Lib. ix. p. 552.
t Plutarch, de Pyth. Orac. c. 13.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 37
Let us hear with what enthusiasm Plutarch de
scribes the pleasure of public worship which they who
lived in the old faith still enjoyed : " No residence in
the temples, no festivities, nothing that we ever do or
see, delights us more than what we see or do in the
worship of the gods, assisting at the festive dances,
sacrifices, or mysteries. The soul at such times is not
sad, depressed or melancholy, as it must be if it had- to
do with tyrannical or vindictive powers ; but in those
places where it thinks and believes the Deity most
especially present, there it most effectually banishes all
pains, and fears, and cares, giving itself up to an in
toxication of pleasure, to sport and play."
With this effusion let his description of the unbe
liever be compared, a description prompted by pro
found feeling : " All this pleasure is wanting to him
who has lost all faith in a superintending Providence ;
for surely it is not the abundance of wine and meat
that causes men's enjoyment of the festivals, but
the well-grounded hope and belief that the god is pro
pitiously present and graciously receives their offering.
But if the god is not present at the sacrifice, every
thing seems forsaken of heaven ; the festival has mis
carried with all its exalted pleasure ; all is joyless and
painful, since out of fear of the multitude he makes a
show as if he prayed and adored the gods, without in
fact praying at all, or else, in words which are contra-

38 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
dictory to his system of philosophy; and when he
brings a sacrifice, the officiating priest appears to him
to be nothing but a cook or a butcher."*
But an attempt was also made to trace back the
unbelief that had arisen to its cause, and it was attribu
ted to the extinction of the true spirit of religion ; to
the coarse, anthropomorphistic representations of the
operations of the gods ; or- to the materialistic process
of amalgamating the organs and symbols of the gods
and their operations, with the gods themselves and
their immediate works ; a confusion and mixture which
must necessarily have shocked man's understanding,
and rendered the whole of religion a matter of suspi
cion, as something contradictory and the invention of
ignorant, uninformed men. " When men," says Plu
tarch, " accustomed themselves to speak of brazen or
stone images, and of pictures, not as images and instru
ments for honoring the gods, but as actual gods, they
gradually received into their minds the perverted rep
resentations involved in such expressions ; and it was
exactly this confusion of words and things which
plunged men of weak and amiable minds into boundless
superstition, but strong and daring dispositions, on the
contrary, into atheistic, wild opinions."
The attempt was now made, by taking an intellec
tual view of the subject, to make the conflicting spirits
* Non posse suaviter vivi sec. Epicur. .. 22.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 39
of unbelief and superstition work well together ; and
this view, which sought to vindicate the old religion
against all objections by bringing it into harmony with
the ideas of reason and the laws of the understanding,
produced a new form of religious philosophy.
After Plutarch had shown* that the same eternal
religion, only under different forms, was to be found in
all nations, he thus proceeds : " Some make use of dark
er, others of clearer, sacred symbols, which lead the
mind to the Divine Being, though not without danger ;
for some, missing that intended use altogether, fell
away into superstition, while others, shunning that as
a dangerous slough, plunged at last into the abyss of
unbelief. Therefore we must borrow for our assistance
the precepts of philosophy that lead to holiness, that
we may not misunderstand the wise appointments of
the laws concerning sacrifice." The object aimed at
thereby was, " that, on one hand, the excellent old reg
ulations should not be abandoned, and, on the other,
that the traditionary notions of the gods should not be
disturbed and perplexed by strange and inappropriate
representations." As superstition mixes and confounds the divine and
the human causes, natural and supernatural, the instru
ment and the efficient principle, the objective and the
subjective, one with another ; whilst unbelief, on the
* De Iside et Osiride, c. 67.

40 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
contrary, recognizes only the human, the natural and
the subjective ; — (both parties erring in this, that they
do not properly separate and discriminate this twofold
combination) — so those good men endeavor to avoid
both these devious paths, by marking accurately the
relation of the divine and heavenly to the human and
the natural, of the subjective to the objective, of the
spirit to the letter. " The oldest theosophists and poets,"
says Plutarch,* " saw every where only the Deity itself
in active operation, and paid no regard to the indis
pensable natural causes ; the succeeding philosophers,
on the contrary, who first discovered those natural
causes, wished to explain every thing thereby, and no
where acknowledged a divine operative principle."
Inquiries were now entered upon which had hith
erto been unknown to polytheism (a religion so averse
to all that is dogmatic), viz., concerning revelation, in
spiration, and miracles. Accordingly, at this, as at all
times when these subjects have become matters of dis
cussion, two opposite parties arose. One party made
use of the meanness of the Pythia's verses as a proef
that the whole affair was of human contrivance, and
certainly the work of no god; the' other maintained
that even the language in which the god disclosed the
future, was necessarily the most beautiful because it
originated from God ; and that nothing but the cor-
* De defectu Orac. u. 48.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 41
rupted taste of men hindered them from acknowledging
this beauty as superior to every thing human, in its
simplicity and sublimity. A third party of these reli
gious philosophers, differing from both, sought to settle
this dispute by analyzing the notion of revelation and
inspiration, by distinguishing the matter from its mode
of expression, the mere instrument from the higher
power that makes use of it.
" From the Deity proceeds only the matter, the
higher influence, the inspiration ; he communicates the
ideas to the soul and excites the light within it, but
neither the language, nor the expression, nor the metre,
comes from him.* The distinct individuality of the
human agents need not be annihilated by this divine
influence ; but every being, whom the Deity makes use
of as its instrument, can communicate the divine will
conformably to his individual endowments, and any
defect in the mode must not therefore be ascribed to
the God who employs it."f A difference therefore in
these revelations was deduced from the difference in
the instruments through which they were conveyed to
men, sometimes pure and free from alloy, sometimes
more combined with human frailty, and obstructed by
the natural causes through which they operate. " The
soul " (says Plutarch, loe. cit.) " is the organ or instru-
* De Pyth. Orac. c. 5 et seqq. t c. 21.
3

42 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
ment of the Deity, and the efficacy of an instrument
consists in representing (as far as is possible, according
to its peculiar ability) the higher power that operates
by its means, and in revealing the thoughts of that
power ; not indeed in perfect purity and free from all
passions and all defects, as those thoughts are, but
mixed with much that is extraneous. For every thing
pertaining to the Deity in and by itself is beyond our
power of vision, and when it reveals itself to us through
some other agent, it mixes itself up with the proper
nature of that agent."
He thence beautifully explains how the violent ec
stasy of inspiration resulted from the contest of two
opposite emotions, the higher divine one communicated
to the individual, and the natural one proper to the in
dividual himself; just as an uneasy struggle between
the natural and the communicated motion is produced
in bodies to which, while by their nature they gravitate
to the earth, a circular movement has been communi
cated. It is worth while to remark the manner in which
Plutarch justifies the alteration in the language of the
oracles as adapted, according to the plan of Provi
dence, to the altered language and the civilization of
nations. " In the earliest times," he says,* " men might
have loved what was splendid and striking in their
* Plut. de Pyth. Orac. c. 25.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 43
dress, their language, and in all the concerns of life ;
poetry may have been the language of common life,
while the use of type and enigma may have given to
things a divine and holy aspect in the eyes of that race
of men ; but now, on the contrary, men have come to
like nothing but what is simple and intelligible, whilst
any lofty flights of poetry or of mystery would excite
a suspicion of an attempt to deceive." He has here,
though unconscious of it himself, confessed that the
alteration in the culture of the human mind would pro
duce a desire for religious instruction adapted to that
advancement. It was the aim of those of whom we are at present
speaking, to recall men's notions of religion from the
general abstractions of the philosophers and sophists
into the concerns of actual life, and to give to religion
renewed warmth and efficiency. From a dislike to
what was merely human, some philosophers had spun
out and refined their ideas of religion still farther into
generalities, and thereby deprived it of all that was
practical and influential. In thus acting, they did not
remember that when man forms his abstractions from
himself as God's image, he at once cuts off all support
from beneath his feet, and falls, if not into a materiali
zing, certainly a formal and empty anthropomorphism.
Many a one fancied that the idea of a Providence ex
tending to every individual concern, however transi-

44 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
tory, savored too much of human machinery ; that the
free agency of every individual could not consist with
the eternal, unalterable law by which the world is gov
erned ; and that the Deity cares only for the preserva
tion of the universe and its various species of existen
ces, while the routine of the world is repeated, accord
ing to an eternal law, with an unchangeable necessity.*
Some again imagined that the Supreme Spirit lived
only in the eternal act of self-contemplation ; because,
if he contemplated any thing external to himself, he
must necessarilyf go -out of himself. J It was in oppo
sition then to this refinement and generalization of re
ligion, that these men of warmer feelings endeavored
to turn men's religious notions into a living, active, in-
vidualizing principle.
From these well-meant efforts there also naturally
resulted an enthusiastic fondness for a Polytheism com
bined with the philosophic idea of the Divine Unity.
The idea of a Divine Being, as it appeared to the men
of those days, resembled one of those cold and refined
abstractions of philosophy, by means of which they
wished to simplify and, in point of fact, to metamor
phose every thing. Much warmer therefore to the
mind, and much more animating to the imagination,
was the notion, that the One Supreme Deity§ not only
* Just. Mart. Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. init.
t Plut. de defectu Orac. c. 30. et Aristot. Melaph.
1 gee Appctdjx III. § Zeus, or Jupiter.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 45-
.ived in the enjoyment of a happy existence, but had
produced from himself other beings of a like nature,
with whom he shared his happiness, and through whom
he extended his operative power in a descending scale
down to man himself. As therefore they considered
Him as the supreme,* essential good, so they thought
these created deities were partial manifestations of
that good. The living idea of every virtue and every
faculty was personified in some one deity ; nor could it
be conceived that the fairest virtue of equitable and
friendly intercommunion, which assigns to each one
that which is his own, could be wanting to the Su
preme Being; the beau ideal of a society and of a
spiritual community being identified with the assembly
of the gods. " There are," says Plutarch.f " besides
the One Supreme, several other deities, towards whom
he exercises the virtues proper to a community."
This effort directed against philosophical abstrac
tions and simplifications, is plainly manifested in the
manner in which the existence of a plurality of worlds
is proved; for instance in Plutarch, J who asserts,
" that one isolated wOrld does not revolve, in a void
waste, round endless space ; that God does not look
upon a boundless vacancy external to himself, nor does
he contemplate himself only and nothing else ; but he
* aird rd iyaUv. t De Defect. Orac. c. 4. % loe. cit. c. 20.

46 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
views the actions of many gods and men, and the mo
tions and revolutions of many planets in their ap
pointed periods : since the Deity does not dislike such
variation, but rather rejoices therein."
In the same manner objection was made to those
systems which exhibited an endless number of worlds ;
because the mind turns giddy before the boundless
view, which appears to it as if it were connected with
a blind chance ; just as the uniform sameness of the
opposite view appeared to it a dead and empty void.
In the gods, " who were not inclosed in matter nor
subject with it to alteration, but free and exalted above
it, guided and directed it as the helmsman steers the
vessel,"* — in the gods was exhibited the perfection of
free- agency, which in mortals is only found under lim
itation. With a view of reconciling philosophical
ideas with the Greek theosophy, a distinction was made
between the invisible gods themselves and the visible,
permanent forms in which they revealed themselves ;
and to the confused notion of these two ideas, enter
tained by the common people, was attributed the wide
diffusion of perverted representations of the nature of
the gods.
Thus, in the regular course of the Stars and their
influence upon the earth, a proof was supposed to be
discovered of the operation of a divine reason, not
* c. 29.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 47
confined (like that of man) by any connection with
matter, but controlling it in-perfect freedom. For in
stance, the image of the active energy of the god
Apollo in the celestial world was seen in the powerful
influence of the visible sun (Helios) in the world of
sense ; and just as the sun's light adapts itself to the
eye in which the power of vision has been brought to
great perfection, so Apollo can exhibit himself to the
mental eye of him, whose higher faculties he has excit
ed to superior activity.* " The sun however withdrew
men in general from thus recognizing Apollo, since
through the medium of the senses it turned away the
human mind from the true sight of him in his revealed
symbol to that symbol itself in its visible appearance."!
We cannot, says Plutarch, but regard and love
those who attach the idea of the Deity to an object
which they esteem as the most dear and valuable of all
they are acquainted with. Since however they obtain
a representation of the Deity only in a dream (though
the most beautiful of all dreams), they are obliged to
elevate that representation to something far above it
and every thing visible ; and thus they are enabled to
contemplate the Deity imaged in his visible representa
tion, and admire the life-giving power which (as far as
the visible can express the spiritual) presents to them
* De Defect. Orac. c. 12. t De Pyth. Orac. c. 12.

48 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
a faint picture of the life and happiness of the god
himself.* Now these men of higher intellectual cultivation
certainly introduced purer religious ideas -into the pop
ular worship ; they honored in the different deities only
one Divine Being, who revealed himself through them.
They looked upon their images as nothing but images,
and endeavored to remove every thing of a material
nature from the pure idea of the Godhead ; and as for
auspices and auguries, they (Considered them only as
the operations of an omnipresent Providence, which
gave men tokens concerning the future through the
medium of natural causes that were subject to its will.*)*
" A knowledge of the laws of nature (Plutarch thus
remarks) needs not be opposed at all to a belief in aus
pices and auguries. The natural philosopher may

* De EI, apud Delph. 21. This word EI was a somewhat myste
rious inscription in the temple at Delphos, and forma the title and subjeot
of one of Plutarch's treatiaes, written in the form of a conversation. It
was one of three inscriptions on conspicuoua parts of the temple, and in
tended probably, like the other two (TfUSi acavrdv and MuSlv aycrn), to
convey warning or inatruction. This word EI was repeated by subse
quent worshippera in various materials : e. g. by Livia Augusta in gold,
and by the Athenians in braas. The discuaaion in Plutarch gives the
various explanations of the party, some trifling enough. The moat rea
sonable are, firat, that aa the god seemed to exhort the worshippera with
Tud)8i aeavTov, the worshipper was thus admoniahed to reply Ei, " Thou
art ;" or, aa some expressed it, Ei lv, " Unum es : non multa." Secondly,
that it suggested prayer : Ei for cWc, " O that !" — Translator.
t Compare Plut. Pericl. c. 6.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 49
know the natural origin and the actual circumstances,
while the augur understands the special object and
purpose of the phenomena, as tokens, or signs of some
thing else. Those persons who supposed that together
with a knowledge of the cause the phenomenon must
cease to be a sign, did not observe that, according to
this mode of judging, all the representations of actual
objects by human art would also cease to be signs as
soon as the cause of their production was known."
The religious knowledge of the multitude however
was not thereby enlightened. They could not raise
their thoughts to those intellectual views ; while that
which struck their eyes retained its hold upon them,
from the impression which the accompanying circum
stances - made on them through the senses. Whilst,
therefore, that enlightened view produced (with the
few) a new enthusiasm for the. old religion, and even
led to the adoption of symbols from foreign religions,
the grossest superstition was promoted among the com
mon people. It was proved on this, as on many other
occasions, that no religious reformation can ever be
effected by little and little through the progressive
influence of intellectual cultivation, though it may
thereby be accelerated and prepared for. Even when
so much inflammable matter has accumulated in the
intellectual atmosphere, the spark must still be thrown
into it that is to set it in a blaze.
3*

50 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
The case was similar at the time of the Reforma
tion, but with this difference ; that then for the first
time appeared the only medium through which- Chris
tianity could be resuscitated, viz., a general extension
of religious knowledge at once active and clear. In
genious men can generally combine that pre-existing
matter with their own view of the subject, and adapt
their measures to it ; and this occurred as well at the
period of which we are speaking as in the history of
Romanism. For instance, all the three contending
parties in the dispute about image-worship had, in point
of fact, correct notions about the living God and his
worship, though the question produced one of those
discrepancies that are grounded on the imperfection of
human nature. One party sought to raise itself men
tally to the Invisible, and disdained the use of an im
age, as something as far below the dignity of -the In
visible, as it tended to draw down the mind to mere
sense, and gave occasion to superstitious practices*
Another party would have the image to serve only as
a remembrancer of the Invisible. The third party,
with whom feeling predominated over reason and un-
* Even as early as the beginning of the age we are treating of there
aroae an opposer of image-worahip, in the person of a learned Roman,
Varro, who deduced the corruption of religion among the Romans from
the introduction of iconolatry. He asserted that those who first set up
images of the gods had removed all piety from the state, and caused the
spread of new errors. — Aug. de. Civ. Dei, Lib. iv. c. 13, Note 6. ->

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 51
derstanding, looked upon the image as glorified by the
Invisible whom they felt to be there present ; and
therefore in that image they worshipped the unseen
Deity that resided in it. But there was then (as there
always is) this disadvantage attending the use of sym
bols and types, that the common people forgot the
invisible original in his image, and lost sight of him
altogether in the contemplation of his external symbol;
whilst very few paid any attention to the image of God
in the heart of man, and the revelation he makes of
himself, in the business of life.
But now, in how strong a contrast to this religion
(connected as it was with so many dazzling symbols
and images addressed to the mind as well as the
senses) must Christianity have appeared, revealing
only the Invisible One in his original purity, and re
jecting every other image, every other temple than
that which exists in the heart of man ! " Though half
naked themselves," says Caecilius of the Christians, (in
Minucius Felix,) " they despise the pomp and purple
of the priests. Why have they no altars, no temples,
no recognized images ?"
Those more intellectual men, above mentioned,
certainly declared that all external rites, all images
and symbols, were unprofitable without a knowledge
of the truth ; but still they considered them to be ne
cessary in order to lead men to the truth, and as means

52 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
of purification, through which men became susceptible
of the influence of the gods. It was indeed acknow
ledged that " it was not external, symbolical rites, nor
the shorn head and linen dress, that made the priest of
Isis." It was asserted that the inquiry after, the truth
was something more holy than all the acts of absti
nence and temple- worship ; yet all traditionary prac
tices were looked- upon as holy, and of undeniable au
thority, and so much the more so at a time when such
zealous efforts were made to call back religion again
to the concerns of life, and to defend its influence over
individuals against, the generalizations of the' philoso
phers — that which was old and established against the
attacks of infidelity. The priest, was considered as
alone and exclusively dedicated to the service of the
gods ; he was distinguished from all other men by out
ward dress, by solemn, symbolical acts, by withdraw-
ing himself into the temple, by the performance* of
certain rites there, and by abstinence from certain
kinds of food ; and all this was connected, by means
of symbolic expositions, with his destination as one
exclusively devoted to the knowledge and service of
the Godhead. f
At a time when these notions were spreading, and
would naturally mix themselves even with Christianity
in its early development ; when men were seeking,
* AarpeTai. t Compare especially Plut. de Iside et Osiride.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 53
with ardent longing, for the lost connection with
Heaven, and for new revelations of its will ; when
practices which were adopted by individuals with a
purely intellectual view, became superstitious observ
ances with the vulgar ; — St. Paul wrote to the Colos
sians,* exhorting them to beware lest any man should
seduce them by merely human philosophy not founded
upon Christ, in whom alone they had all the fulness of
the Godhead revealed ; and reminding them, that as
Christ had conquered for them all evil and all opposing
powers, they were now exalted, through him, above
that which was visible, and were made free to live to
him in faith only. " Let no man, therefore, judge you
as to any kind of meat or drink, or in respect of a
holy-day." — " Let no man triumph over your liberty
by enforcing external acts of humility, and worship
ping of higher spirits ; prying into things which he
hath never seen, in the empty pride of a mind set only
upon the externals of religion."
At a subsequent date, near the end of the second
century, when Christianity had now spread among a
larger humber and a greater variety of men, (and had
therefore been also mixed up with various human ima
ginations,) Tertullian asserted that, properly speaking,
all Christians are priests, and all, by virtue of that
* Coloss. ii. 8-18. Here, as elsewhere, I give St. Paul's words ac- ^
cording to Dr. Neander's version or paraphrase —Translator.

54 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
priesthood, had a right to administer baptism ¦; because
what all had received in the same way might also -be
imparted in the same manner by them to others.* And
the consciousness of possessing this priestly dignity
was so general and so strong among Christians, that
the laity sometimes enforced it in opposition to the
views and claims of the clergy, who had begun to look
upon themselves as a peculiarly distinct order, devoted
to God's service. Therefore Tertullian remarksj-—
" When we would exalt ourselves, and bear ourselves
haughtily towards the clergy, then we say, We are all
one and alike,% being all of us priests ; for Christ hath
made us all priests before God and his Father."
When the Montanists of that day wished to estab
lish regular fasts and ascetic practices among Chris
tians, this spirit of Christian freedom rose up in oppo
sition. The Christians found fault with this as "a
mixture of heathen superstition with Christianity ;
whereas the free Christian faith was not at all bound
to the rules of abstinence prescribed in the Mosaic
law ; nor, according to the teaching of the Bible, could
a man be defiled by any thing external to himself;
moreover the Lord had prescribed no such fasting, no
* See Tertullian de Baptismo.
t De Monogam. u. 12, p. 581, Edit. Bas.
t In the Latin (as well as the German, Sind wir alle eins) it is more
strong, Unum omnes sumua. See Bishop Kaye on Eccles. Hist, of the
second and third Centuries. — Translator.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 55'
abstinence from meats, but rather abstinence from evil
and from the works of legal righteousness.*
The external observances of the Christian religion,
from their being both few and simple, were contrasted
by the dazzling worship of the heathens ; wherefore
Tertullian (after speaking of the simple rite of bap
tism, as offering nothing striking or glittering to the
senses, and liable to be despised on that very account)
remarked that, on the contrary, the festivities and mys
teries of heathenism procured for it both belief and
respect by its processions, its preparatory rites, and its
large expenditure.! Christianity at that time must
have made some such an appearance in relation to the
public heathen-worship, as certain sects that affected
to revive the pure spirituality of Christianity, presented
in comparison with the dominant Church of the mid
dle ages.
As at that time every one, who denied the being,
the agency, and the revelations of the gods (as they
were traditionally taught in the popular religion) was
generally called an atheist,J so Christianity itself be
came an object of hatred under the name of atheism.
A religion directed purely to the Invisible, without any

* De Jejun. advers. Psychic, p. 771.
t De Baptism, u. 1.
t " One God ia as good aa none." " Unus Deus nullus est," says the
Emperor Hadrian in Flavius Vopiscus Saturnin, c. ii. N. 4.

56 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
pomp of worship to attract the eye, blended with no
national custom, connected with no peculiar class of
citizens ; a religion which bore upon it no character or
mark of exclusive nationality, but claimed to produce
- a perfectly new creation in all who received it, and to
be the religion of the human race ; — such a fact as this
was something that had never been thought or heard
of. Judaism, therefore, was more esteemed becau§e it
was the religion of a distinct people, and quite pecu
liar to them, being interwoven with their political con
stitution, and combined with an external ceremonial
worship. " Even the Jews,", says Caecilius, " a wretch
ed people as they are, and separate from all other na
tions, certainly worship but one God ; yet they do it
openly, they ,do it in temples, they do it with altars,
sacrifices, and ceremonies." Celsus, the opponent of
Christianity, speaks thus :* " The Jews, as a distinct
self-subsisting people, had a national code of laws
which they also faithfully observed ; their religion,
such as it was, was the religion of their country ; and
in that respect they acted like all other men, who have
continued to follow the institutions of their country,
of whatever kind they may be. And this appears a
useful practice, not only because the individual is
bound to comply with the laws prescribed by the na
tion ; but also, inasmuch as it is probable that at the
* Origen c. Celsum, Book v.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 57
beginning of the world the different portions of the
earth were allotted to different heavenly superintend
ents, under whose separate government those nations
were respectively placed, it would clearly be a crime
to do away with regulations which originally proceed
ed from them.*
The idea of the infinite perfectibility of nations
and of individuals is quite peculiar to monotheism,
which recognizes in men the image of the all-compris
ing Deity ; so that it prescribes also one mental train
ing for men, one system of religion and morality, to
which all may be brought by education. The Poly-
theist imagines the ideal perfection of individual vir
tues and faculties to be personified in individual gods ;
and therefore he sees in every human being and in
every nation the image of some god, of whom it is a
manifestation, and to whose guidance they are subject.
He sees also a decided moral and intellectual charac
ter .imparted to each nation from which it cannot
depart, and therefore esteems the different forms of
national religion as revelations from that national god,
completely blended with the distinguishing character
and peculiar social institutions of the particular nation.
Men hated therefore in the Jews only " the presump
tuous spirit and barbarian self-conceit," with which
they excluded all other gods, and declared their own
* See Appendix IV.

58 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
religion the only one, their God as the only God;
while this "mixture of pride and rudeness" was
thought to express itself in all their demeanor. The
Romans, on the contrary, destined as they were by
Heaven to rule over all other nations, for that very
reason honored the gods of all nations, and received
them all in a friendly spirit. " We see," says Caecil
ius, " that whilst all nations and kingdoms have their
- national worship and honor their respective gods, the
Romans respect the gods of all the others, just as their
power and authority have reached the compass of the
whole world. They search out every where these
foreign gods, and adopt them for their own ; nay, they
have even erected altars to the unknown gods and to
the infernal deities."
Christianity therefore, the extension of which had
been promoted by the ruin of established institutions,
was generally thought to have a tendency to cause the
decay of states because it attached itself to none in
particular ; not to mention, that from the close con
nection of religion with conventional forms, a contest
with the one must have involved it in a contest with
the other. Christianity at once placed itself in a dif
ferent position, in regard to human life, from the pre
existing religions, which were so interwoven there
with and so closely related to all its circumstances.
Christianity, on the contrary, looked upon this mortal

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 59
life not as the object, but only as the means ; bestowed
upon all a relation "to another and an unseen world,
and taught an exalted, perfect morality, far above all
human laws, to which men were then first called upon
to conform their lives : this perfect moral code, and
the direction which it gave to men's minds towards
interests out of and above this lower world, appeared
to suppress all zeal for temporal concerns, all care for
the present life, and all love for their father-land.
Christians therefore were spoken of as a class of per
sons quite unfit for the intercourse of social life ;* as
men who shunned the light, concealing themselves in
their dark corners, dumb as soon as they are seen in
public, talkative in their private haunts ;f who express
with unbounded freedom their disapprobation of the
present state of things. J The Romans delighted to
speak of Rome as the Everlasting City, but the Chris
tians announced to them the coming destruction of the
whole world, which was only delayed by the exist
ence of the Roman empire, the last of all successive
empires .
To these causes of disagreement were added still
* Homines infructuosos in negotiis. TertuU. Apolog. p. 883. Edit.
Bas. t Latebrosa et lucifugax natio,in publicum muta, in angulus garrula.
Ceecilius apud Minuc. Pel.
X Quibus- praesentia semper tempora cum enormi libertate displicent.
Flavii Vopisc. vita Saturnin. i.. 1,

60 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
more points in the character and genius of Christi
anity, in which it differed, both theoretically and prac
tically, from the mode of thought till then universally
received. Those who at that time (e. g. the Platon
ists) made an esoteric and exoteric revelation the
basis of their philosophy, conceived the notion (among
external sources of revelation) of a stirring up of the
Divine Spirit in the inward man, varying according to
the different necessities of individuals. Plutarch*
therefore calls the collected mass of the various tra
ditions and revelations,! the materials of that philoso
phy which had for its object the teaching of divine
things. J According, to their ideas, so-called mysteries
were only such to the unitiated ; but whosoever had
his understanding opened to the divine influence
within him, could arrive at an adequate knowledge of
these symbols and revelations by following the impres
sions made -by them on his mind. But the idea of a
revelation, confined within itself, perfectly new and far
surpassing man's ordinary means of information (of
which man might perhaps conceive the necessity, but
which, from the defect adhering to his actual acquaint
ance with the subject, he could not adequately com
prehend,) the very idea of a revelation so decided in
its character was foreign from the existing philoso-
* De defect. Orac. c. 2. + 'Inropiap. { QeoXoyidv.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 61
phy.* It gave, however, a new direction to the philo
sophic mind, and produced what we may call " the
critique, or inquiry into the powers of the human un
derstanding in relation to a higher kind of knowledge."
With the ancients philosophy had not generally
proceeded from religion (as among Christians it pro
ceeded from the inquiry into the capacities of man's
understanding iri regard to revelation), but rather from
the observation of nature. Men conceived therefore
of Infinity^ that it was a predicate of matter, or rather
its remaining essence, after the abstraction of all defi
nite organization and bodily shape ; in short, as some
thing entirely defective and without form, which could
not be comprehended by the human intellect, but could
be arrived at only by a Xoyog vo&og-X Therefore it
was that to this Infinity (thus arrived at by the ab
straction of all definite forms) men always attached
the idea of a chaos and a blind necessity, and carefully
removed the notion from God§ and divine things.
This unorganized and shapeless essence, which was
discovered by analyzing the notion of the corporeal
world, || could by no process be combined with the idea
* See Appendix V.
t "A-ITEipOV.
X Illegitimate reasoning, \oyns for \oympo.. — Translator.
fj Compare Plut. de Defec. Orac. c. 24 — 30.
|| On the one side was the amipw, on the other the ir.pa.ra with in
which definite bodies exist.

62 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
of the Deity ; it was therefore imagined to be that
which served as a basis for the creation, and itself to
have been first reduced to an organized, corporeal state
by means of that same creation.*
As the notion of a Being incomprehensible to man
was foreign from the then existing mode of thought, so
also was the idea of an incipient creation, and the
commencement of time. To this we must add another
and more practical difference in the estimate of things.
The natural man seeks and recognizes the Divine in
the great and the extraordinary. In the regular mo
tions of the planets, in the course of the universe, (on
the whole ever uniform and consistent), he sees the
manifestation of a Mind, free as to any restraint of
matter, yet directing itself according to unchangeable
laws ; while, on the contrary, the nature of man every
where exhibits to him the traces of dependence and
decay. He recognizes the universe as the image of
God, and man, next in order, as an image and portion
of the universe.
Through the announcement of an Incarnate God
the aspect of things was completely changed. The
close connection between God and -man was here ex
hibited by representing the latter as the image chosen
for the manifestation of the former : he thus appeared
as the centre of creation, to which every thing else
* See Appendix VI.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 63
was related. Caecilius therefore, in Minucius Felix,
speaks thus against the Christians : " They threaten
destruction to the entire world and all the stars, as if
the divine order, of Nature, which is founded upon
eternal laws, could be disturbed. And, not content
with this strange fancy, they compose old wives' fa
bles ; they assert that they return again to life after
their bodies have returned to the dust. O ! the twofold
insanity — to announce the destruction of the heavens
and the stars, which we leave behind us just as we
found them ! and to promise immortality to us who die
as we were born ! No wonder then they so abomi
nate the burning of the dead." In the same manner
also Celsus* derides the Christian doctrine, that all
things were created for the sake of men : " All things
(he saysf ) were created in order that the world might
exist, as God's work, complete in all respects ; the
whole is the object of God's care ; his providence never
leaves it; nor does it ever become .worse. God will
never recall it to himself, and he is no more angry with
it on account of men, than on account of the brutes."
The announced advent of the Son of God, and the
whole character of his life upon earth, gave every
where a new direction to the moral and religious mind
of men, as well as their moral and aesthetic estimate of
things'; since the idea of the Divine nature " in the
* Lib. iv. Orig. c. 77. t Ibid. c. 99.

64 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
form of a servant" would never originate from the
natural man.* The feeling of constraint, accompa
nied by the consciousness of a higher power that lies
confined within him, drives him to idealize for himself.
He seeks for and invents gods, who reveal themselves
in perfect form, surrounded with light and splendor^
and free from the defects and constraint under which
frail human nature labors. His heroes display im
mense, superhuman strength, which triumphs alike over
savage nature and the violence of godless men.
The idea of divine dignity combined, with humility
and human weakness, of power displayed in suffering,
is one which man's invention never produced. St.
Paul therefore had good reason for remarking (what
indeed is found to be true at all times), that " Christ
crucified was to the heathen foolishness ;" and there
fore it was that " the worshippers of a dead and cruci
fied Master" were so despised by the heathen. The
change, however, produced thereby in the moral views
' of society extended to all the concerns of life. Meek
ness coupled with strength, power united with endur
ance, now became the highest form of virtue ; they
were alike honored in the martyrs. Their sufferings
and death (amidst torments that were shocking to
the senses) were celebrated as a victory. All possible
information respecting them was carefully collected,
* See Appendix VII.

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 65
as well as the remains of those bodies through which
they had displayed such superhuman energy. Meet
ings were held on the anniversary of their suffering,
which was spoken of over their tombs as their proper
birth-day ;* nay, they were still cofisidered as parta
kers in the Communion of the Lord's Supper, in proof
that, in the Lord, Christians were still united with those
who died for him. Hence, too, originated the care
which Christians immediately bestowed upon their
sepulchres ; so that Tertullian, as early as the end of
the second century, remarks, that the Christians ex
pended more money in Arabian frankincense than the
heathens did in the religious service of their gods.f
But let us now also view the other side of the pic
ture, and see how much this contrast of Christianity
with the prevailing modes of moral and philosophical
thought contributed to the wider spread of Christ's re
ligion. A notion had been generally adopted among
the educated classes, that all religions were revelations
of a divine mediatorial Mind, presented under various
human forms, and causing more or less trouble to the
Deity. J- This Eclecticism gave man no certainty, as
he was obliged first of all to find out the Deity from
amidst this admixture with its human representatives.
Men" therefore, being prepared by this idea for the re
ception of a religion which could serve as a common
* Dies natalitios martyrum. t Apolog. p. 884.
X See Appendix VIII.
4

66 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
centre to all other religions, found this now in Chris
tianity. They recognized here the truth and the Di
vine Mind in the purity and completeness of its reve
lations. From this elevation they looked back upon
all other forms of philosophy and religion, and were
pleased at finding therein traces and manifestations
(however isolated and detached) of that affinity of the
Godhead to man which they had now found revealed
in its purity and perfection. " Every one," says Justin
Martyr, in the second century, who had himself gone
over from the Platonic philosophy to Christianity, —
" every one who recognizes in particular revelations of
the Divine Word (of which the seed exists in all men)
the truth which is allied thereto, teacheth correctly;
but inasmuch as the philosophers have contradicted
each other on the weightiest subjects, they have proved
thereby that they are not in possession of sound, irre
futable knowledge ; a blessing which belongs to all of
us who are Christians ; and all are Christians who have
lived and are now living agreeably to the Divine
Word." The Platonic philosophy made men acquainted
with the sublimity of the Divine nature, and its affin
ity to the mind of man ; it excited in them a feeling of
the Godlike, an elevating enthusiasm and an ardent
longing to explore beyond the limits of actual life;
hence arose the inclination to the magic art. To rest
less man, thus longing after arid seeking for the truth,

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 67
and painfully sensible of the defective, limited powers
of human nature, Christianity pointed out a way to
God by the practice of humility ; and whilst it an
nounced to him the revelation of God in the nature of
man, it inspired him by that belief with a confidence
that, being united with God, he might, even in that re
stricted state, exhibit the features of a divine race. It
showed to him the perfection of virtue expressed
amidst the restrictions of humanity ; and thereby
taught him to strive after his high destination, not in
the infinity which lay beyond, but within the compass
of those very restrictions. St. Augustine felt all this,
when burning with thirst for truth and virtue, he
passed, after long vacillation, from the new Platonic
philosophy to the Christian faith : " That the Eternal
Son of God* (he says) remains unchangeably exalted,
before and beyond all time ; that the souls of men re
ceive all their happiness from his fulness ; and that they
are renewed in wisdom by their union with the wis
dom that ajudeth eternally in him : — all this I learnt in
that philosophy ,* but that this Son of God had come
down to the human race as his own possession, and
that he had given, to all who receive and believe in
him, power to become the sons of God -.—this I found
not there ; for Thou hast hidden these things from the
wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes, in or
der that those who labor and are heavy-laden may
."-*-' * Confess. Lib. vii. c. 8 — 21.

68 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO
come unto him, and He may give them strength." He
says in another place, " It is one thing to look down
from a wooded height upon the abode of peace, while,
unable to find the way that leads to it, you strive in
vain to pass through pathless tracts ; it is another thing
to have the way that leads thither made passable and
safe through the victory of our heavenly Leader.'^
At a time of general complication, confusion, and
approaching dissolution of human institutions, men had
the greatest need of, and were most alfve to, the im
pressions of a religion, which raised them above all
mere visible forms ; confining itself to no national and
political forms, like all other religions ; but uniting all
men of all nations in one common faith, it formed a
character till then quite new, advancing claims to uni
versal acceptance, independent of any peculiar nation
ality. They were no longer the times of a free and
happy social life ; liberty and patriotism could no lon
ger produce heroic virtues ; it was now seen how far
the influence of these human motives extended. Who
ever then sought for the ideal perfection of the olden
time (when men displayed themselves in the fulness of
natural strength abandoned to its own discretion) must
have been filled with hatred for his fellow-men from
the contrast presented by actual life, or else have sunk
under the sense of degradation. Every thing seemed
to slacken the efforts of the human mind, and tended

THE AGE IN WHICH IT APPEARED. 69
to reduce it to a servile state. Self-indulgence,*
empty, pampered and aesthetic, was opposed to any
real change of heart ; all ideas of what is good and no
ble were reduced to a question of taste ; men of rank
made honor consist in the possession of busts that
most resembled the sages of antiquity ; they had the
lofty sentiments of the ancients on their lips, and ex
tolled with high-sounding words the virtues of ancient
heroes. This outside and assumed show contented
that effeminate generation ; satisfied with glossing over
and concealing from others (perhaps, for the time, even
from themselves) their real weakness, they yet felt
some degree of shame in society, possibly even by
themselves. They exerted not, however, the least en
ergy of will to bring their lives in the smalfest degree
into harmony with this external appearance. f
It was at this period of man's history that a reli
gion appeared which held out to admiration no glit
tering ideal to dazzle the imagination or allure the
senses of men, but showed them a pattern of virtue
well calculated to impel their hearts to copy it, and to
which they were both required and enabled to conform
their lives. And what a religion ! Whilst it, at first,
called every man to a knowledge of himself, and a con
sciousness of his total corruption, it at the same time
raised in him also a consciousness of dignity ; it re
quired no display of supposed divine relations in order
* See Persius, Sat. I. t See Juvenal, Sat. II.

70 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION, ETC.
to reveal itself to him ; it could present itself to him
equally in all the circumstances of life, however lim
ited. It gave man an elevated feeling that could
be crushed by no human despotism, because it was
grounded upon something which can neither be con
strained or advanced by man ; in short, it offered an
appropriate remedy for all the moral diseases of the
age, a consolation adapted to all its calamities. The
divine power of this religion was shown in the daily
life of individuals, and through their example it drew
others to accept it. " We can show you," says Justin
Martyr, in the second century, " many amongst us,
who from having been violent and tyrannical, have be
come quite different characters : men, who were con
quered by the force of example, while they beheld the
all-enduring patience of their neighbors, or the extra
ordinary forbearance of their travelling companions in
submitting to injury, or in any other way became ac
quainted with Christians in the ordinary intercourse of
life." This religion inspired men with a new and dif
ferent sort of heroism, a spirit which showed itself in
suffering as well as in action ; which, as it was not
kindled by the existing circumstances of life, by the
love of liberty or fame, so neither could it be suppressed
or extinguished by bonds and slavery ; nay, it exhibited
to an enervated age tranquillity of soul amidst the
acutest tortures.

JULIAN S EDUCATION. 71

SECTION II.
Julian's education^ and the formation of his character,
till his elevation to the imperial throne.
Julian, son of Constantius, a brother of the emperor
Constantine, and of Basilina, daughter of an Imperial
Lieutenant, already in his sixth year, saw the blood of
the individuals who were nearest and dearest to him
shed by violence. After the death of the emperor
Constantine in the year of our Lord 337, almost all
the members of the imperial family, victims of suspi
cion and distrust, were murdered by the soldiers, in a
tumultuous excitement (as it was said), but through
the secret order of the emperor Constantius, who be
lieved that he could by that means only secure the
possession of his throne. Amongst these victims Ju
lian lost his father and his eldest brother ; his second
brother, Gallus, was only saved from instant death by
a dangerous illness, and himself by his tender years.
Abandoned by those who might have paid him more
strict attention* (since his mother had been taken
from him a few days after his birth), his education was
intrusted to ' an aged tutor, Mardonius, an hereditary
slave of his mother's family, whom his grandfather had
* See Julian's Misopogan, p. 351, 53. Orat. ad Salust. p. 241.
Socrat. 3. 1. Libanius in Jul. necem.

72 julian's education, and
brought up and educated, in order to instruct his
mother in elegant literature by the study of the ancient
poets. Through long-standing attachment, therefore,
he devoted himself to Julian, who always makes men
tion of him with affectionate remembrance.
The young Prince was brought up in perfect re
tirement, so that he excited no suspicion, and remained
at a distance from the burthensome ceremonies of the
court. His instructor sought to awaken in him a sense
of the great and the noble through the poetry of Ho
mer, and examples taken from ancient history, and
thus confirmed his mind in that direction to which also
it was naturally inclined. For there was implanted in
him by nature a longing after things above, that strove
to mount into the heavens beyond the limits of actual
life. This bias discovered itself in little but striking
traits in his yet undeveloped childhood.f " From my
earliest age," he said of himself, " a powerful attach
ment to the splendor of the God of the Sun (Helios)
was implanted in me ; the appearance of the heavenly
light used to carry me so entirely out of myself, even
in my childhood, that I not only strove to look upon it
with a steady eye, but often went out into the open air
on bright, cloudless nights, and, careless of aught else,
I gazed in admiration on the beauty of the starry
heavens, without thinking of myself, without hearing
what was said to me ; so that I was already often taken
* See his Hymn, in solem. p. 130. See Appendix IX.

FORMATION OP HIS CHARACTER. 73
for an astrologer before my beard was grown, and yet
no book upon the subject had ever fallen in my way ;
nay, I did not even know what the term meant. But
I could say much more than this, if I attempted to re
late how at such times I thought of the gods."
A person of Julian's powerful and elevated mind
could not be made torpid either from the depressing
and confined position in which he lived since his earli
est-childhood, or from the constant dangers from which
he had hitherto been saved, as it were, by accident.
His longing after liberty and his pursuit of the extra
ordinary must have been the more excited by the con
trast of his life with the bias of his disposition ; the
same may be said of the inclination which had arisen
within him, of seeking out of the realities of life what
he could not find within it. Great pains were taken to
bring him up in the Christian faith, and to guard him
from the contagion of heathenism. With this view he
was not allowed'to attend the rhetoric school of Liba-
nius, who had just commenced teaching at Constanti-.
nople, and was in the highest reputation.* Another
rhetorician of less ability was appointed as his instruc
tor ; a man who, though in his heart inclined to hea
thenism, maintained the appearance of being a zealous
Christian, and thereby gained the favor of the em
peror. About the year of our Lord 344, when Julian was
* Compare Liban. Panegyr. et Orat. de vita sua.
4*

74 julian's education, and
now in his thirteenth year, the suspicious Constantius
removed him and his brother Gallus (who soon after
the death of Constantine had sought for safety in
flight) to 6ne of his estates, called Macellum, in the
remote and mountainous province of Cappadocia. In
this place they lived together for six years,* in a state,
as Julian has described it, of splendid slavery, guarded
on all sides and surrounded by persons who strove to
bring them up in humble obedience to the emperor.
Indeed, great pains were taken to reconcile them to
him ; they were often assured that he had been in
duced, against his will, to consent to the murder of
their relations, partly from having been deceived, and
partly through the violence of his riotous troops ;• that
he regretted the deed, and looked upon his childless
state, as well as his ill success in the Persian war, as a
punishment for his crime. This statement might really
have been well grounded, and this momentary con
trition might probably have procured fetter treatment
for the two brothers.
Meanwhile the young princes were watched by
ecclesiastics, who endeavored to fix them in the Chris
tian faith ; but probably they were not themselves
thoroughly imbued with the true spirit of Christianity ;
for men of this sort were not to be found in the ser
vice of the court. As Julian had by nature a strong
bias towards heavenly things, and eagerly followed all
* See Appendix X.

FORMATION OF HIS CHARACTER. 75
the impressions that were made upon his youthful
mind, he now became zealous for the Christian wor
ship, and abhorred heathenism. The reverence at j
that time generally paid to martyrs had perhaps some
thing in it which flattered his fancy ; he conducted
himself as their devout admirer ; he engaged, in emu
lation of his brother, in the labor of erecting a chapel
over the grave of a martyr, whose memory was there
honored : he frequently attended the churches, and
even held the appointment of a reader* of the Holy
Scriptures. His love for the old Greek poets, and for
the .Greek literature in general, still continued ; anditi
Cappadocia (where the school of Origen, which he ^
that literature in the highest esteem, was the prevail
ing theological party) he could easily find means, even
through the Christian clergy, of gratifying his inclina
tion. He procured Greek books for transcription,
from the well -filled library of Georgef of Cappadocia,
who had been forcibly installed by the Arian party as
Bishop of Alexandria in place of St. Athanasius. J
At the end of this six-year's residence in Cappa
docia both the brothers were recalled to Constantino
ple by the emperor, whose suspicions were for some
time appeased. Gall us was introduced at court, and
Julian, having obtained permission to follow his incli
nation, attended with great diligence the schools of the
* Lector, or Anagnostes.
t The tutelar saint of England. X See Socrates, ii. 14.

76 julian's education, and
Greek literature, and courted the society of the most
celebrated scholars who then resided there.* Nio-
cles,f -a Lacedaemonian jurist, a friend of Libanius,
and well acquainted with the ancient philosophy,
explained to him Homer and the other old poets.
The philosophical, allegorical mode of exposition was
well adapted to excite Julian's ardent imagination,
and stimulate his mind in the investigation of hidden
truth. His enthusiasm and talents collected so many
persons about him, that the suspicion of the emperor,
who was on the point of leaving Constantinople in
order to march an army westward against Magnen-
tius, was excited afresh. Not thinking it safe there
fore to leave him alone in Constantinople, he sent him
to Nicomedia in Bithynia, a city of less notoriety, but
a flourishing seat of learning, that he might there fol
low up his inclination for study.
About this time (a. d. 351) the emperor advanced
Gallus, Julian's brother, to the rank of Caesar. In the
meanwhile, Libanius, the enthusiastic supporter of the
new Platonic ideas of religion, had been expelled from
Constantinople by his enemies among the Sophists of
the place, and at length entered into the service of the
city of Nicomedia. Julian, before his departure from
Constantinople, had promised his Christian instructors
upon his oath never to attend the lectures of this man,
* See Julian, Ep. 9, p. 377.
t See Socrat. loe. cit. — Libanius (Legat. ad Julian ) says of him ,
£t<Jws, elir.p ns, Tils '0/ji.pov yvoj/jiis rd dir6p^ijra.

formation of his character. '77
whose influence upon his religious views was so much
dreaded ; a prohibition which was calculated to excite
a distrust in Christianity in the mind of the ardent
youth, as well as the greater desire to become ac
quainted with these dreaded expositions, and such
formidable eloquence. He certainly kept faithfully to
his promise, yet at a considerable expense he caused
the daily lectures and discourses of the philosopher to
be secretly conveyed to him in Nicomedia, studied
them with great industry, and endeavored to model
himself in the art of speaking by that pattern. Hence
originated his steady attachment to Libanius, and also
the report that he had been his scholar.*
Up to this time Julian's devotion to Christianity*]* ;
was not mere simulation ;J yet, probably, from his j
constant study of the ancient poetry and history of |
Greece, and the natural activity of his mind, a longing »
had arisen for a religion which was better adapted to \
the ardor of his imagination, and afforded more occu- !
pation for his speculative bias. The theological con
troversies then prevailing were certainly far from
recommending Christianity to a mind like his, nor
could a religion that revealed the Godhead in the form
of a servant, attract a heart that was devoted to the
great, the extraordinary, and the showy. While he
was in this sort of temperature he heard some philoso-
* See Libanius, Legat. ad Julian.
t He was now 20 years old.— T. X See Appendix XI.

78 julian's education, and
phers discourse " concerning the origin and the nature
of the soul, its imprisonment and its liberation ; how it
was brought down to the earth, and by what means it
could be raised again ; as also concerning the nature
and operations of gods and demons." What doctrine
could have had more charms for Julian than that the
soul, derived from higher regions, was imprisoned in
the body as in a dungeon, and was set free from the
bands of matter by the kind assistance of the gods,
the authors of all that was great and exalted in human
ordinances, and who evidently revealed themselves in
their salutary influence upon men's souls and bodies ?
He now soon learnt how to interpret the dark sur
mises of his soul, as, from his early youth, he had
directed his eyes with a sort of Jonging to the sun ; he
felt that the god, Helios, to whom his soul belonged,
the god who conriected the visible with the invisible
world, had drawn him thither. He found here glitter-
ling symbols, rich materials for his ardent and pro
found imagination ; and mysteries, which did not, like
;those of Christianity, set limits to his speculations, but
jfound ample occupation for his mind and spirit in the
task of symbolical interpretation. He met not here
with suffering saints who had wrought nothing great
or remarkable in the world, but heroes who had dis
played extraordinary feats of strength, and whose
example kindled in him a desire for great exploits.
From the reputation already gained by Julian many

FORMATION OF HIS CHARACTER. 79
learned men and philosophers were induced lo visit
Nicomedia, to see the youth through whom they
hoped for the restoration of the ancient worship of the
gods, and to confirm him still more in the faith to
which he was already so well inclined.
The individual who made the greatest impression
on Julian was the philosopher Maximus,* whose phi
losophy was interwoven with theosophy and demonol-
ogy. He was a man who sought what was showy
and extraordinary, who eagerly searched into futurity,
and was given to the practice of magic. He was
exactly the person to exercise the greatest influence
on the ardent disposition of the Prince, struggling as it
already was to pass beyond the limits of this confined
existence. Predictions, for which the . then state of
society naturally afforded occasion, had been widely
spread among the heathen, that Christianity was soon
about to fall, and that a restorer of the ancient religion
should rule over the Roman empire. This of course
was made to point at Julian. The wonderful in
stances of providential care through which he had
been hitherto preserved in his struggle with dangers
and difficulties, connected, as they now were, with
these prophecies, raised in him the strongest convic
tion that he had been expressly sent into the world by
the gods to raise up again by their restored worship
the empire that had fallen away through the contempt
shown to the religion of his father-land.
* See Appendix XII.

80 Julian's education, and
His recent mode of life caused him to give a more
lively reception to this conviction, so that he hence
forth viewed all events that befell him in this feeling
and belief. From this period he became an enthusias
tic admirer of Polytheism, and made use of the Chris
tian religion (to which he had before earnestly attached
himself) only as a mask wherewith to conceal his real
opinions. Maximus, who himself had come to him
from Ephesus, induced him, probably by the represen
tation he gave him of the assemblage of philosophers
in Ionia, to go thither.* He previously obtained the
emperor's permission, who indeed gladly saw him
drawn off by scientific pursuits from engaging in
political schemes. His enthusiasm on these subjects
was there raised still higher by the most distinguished
philosophers of the age, in whose system philosophy
was completely amalgamated with the symbols of Poly
theism. The theosophist Chrysanthius contributed
most to this, who sought lo lead the mind of Julian
from the showyf promises of magic to profounder
notions of philosophy, and thereby to moderate the
impetuosity of his nature. " He withdrew me (said
Julian at a later period) from all that was passionate
and irregular, and endeavored to make me sober*-
* Ammianus, 15, 2 ; Gregory Naz. Orat. i. Stilit ; Liban. Legat ad
Julian, p. 175 ; Sozom. v. 2, and the letter of Gallus to Julian, tes
tify to thia journey of Julian to Asia Minor, and especially to Ionia.
t That Julian did not love mere show, like Maximus, and was in
general of a soberer cast, was proved by his subsequent proceedings.

FORMATION OF HIS CHARACTER. 81
minded; he taught me above all things to exercise
virtue, and to consider the gods as the sources of all
good." The rumor of Julian's sentiments rapidly spread
among the heathens, who formed new hopes, collected
more predictions, and privately sacrificed and prayed
to the gods for his preservation. Even his brother
Gallus, who was staying in the neighboring parts of
Asia, was disturbed by the report ; until the ecclesias
tic Aetius* brought him intelligence that he (Julian)
still frequently attended the churches, and showed
himself a zealous worshipper at the tombs of the mar
tyrs. Gallus upon this exhorted him earnestly to
remain true to the Christian faith, f After Julian had
thus enjoyed the privilege of living agreeably to his
own inclinations for about four years, this pleasure
was again disturbed by an event of a most painful
kind. His only remaining brother, Gallus, (who had
* This Aetius was originally a physician at Antioch ;. during the
Arian controversies he applied the Dialectica of Aristotle, and the Cate
gories in particular, to the doctrine of Christ's Godhead, and from thence
concluded that Christ was not truly God, because nothing could exist
between God and that which was created. He gained the friendship of
Gallus, who resided at Antioch, and through his patronage he became
deacon ; but after the murder of Gallus he was, on a charge of heresy as
well as his connection with him, deposed and banished. Julian, who
had esteemed and loved him, partly as his brother's friend, partly as his
own, and. partly also as a learned man (for Aetius waa familiar with the
Aristotelic philosophy), now treated him with more respect than any
other eccleaiastic. See Julian. Epist. 31, Book v. and Sozom. iii. 15 ;
iv. 24 ; v. 5.
t See Epist. 64.

82 julian's education, and
indeed by his violent* temper made himself many ene
mies, and excited many suspicions against himself,)
was taken from hiin, a. d. 354, by him who had
already shed the blood of so many of his relations, and
who extended the same suspicious spirit to Julian also
with many other persons connected with Gallus.
From his journey from Nicomedia into Ionia, his
brother's neighborhood, the emperor conceived a sus
picion of a secret understanding between them.f He
was conducted, under strict guard, from Ionia to Italy,
* This ia much too lenient a statement of the conduct and character
of the weak and cruel Gallus, urged on as he was by his wife Constan-
tina, who (as Gibbon says) is described not aa a woman but as an infer
nal fury.— T.
t We may draw this conclusion by comparing Ammianus loe. cit. ;
Julian's Epist. ad Athen.; and Libanius in Juliani necem. Julian's
epistle is a special authority for thia part of his biography. See his
Works, p. 272, for his seven months' surveillance, six of which he spent
at Milan, in the same city with the Emperor ; his departure thence for
Ionia, p. 273 ; his recall from thence, p. 274 ; his removal to Greece,
thence again to Milan, where he for the first time met with Eusebia.
The context proves that the relation of his dream and his determination to
commit every thing to the gods, belongs to this period ; for it is clearly his
aim to relate how he had strength given him to endure the trial of living
with the murderer of his brother, e. g*. l.ravBa ^pi) p>) n-a^aXc'irai,, nus IMpw,
k. t. X.p.274. This leads him to speak of his sufferings on that account and
his prayer to the-gods. He then returns to the intention of his narrative,
viz. the means by which he obtained strength to accommodate himself to
all that befell him. That narrative begins thus, avvi/Sn Si n xal roiovrov.
Ammianus ia not very exact here (neither indeed did his proposed object
require it of him) : he does not distinguish between Julian's first and
second journey to Greece, and he speaks of the latter aa having hap
pened before the murder of Silvanus, which yet, according to Julian's
own testimony, preceded his second journey to Greece ; since it was not
till after he had come to Milan that Conatantius, after the death of Sil
van' :«. arrived there.

FORMATION OF HIS CHARACTER. 83
¦* * •
where Constantius then resided, and he spent seven
months in a state of the greatest anxiety. Closely
watched on all sides, and seeing death every moment
impending over him, he was at length delivered from
this oppressive imprisonment by the good services of
the empress Eusebia, who was favorably inclined to
wards him, and obtained permission for him to return
to his maternal estates in Ionia. The emperor, how
ever, who since the insurrection of Silvanus had be
come more jealously watchful, discovered a new cause
of suspicion : he recalled him therefore a second time,
but gave him permission, when he had now got as far
as Greece, to withdraw himself for a time to Athens.*
Here, in the society of the philosophers, priests, and
students, who were still assembled at the ancient seat .
of knowledge, he forgot all his misfortunes ; and here i
his spirit found that freedom, which the relations of |
life did not afford him, in his efforts after the godlike
and in the friendship of the gods, who always became
so much the more his friends, the more he felt himself I
to be deserted by men.
An imperial order however soon called him away
again from this peaceful abode to the emperor and to
Milan. With burning tears he left a city that had be
come so dear to him, to go probably to encounter death.
He raised- his hands in prayer to the consecrated cit-
* This was probably done because he was himself occupied by the
commotions excited by Silvanus.

84 julian's education, and
adel of Minerva, and besought her to protect her de
voted servant, and not betray him or allow him to die
even in Athens. And he evidently believed that he
experienced her protection throughout life, and that
she was ever with him and delivered him from all the
critical circumstances in which he afterwards found
**>
himself. On his arrival at Milan the emperor was ab
sent in consequence of the insurrection of Silvanus ;
but the empress, Eusebia, sent many friendly messages
to him through one of her eunuchs, and hinted to him
that he need only transmit to her in confidence a writ
ten statement of his wishes. Tired out with the op
pressive anxiety of his position, he wrote a letter, in
which he begged and adjured her to get him permission'
to return home as soon as possible. It occurred to him
however afterwards, how dangerous it might be for
him to write a letter to the empress ; and, doubting
what he ought to do, he begged of the gods to reveal
to him that night whether he should send the letter or
not. He was assured in a dream, that in case he did
so a most cruel death awaited him. He therefore
withheld the letter, and determined, from that moment,
to render himself without fear or anxiety to the gods ;
since man (he said to himself) surveys only the present
moment, but the wisdom of the gods, on the contrary,
surveys all things ; and they alone can reveal to men
as well as bring to pass, always what is best. " Thou
art ready ( said he again to himself) to flatter and do

FORMATION OF HIS CHARACTER. 85
homage out of the fear of death, when thou mayest
throw off all trouble from thyself, and transfer all care
for thee to the gods." He determined therefore to
follow his own notions of duty as well as he could, but
to resign his fate wholly to the gods ; to strive after
nothing in the world as a matter of anxiety, but to- re
ceive with confidence what they were pleased to grant
to him. With this feeling of pious resignation to the
Divine Will, he submitted (painful as it was to the
feelings of his heart) to dwell under the same roof with
the murderer of his nearest relations, when the em
peror, whose snare seemed to threaten him with death,
summoned him to the palace, on his return from the
murder of Silvanus.
At length, through the entreaties of Eusebia, he
was released from the fetters of a fife at court, a life
so repulsive to his free and noble spirit that hated
every thing that was effeminate, and he obtained per
mission to return to his beloved Athens. Here he once
more lived, engaged in the study of ancient science
and art, and the rites of the ancient religion. He was
initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and formed con
nections with young men who were studying Greek
literature there with him, some of whom afterwards
went over from those studies to that of theology, and
became distinguished teachers in the Christian church,
as Basil of Caesarea and Gregory* of Nazianzus. The
* I have ventured here to read Gregorius instead of Georgius, as it
is in the original. — T-

86 julian's education, and
latter* even then remarked in Julian that enthusiasm
for the polytheistic religion, which, though he endea
vored to conceal it, expressed itself in all that he did.
When he had now spent several rrionths so agreea
bly to his own inclination, he was (a. d. 356, set. 25)
recalled by the emperor, much against his will ; and
he reluctantly sacrificed his liberty to a. station of
honor through which he was drawn again into a spe
cies of captivity. Constantius, who wanted help un
der the simultaneous pressure ofthe Persian and Gallic
wars, nominated him to the dignity of Caesar, on the
advice of Eusebia, who was partially inclined towards
Julian. He could now even far less than in his former
private life, venture to practise openly the worship of
the gods of Greece, since he was still carefully watched
on all sides, and his connection with the heathen party
was still more dreaded. Still in the midst of his un
settled life among the rude Gallic nations and the wars
with which he was occupied, he continued to study
with the same enthusiasm the works of the ancient
philosophers and poets, and (what was in his opinion
completely connected therewith) the mysteries of the
old religion ; nay, in his mode of life he followed its
regulations wherever he could with safety, although he
still concealed his real sentiments under a show of
Christianity, and disclosed his genuine opinions only
to a chosen few whose ideas agreed with his own, and
on whose fidelity he could rely. The first person who
* Orat. Stel. ii.

FORMATION of his character. 87
entered into his religious views and encouraged him in
this, polytheistic worship was only a trusty servant,
though probably of a cultivated mind and a scholar, as
he was the superintendent of his library. The next
was an official person whom the emperor had placed
near him as his adviser for the purpose of watching
his movements. This person, however, in opposition
to that intention, became his devoted adherent, being
bound to him by the closest friendship that sprung from
similar modes of thinking, especially on religious sub
jects. He therefore incurred the suspicions of the em
peror, and was soon recalled. Julian was intimately
connected also with other Greek philosophers and scho
lars, as well as the physician Oribasius,* who sought
for indications of the future in predictions both old
and new, as well as by auspices, and endeavored to
encourage and cheer him under critical circumstances.
His nights were divided between the affairs of state
and his studies. As soon as he arose, before he pro
ceeded to the examination of public business, he prayed
* See Julian's Epist. ad Athen. p. 277. — By njeans of those felicitous
predictions of Oribasius a report was widely circulated among the heathen
that he was the means of elevating Julian to the imperial throne. See
Eunapius, Vit. Oribasii. That Sallust was devoted to heathenism we
learn from Socrates, iii. 19. " Not without the favor of the Muses (says
Julian in his consolatory addreaa to Sallust, Orat. 8) have we often sung
together of the plastic power, the juatice, and the intellect which con
ducta the transitory affairs of men." He also dedicated to him, at a
later time, several of his treatises on religious subjects, with a view of
making him acquainted with the mysteries of theology. See Orat. iv. de
Sole. p. 157.

88 julian's education, and
to Mercury, as the all-pervading* mind that spreads
every where and fosters the seed of life, and connects
the things of eternity with those of time. The happy
results, however, of his enterprises in Gaul excited
afresh the suspicion of the emperor, who thought he
could no longer in safety leave to his disposal so large
a force as that with which he had effected so much-;
he therefore, a. d. 360, recalled from him the greater
part of his troops. This order, however, was received
by the army, then* assembled at Paris, with universal
displeasure, and the soldiers with loud clamor sur
rounded the palace of the young Caesar. He, who had
formed a resolution to follow in all things the guidance
of the gods, fell upon his knees and prayed to Jupiter
that he would point out to him by an omen which way
he should proceed. When he thought he had disco
vered the expected sign he was still undecided, till he
was compelled by the army to accept the imperial
throne, and was proclaimed by the title of Augustus.
Not yet, however, fully determined, and musing
* Ammian. 16, 4. Occulte Mercurium supplicabat, quem mundi »e-
lociorem sensum esse, motum mentium suscitantem, theologica prodidere
doctrine. Mercury (as quotedljy Euaebius, Pr&par. Evangel, iii. 2) ia
explained by Porphyry to be the all-creating, truth-revealing mind. '0
W6yos irdvrutv irotririKos nal lppt]VEvriit6s. Jamblichus, de DTyster. c. 1, calla
Mercury the god who ia the common creative director of all human rea
son, from whom all our knowledge of divine things proceeds, whereverit
exista among men. It was therefore natural that the Christian teachers
found therein an analogy to Christ as the Aiyos in whom the Deity waa
revealed. So Justin, Apolog. ii. compares Christ as the Aiyos, the be
gotten Son of God, with Mercury as the A6yos irapa Qsov dyy.\riit6s.

FORMATION of his character. 89
over his plan of proceeding, he spent the winter at
Vienne in Gaul ; prophecies and dreams inspired him
with still greater hopes, yet he thought himself obliged,
in his uncertain position, to conceal his actual opin
ions, that he might not alienate from him the powerful
Christian party. "With this view he attended the
Christian churches on the festival of the Epiphany, the
6th of January. To the messengers of the emperor,
who promised him life and personal security, he ex
pressed* his sentiments by replying, " It was better
for him to intrust the care of his life to the gods than
to the sword of Constantius." As he returned (a. d.
361) from Gaul towards Constantinople, he made his
religious opinions more known upon his march, espe
cially in the cities of Greece, which still contained
many adherents of the ancient religion. In his dearly-
beloved Athens he caused the hitherto closed temples
of Minerva and the other gods and goddesses to be
again opened ; and there, for the first time, he publicly
practised the heathen worship, and called upon all
other persons to follow his example in honoring the
gods. In order to show his recognition of the Athenians
as the ancient model of righteous judges (before whose
tribunal even gods had been wont to appear), he ad
dressed to them an epistle containing an account of
his whole life and conduct. The restoration of the
* See Zosim. L. iii. <;. 9.

90 julian's education, and
ancient worship was considered by him of such impor
tance, that amongst his greater undertakings for that
object he took pains to settle a dispute between the
old sacerdotal families in Athens, (in which all the
heathen persuasion took a part,) that the peaceable
worship of the gods might not be disturbed thereby.
Before he left the city he asked counsel of the gods by#
sacrifice ; nor did he set out upon his march before all
the omens appeared propitious to him ; and with simi
lar anxiety he now sought on all occasions to acquaint
himself by the usual means with the events of the yet
distant future.
In the midst of these preparations he received the
unexpected intelligence* of the death of the emperor
Constantius. The news was so unlooked for by all,
that no one at first believed it, though Julian referred
them to. predictions which had already announced it.f

* Julian, in his 17th Epistle, addressed to Oribasius, finds the predic
tions of that individual to be confirmed by his dream : — " I thought I
saw a lofty tree growing in a very large saloon. The tree was bent
down to the ground, and close to its roots another smaller and much
more vigorous plant shot up. I felt great anxiety lest some one should
tear away this smaller with the larger tree ; and as I drew near, I per
ceived the lofty one stretched upon the ground, but the little one stand
ing erect and rising towards heaven. On seeing this, I said in distress,
What a tree was that ! it is to be feared that the sapling cannot have
escaped unscathed by its fall. But an unknown voice said to me, Take
but a closer view, and be of good courage, for the root is still left in the
earth, so that the young tree remains unhurt and will stand so much the
firmer." t See Libanius, in nee. Julian, p. 289. It was, however, a feature

formation of his character. 91
His belief that , he was under the special guidance of
the gods, and. that they had made him ruler of the
Roman empire in order to re-establish their former
worship, became now still more powerful ; so also did
his determination to bring back again the old customs,
regulations, and religious ceremonies through which
- the Greeks and Romans had become the greatest
nations of the world. Soon after his entrance into
Constantinople (a city, which ever since its revival by
the first Christian emperor, had been the seat of Chris
tianity) he ordered the temples there to be thrown

in the character of Julian (and one which originated in the elevation of
his sentiments) that he by no means suffered himself to be alarmed by
auspices or omens when he wished to carry any thing into execution ;
and that he knew how to give a favorable turn to them, with rapid
presence of mind, when they had been unfavorably reported by others.
For instance, as he was exercising himself at Paris, in a variety of move
ments with his shield on his arm, the shield was so completely broken
that the handle only remained in his grasp ; this he held firm in his
hand, and, while all the bystanders were frightened at the omen, he
coolly said, " Let no one fear, for I still hold fast what I held before."
See Ammian. 21, 2. In the same manner he acted also in the last Per
sian war, when the soothsayers endeavored in vain to restrain him. In
the conviction that a higher kind of wisdom waa with the goda, and in
a consciousness that he exercised his power under their control, he
waited for no oracle from above, and spent not the time for action in com
pliance with the lazy movements of the soothsayers, but waa himself his
own Pythia. Liban. Panegyr. Julian, p. 183. In this he displayed
the truth of his religious impressions, distinct from servile superstition ;
since he sought to realize the notions which animated him, and fulfilled
his mission with a devotion to the will of the .gods, to whose wisdom he
confidently resigned the final issue.

92 julian's education, and
-open, and himself offered to the genius of Rome* a
sacrifice of thanksgiving for the great good fortune
which he had bestowed upon him.
* Socrat. iii. 11.

formation of his character. 93

SECTION III.
julian's view op religion and philosophy in general ;
his view of christianity resulting therefrom ; and
the means by which he endeavored, as emperor,
to realize his religious ideas.
The different and contradictory views and representa
tions of Julian's behavior towards the Christians have
arisen in part from the fact, that his actions have been
considered nakedly by themselves, and not as they pro
ceeded from his religious mode of thinking. In at
tempting to exhibit them fairly, we must turn back our
attention to the preceding introductory Section ; since
the religious view of Julian's character can only be
understood by studying the spirit in which the later
heathenism opposed itself to Christianity. His theo
logy indeed was formed by the efforts then made to
connect the revelation of God in the soul of man with
the old traditions and myths as well as the ancient
worship of their father4! ; to give the latter a living
spirit by means of the former ; to unite the former, by
means of. the latter, to something firm and independent
of human authority, as being hallowed by its remote
antiquity ; and, with the view of giving the system an
objective, universal adaptation for the nations, to attach
if to a form that would operate upon all by exciting
and elevating their religious impressions.

94 julian's view of religion,
He had a lively consciousness of " the laws that
are written by the gods upon the souls of men, and
through which, without any further instruction, we are
convinced of the existence of the Deity." From this
Deity originated all those systems of philosophy that
pro.ceeded on correct notions, and they all therefore
agreed with one another, because they represented
precisely the same thing, though under different and,
apparently, contradictory forms. " Let no one (said
he) cut up philosophy into many parts, or (to express
myself better) let no one make for us many philosophies
out of the one and true one. One may go to Athens
by different routes, by water or by land, by the high
ways or by the short cuts and by-roads." By the
former he understood those who, like the Stoics, at
tached themselves to the political and practical life ;
by the latter, those who, like the Cynics, despised all
human forms and regulations, seeking after and exer
cising only the truth. " Let no one (he proceeds)
make it an objection against us, if some persons who
followed their own peculiar paths, have lost their way
or been cast on some other coast, allured by pleasure
or ambition (as by Circe or the Lotophagi), and hin
dered from proceeding farther and reaching this, their
proper haven. Let the first men only in every school
be looked to, and you will find them all in harmony."
(See his Oration, vi. p. 185.)
Whilst he went back to this inward revelation of

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 95
the Deity (through which man becomes conscious of
an existence, unbroken ih its duration, and preceding*"
all distinction of time or space), he acknowledged the
original unity of the Divine Being, as in fact every
reflecting polytheist acknowledged it, as the one Ruler
of all things and from whom all things proceed ; whe
ther he were called " the Power that lies beyond the
powers and ken of human reason," or " the Archetype
of all being," or *"' the One Being," or " the Chief
Good," — from this one Cause flowed all beauty, all
perfection, unity and exceeding strength. {Oration,
iv. p. 152.)
He who has arrived at a consciousness of this one
existence, apprehends at the same time that there is
implanted in man a longing after the same, or an in
stinctive desire of immortality. And this immortality
consists not merely in a progressive transplanting of
the individual being into an altered or metamorphosed
state, but in being raised to an existence really and for
the first time independent ; an existence elevated
above all change and accidents of external forms, whose
image and idea we bear impressed in our inner man,
combined with that of our real personality. The un
taught polytheist, recognizing his personality solely in
its temporal manifestation, looks upon the natural life
as man's only real existence, and the realms of the
dead as an empty dream, the mere striving and longing
after the lost reality ; just as the philosophy which has

96 julian's view of RELIGION,
been refined by the contrary process in the scale of
education, removes the -.opposition between heaven and
earth, to which all human witnesses testify, and de
clares the belief in a continued personal existence to
be but an egotistic conceit. And this it does, because
it recognizes that personality only as it discloses itself,
broken, limited, and restrained by the relations of time;
not as it reveals itself, by and for itself, in man's inner
nature, reposing upon and hidden in the Deity, of
whom it is itself a faint conception, allowing itself
to be known only in part, as through a glass darkly.
" The soul (says Julian) will then require no far
ther growth or progressive improvement, being no
more subject to changes of form, but raised into a
higher region of existence, the pure spiritual world."
(Orat. iv. p. 136.) He prays (ibid, page 138), "that
God would raise him after death to the calm free
dom of the Divine life, and deliver him from the law
of necessity to which all temporal concerns are sub
ject." The reflecting polytheist, however, is distin
guished from the monotheist not so much by the fact,
that he does not acknowledge the unity of the Divine
nature, as in these respects : — that, lie does not prac
tically allow the* Deity any influence upon life, or refer
life's varying circumstances thereto ; that he does not
look upon the connection between God and man to be
of a direct, immediate kind, but (separating the Divine
and the natural principle from each other) he connects

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 97
and fills up the interval between them by a series of
Divine beings ; and, lastly, that he distributes and di
vides what the monotheist comprises in his idea of the
Godhead, by making it an object for the imagination in
many different ways and by means of actual personifi
cations. Julian considered the first and highest object of
worship to be the Incomprehensible, Divine Being, the
everlasting Source of Good, which, as it were by a
multiplication of its own essence, generates from itself
Divine* beings, which form the first scale of existence,
and are entirely! distinct from all that is merely natu
ral and temporal. Next in the scale come the execu
tive deities, unconfined by space or time, who govern
and control the natural world ; J and these operate di
rectly upon the material, perishable world by means of
their ever-living representatives, the stars, which so
well exhibit and communicate their influence. In this
manner the operation of the Divine life was extended
from the highest in the scale of being, through the dif
ferent intermediate members, to the very lowest. That
* The passage in Plato (De Rep. L. vi. p. 116, ed. Bib.,) in which
he compares the operation of the sun with that of the Supreme Good in
the spiritual world, was turned to account by the speculative imagination
of this age. This idea, that the First in the scale of existence gives co
pies of himself, though differently expressed, in the lower gradations of
being, is exhibited in the poetico-philoaophical systems which were formed
after the birth of Christ.
t The GeoI ro-jroi, Orat. 9j p. 139.
X Qeol v.tpox. 5*

98 julian's view of religion,
which the Eternal Good was to the first in the scale of
being (that Eternal Good, which originates all life and
sustains it by a common bond of union), Helios, the
god of the sun, the revealed emblem of the Supreme
Good, is to the second scale of beings. In a similar
manner he communicates his power and influence to
those beings, he connects them mutually with himself,
as their common centre, and through the higher grada
tions of being, into' one great whole. • Again, the visi
ble sun is the image and revelation of the same original
in that visible part of the universe which is raised above
this scene of change and decay ; it there stands in the
same relation to the other heavenly bodies ; imparts life
and strength to them as revelations of the other gods ;
connects all those revelations with their eternal Arche
type, and, as the common centre of the whole as well
as the conveyer of good to every grade of existence,
extends their combined influence to the whole material
World. The One great Cause of all being (he says, ibid. p.
132) produced, together with the other operative im
material causes (from himself and entirely like himself),
the great god Helios ; and what the Supreme Good
does amongst the highest gods, the latter does amongst
those spiritual beings. The former produces among
them existence, beauty, unity and perfection ; all this
the god Helios effects in the succeeding grade, of being.
The third power is that visible, shining body, which is

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 99
the source of support and health to the visible world.
(See ibid. p. 133.) Thus in the sensible objects of the
universe, above him and around him, Julian saw a
representation of the being and the operations' of the
Most High ; an idea which must have had great attrac
tions for his thoughtful, poetic mind. " You believe"
(he therefore wrote to the people of Alexandria, p.
434), " you believe that Jesus is God, whom neither
your fathers nor yourselves have ever seen ; but you
believe not this of him whom from the beginning of
time the whole human race sees and honors as their
benefactor, — even the great Helios, the living, anima
ted, spiritual, beneficent image of the Supreme Father,
who is exalted above all the powers of reason."
In the same spirit he says (apud Cyrill, contra
Julian, p. 65), " the stars were only called gods inas
much as they were the representatives of the 'invisible
gods, each one being made known to us separately,
according to the peculiar nature and operation of each ;
and these invisible gods themselves dwelt in the es
sence of the Supreme Creator, from whom they were
produced." Julian considered himself as living under
the especial guidance of the god Helios, and his soul*
(which thus revealed him to him) as appointed to con-"
nect again the fallen visible world with the Invisible,
by re-establishing the worship of the gods.f With the
Divine Life (according to Julian's view, and that which
* "Omifc 8.o. faiov. t See Appendix IX.

100 julian's view of religion,
has been already exhibited in the characteristics of this
polytheistic philosophy) is also necessarily connected
the entire revelation and development of the same,
down to the lowest material forms, (beyond which
there remains nothing but the bare boundary-line of
being,) that is, matter* in and by itself; in other words, ,
the whole internal and external creation; thus con
necting the ever-existing, self-subsisting Godhead with
nature in its state of constant progression and growth.
With such views, then, the Christian doctrine of
the creation, dated from a commencement of time,
must have appeared to him as something desolate, and
void, and completely unphilosophical. Indeed he
looked upon it as a kind of anthropomorphism, to ap
ply the idea of a beginning, or any reference to time,
to the operations of the gods. "It is not without
some risk, (he said, in his Orat. iv. p. 146), even with
the view only of making the matter more intelligible,
that we speak of an incipient creation of the universe ;
since the god Helios, from all eternity, produced the
visible from the unseen world, without relation to
time,*)* and by his divine will." This universe (he
says, ibid. p. 131) existed from eternity, without any
'temporal beginning, as it also endures to all eternity."
He made the peculiarity of the myths to consist in this,
* rd rrj. amp-queuis Svopa /*£ra dpiSpat hirivolas — Orat. V. p. 161.
* 'Ev roi vvv — in the actual now — as he expresses it, in order to show
hat all idea of temporal progression must be removed from the notion.

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 101
that they represented as having happened at a definite
point of time what was grounded in the eternal laws
of things.* Agreeably to this view, it seemed to him
a proof of superstition and unphilosophic ignorance in
the Christians, when they taught that God created all
things, heaven and earth alike, generally and individ
ually, out of nothing ; and, moreover, that he has
doomed the whole material universe to destruction.
For (he reasoned) the causes of all things were eter
nally based in the Divine Nature ; although the causes
of imperishable things, abiding as they do in everlast
ing existence, differ in their nature from the ever-en
during causes of perishable things, from which a never-
ending succession of being is produced. (Orat. vi. p.
185.) Effects differing in kind could not originate
from similar causes ; the whole being eternal and un
changeable, shows itself thereby to be the work of the
Universal Creator ; but the individual, perishable, ma
terial beings could not be derived from the same Crea
tor, but were the productions of the individual gods.f
The monotheist forms an ideal conception of hu
man nature as being the image of God ; he therefore
looks upon the whole human race, proceeding from
one man, as a manifestation of the unity of the God
head. The polytheist, on the contrary, conceives
there are various living ideals in the various gods,
* Orat. v. p. 171.
t See Cyrill. cant. Julian, L. ii. p. 65.

102 julian's view of religion,
who, in a way corresponding with their nature, make
themselves known through the characters of men des
tined to express an image and likeness of them. Julian,
therefore, rejected the notion that the whole human
race was descended from one common parent, and
considered it more probable that the different gods,
receiving the immortal souls from the Creator, formed
simultaneously many individual men, progenitors of
the various nations ; and that the marked difference of
manners and institutions in different countries attests
the truth of this theory.* Undoubtedly (he argued)
all would be one and complete in the common Father
and Ruler of all ; but he could not reveal himself in
his oneness and completeness in the work of creation.
Amidst the divided and individual acts, one or other
power, and one or another god would predominate, and
so every nation would be placed under a different
god.f whose leading character it would exhibit in its
daily life, as the source from whence, in accordance
with that character, its peculiar institutions and laws
proceeded. "It is not enough here to say, as the Chris
tians are accustomed, that the difference in nations
exists only because God has so commanded it, since
the commands of God are not, like the commands of
men, of a perishable or transitory character ; but as he
himself is everlasting, so the natural qualities and laws
of existence would be eternal and indestructible. The
¦ * Fragment Ep. ad Lacerd. p. 292. t Q.ds iBvipxis-

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 103
destined character therefore of nations, and their
modes of life, reached a point beyond which they
could not advance ; and their several lawgivers added
but little, by means of education, to the natural abili
ties of men. Indeed, as long as the Roman Empire
endures, no western people will .easily be found that is
devoted to the sciences ; the cleverest of them as yet
having never got beyond the rhetorical art.*
[Julian did not perceive that in using such lan-j
guage he was bearing witness to the Divine power'
of the religion against which he wrote ; for we now
see that it alone has effected, and that it alone could
effect, what Greek and Roman science and culture
were not equal to. Before the times of Christianityj
each nation knew not only religion but also science,
art, and accomplishments, only after its own peculiar;
views, and in a, form interwoven with its national
characteristics and relations. But how could the edu
cation of Greece and Rome be ingrafted upon a for
eign nation, entirely different in its character, without
that nation thereby losing its self-dependence, and
therefore becoming weak and spiritless ? Generally,
indeed, that education must be shallow and superficial
which is opposed to the course of nature, according
to which there must first be the fresh juice of life,
which makes the young plant shoot upwards, and then
in their pioper course produces the leaf, and the bud,
*** Ap. Cyrill. u. Julian. L. iii.

104 julian's view of religion,
and last of all, the fruit. This animal juice, or sap, for
the human plant, man, is religion, which alone (as his
tory proves) can draw him up from the slime of
earth. Thus it was that Christianity civilized the
nations which appeared to the Romans incapable of
culture ; it first of all stirred up religious and moral
susceptibilities by simple annunciations, intelligible to
the hearts of all men ; and these powers thus excited
could not but awaken all other seeds of life, to be culti
vated after the peculiar fashion ofthe nation. No zeal for
science, however, no admiration of ethics or philosophy,
whether Stoic or even Platonic, could induce men to
abandon the seat of learning and civilization, for the
purpose of instructing perfectly barbarous nations.
Nothing could bring men to do this, but a religion
which announced to men that He who had redeemed
them from misery had come down from heaven itself,
and that One had given his life for all, in order that all
might have an equal claim to the enjoyment of the
highest of all blessings.]
From this idea (of national character dependent on
different gods) Julian deduced the sanctity and invio
lability of the ancient religious institutions and tradi
tions. " I eschew (he writes to the chief priest, Theo
doras, Ep. *85, p. 452) a taste for innovation in every
thing ; especially in every thing which concerns the
gods. I am convinced that we are bound to observe
in every thing the original institutions and laws of our

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 105
country, since it is clear that it is the gods who gave
them ; they could not be so excellent had they origi
nated simply from men. We must follow no man, but
only the gods ; since on such matters men can only
conjecture, while the gods necessarily know* what is
true." — " Some persons" (he said.-f speaking of an an
cient legend) "who are wise in their own conceits may
choose to call this an old wives' story ; but I consider
it better, on such a point, to adopt the belief of an
cient cities, than the teaching of distinguished men of
the present day, whose understanding certainly rea
sons ingeniously, but can attain to no sound and genu
ine insight." These old traditions delivered the most
exalted divine doctrines in a mythological dress, since
the hidden nature of the gods permits not itself to be
exhibited unveiled to impure minds.
The fathers of the human race, who first explored
and investigated the origin of things under the guid
ance of the gods, concealed their discoveries, for that
very reason, under a variety of accounts. They re
presented that which was really founded on the eternal
law of things, as something that had occurred since
the beginning of time. And this they did, that the
ignorant multitude might thus receive the benefit that
is effected by the mere symbols unaided by the powers
* He here rested the belief in immortality on the teaching of the
gods. t Orat. v. p. 161.

106 julian's view of religion,
of reason ;* whilst, on the contrary, menf of talent
would be induced, by what was striking or even con
tradictory in the myths, to suspect a higher hidden
meaning, and to 'engage in an investigation thereof.
And since man could not arrive at a knowledge of this
higher truth without especial activity and sagacity, he
was obliged to seek for it, not by a devout attention
to, or faith in, some extraordinary opinion, J but by the
active working of his own mind.-)

* They ascribed, for instance, to these myths a sort of magic power
of introducing the direct agency of the gods, though unseen by men, and
thereby healing both mental and bodily diseases.
t Origen made use of this method for the explanation of the Bible,
especially of the Old Testament. " God," he says, " has placed here
and there, in the law and the historical parts, as it were nniivSaXa k.X
irpoint6ppara nal dSiivara,m order that men of ability may be stimulated to
the investigation of the hidden, higher sense." (See II. dp%. L. iv.) ' It
has fared with the knowledge of the Bible, as it has with the contempla
tion of the universe. The ancient observers of its structure, filled with
the Divine Mind which animates the universe, saw every where the im
mediate agency of God only, overlooking the natural causes and their
operations ; whilst later inquirers, who had studied and explored the latter,
wished to explain every thing thereby, saw nowhere the operation of the
Divine Mind, but everywhere only the working of machinery. Just so,
the teachers of the earliest Christian era, being filled with the spirit of
the Bible, followed that only on ah occasions, and neglecting the natural,
literal sense, began to allegorize every thing ; while later atudents, who
examined and underatood the literal aense, wished to eatimate every
thing by that atandard, not searching for the Divine Spirit with which
the Scriptures are instinct, and without which the Bible ia a book locked
up. X Julian probably made this remark in oppoaition to the unphiloaophic
faith which was commonly imputed to the Christiana.
<*-, Orat. v. p. 170. — See Appendix XIII.

¦ AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 107
That the contradictory* and obscure is exactly the
most profitable, inasmuch as it denies the power of
finding relief in the natural sense, and so drives men
to seek for the higher hidden sense, he thus shows in
his comparison of the myths of Bacchus and Hercules.
" Many persons, without paying rhuch attention to the
case, believed that Hercules was raised to Olympus by
his father Jupiter, on account of his heroic virtue ;
and that Bacchus also, of mortal birth, was admitted
to the number of the gods' in consideration of his skill
in theosophy and magic. Hercules however, accord
ing to the ancient legend, although from his childhood
he displayed in his body an extraordinary and godlike
strength, so as even to have vanquished the laws of
nature, yet in a certain manner always continued with
in the boundaries of human nature, and allowed a cer
tain resemblance thereto to be recognized. It was
quite otherwise in the case of Bacchus ; all the differ
ent features of the narrative are here in contradiction
to the representation of a human nature or a human
procreation. Here, therefore, some, higher sense must
be sought for, and here, truly, was found the account
of a pure God, of his emanation from the Supreme
Godhead,f and his first revelation and appearance^ in
the world. Semele, who was called his mother, was
a holy priestess, who first foretold his advent ; but be
cause she could not wait with patience for the time
Air.Kipaivov. tKvr_o-l.lv rois vor/rol. irapa rurrarpi. X "En'ipaviri..

108 JULIAN'S VIEW OF RELIGION,
appointed in the divine will, and excited the appear
ance of the god too early, she was destroyed by fire
at the coming of the god. (pp. 219, 221 of Julian's
Works.) Julian deduced the necessity of actual visible ma
nifestations of the gods, and of a religious service ad
dressed to the senses, from the sensual nature of man ;
and for that reason it was that the gods at first revealed
themselves to the human race through their ever-living
representatives, the stars. But since even to these no
sensible honors can be paid, images were found on
earth to which men could perform their worship with
the hope of making the gods propitious.* These
images were not however confounded with the gods
themselves,' for men knew well, that the gods needed no
worship, f But as subjects adopt pictures and other
representations of their princes, and by paying them
honor obtain their good will, though they had no ne
cessity for such a compliment ; so also in this case, the
zeal which is shown in the religious service which men
can pay, may well be taken as a sign of true piety.
He, on the other hand, who neglects a practicable
duty, under the pretence of striving after an impossi
bility, shows that, properly speaking, he does not strive
for the latter, but only despises the former. He who
* See Appendix XIV.
t This objection might as well be made against all Divine wor
ship, even the purest, since this can as little be said to be necessary to
the Deity.

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 109
loves his king feels a pleasure in looking upon the king's
image ; he who loves his father feels the same towards
his father's portrait. Just so the affectionate wor
shipper looks with delight upon the images of the gods,
and is moved thereby to a feeling of reverence and
holy awe for the invisible gods who are looking down
upon him. (See Julian. Fragment. Ep. ad Sacerdotem,
pp. 293-4.)
Julian certainly conceived an ideal standard of
men, who were elevated above the different institu
tions of state and their religious usages ; who, without
allowing themselves, as citizens of the world, to be
fettered with peculiar forms, sought only for such as
are common to all men, and grounded upon their na
tural relation to the Deity : and who, directing their
minds only to the simple, unseen truth, despised public
opinion, and paid but little attention to external and
symbolic worship. A nearer examination of this pic
ture, to which at first sight Christianity might appear
to correspond, shows us how little it could harmonize
with Julian's mode of thinking on religious and philo
sophical subjects. We have here the picture of the
genuine cynic sketched by Julian himself.* " This
(he says, p. 187) is a philosophy of which no one can
be called the founder, since it is the philosophy of na
ture, and common to all ; and requires no peculiar sys
tematic study. It is necessary only to will what is
* Compare Orat. vi. and vii. adv. pseudo-Cynic.

110 JULIAN'S VIEW OF RELIGION,
i good ; provided a man strive after virtue and eschews
\ wickedness, there is no need to read a multitude of
\books. This is the shortest, but it is also the most dif
ficult way to the chief good, adapted only to a few men
6f extraordinary natural powers ; since the beginning
of all philosophy is self-knowledge,~and its end a re
semblance to the gods. The true cynic, therefore,
looking above all usages and opinions of men, must
direct his thoughts primarily to his inner self and to
God ; he should be able, as it were from the summit of
Olympus, to look down upon other men, and being ever
conscious that he partakes of a divine nature, should
continue with a mind unshaken and immovable, in the
exercise of pure and godlike thoughts."*
" Only some few, extraordinary men, however, are
likely to be thus especially destined and , called ex
pressly by the Dejphic god to lead other men to the
knowledge of the real and the essential, and to reject all
that circulates among men, as it were, in the current
coin of life ; according to the oracle given to Diogenes,
mxQuxaQtxTTsw ta vonlafiara.'] The cynic teaches more
by deeds than by words ; he makes use of no images
* Pp. 225-6.
t irapaxdpa^ov rd vipinpa, was the oracular response given at Delphi
to Diogenes the Cynic : " Mens oraculi non erat, ut Diogenes putabat,
monetam esse adulterandam, sed consuetudinem sive opinionem vulgi."
Kuster's note to Suidas. Or, as Suidas gives it, rovriun, rm rt-v m>AXwu
<*<**7js .rr.pdpa, ko.1 irapd%apaTT£ pi) ri)v d\r_6.iav dWd rd v.pttrpa. That is,
agreeably to the primary meaning of the word, to vipipov ISps, custom
grown into a law  T.

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. Ill
or myths, since the language of truth is simple, (p. 214.)
In divine worship, also, he would care only for the es
sence of devotion, the .gious intention. He teaches
men in their acts of worship not to estimate expense
more highly than piety, but the latter rather than the
former, and to consider it (piety) as that without which
all worship, however elaborate, all sacrifices, however
numerous, would be unprofitable, (p. 214.) Diogenes
did not attend the temple-worship, and showed no rev
erence for the altars and images of the gods, since he
had nothing to offer, nor any money to purchase offer
ings ; it was enough for him to honor the gods by the
devotion of his own soul ; and he considered that he
gave them the highest and most precious thing he pos
sessed, namely, his mind, which by the pious devotion
of his thoughts he made a sanctuary for them." (p.
199.) Julian thus sought to explain on these principles
the well-known contempt which Diogenes expressed
for the Mysteries ; " In doing this he was still true to
the calling to which the gods had appointed him ; for
as he knew that every one who would partake of the
Mysteries must be a citizen of Athens, it was this that
he despised, not the initiation in those Mysteries on
their own account. For he looked upon himself as a
citizen of the whole world, and, in the greatness of his
ideas, wished for communion only with the universal
nature of the gods who preside over the whole world,

112 JULIAN'S VIEW OF RELIGION,
not those who are appropriated only to separate por
tions of it. Out of reverence for the gods also, he was
anxious not to transgress. their, laws, though he tram
pled under foot and rejected every other claim, that he
might- not again be subjected to the restraint from
which he rejoiced in being free. He did not, however,
openly specify his true reason, but expressed himself in
disparagement of the Mysteries, because he saw many
persons proud of the initiation they had received, yet
neglecting altogether the practice of genuine piety ; he
was desirous, therefore, of informing them that those
men who lived a life worthy of the Mysteries, even
without initiation in the same, always received a due
reward from the gods ; while, on the contrary, it was
no advantage to the wicked, even though they had
been admitted to the most holy part of the sanctuary."
(pp. 158-9.)
As therefore, on the philosophical and- religious side
of his character, the cynic appears as a superior being,
who looked down from an elevated station upon other
men (being free from those relations in life by which
other persons are confined), so also* on the practical
side he displays an excellence (which is yet very differ
ent from the Christian's meekness and love of ene
mies), viz., such an indifference to offences and incon
veniences, that he cannot be affected by them. " The
true cynic (he says) has no enemy, even when any
one inflicts blows upon his body, or slanders and in-

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 113
suits him ; because enmity can exist only between per
sons who are on the same footing. But that virtue
which is exalted above all strife can be honored only
by love ; and if any one be otherwise affected towards
it (as many are even towards the gods), it is not felt
as hostile or detrimental ; but the rude person is looked
upon as inflicting the heaviest punishment on himself,
namely, an ignorance of his higher nature and a con
tented dereliction of its guidance." This cynicism,
therefore, could be adapted only to some few extraor
dinary individuals ; the multitude (he said) must follow
the received opinions, as something better than entire
shamelessness ; for men in general have still some nat
ural affinity with truth. The false cynics, on the con
trary, he considered as men who impudently con
temned received opinions without being justified therein
by any superior talent or merit of their own ; and who
trampled under foot all the laws of society, though they
introduced no better or purer mode of life', but one
much worse and far more detestable.*
Christianity must have appeared to Julian, as he
viewed it, a sort of false cynicism. He, indeed, com
pared that sort of cynics with the monks (called by
him anozaxTio-zai, men set apart). " For most of them
(he says) have forsaken but very little property, and, in
return for that little, they have scraped together what
they couid from all sides, and managed moreover to
* See Appendix XV.

114 julian's view of religion,
get themselves great honor, a numerous retinue of sei -
vants and dependents. So it is with you, except that
you do not make so much profit as they do ; this how
ever does not depend on you, but on us who have
more sense than those silly people ; and also because
you have no pretext for collecting money in a reputa
ble way, as they have, under the so-called name of
alms. In every other respect you are like them ; you
have abandoned your father-land as they have ; you go
about in all directions ; and ye a-re more burdensome
to the court than they, and that with the more impu
dence, inasmuch as they are invited thither, whilst you
are driven away."
According to Julian's view, every thing that is
great and distinguished, in the inner as well as the
outer life of man, in science and in art, is most inti
mately bound and connected with religion: and all
this he derived from the influence of the gods and our
communion with them. " As the mind of the gods
(he says) is but seldom revealed, and only to a chosen
few among men, not to all nor at all times, (all the or
acles, for instance, had, after certain periods of time,
lost their power,) so father Jupiter, the friend of man,
unwilling that men should be altogether shut out from
intercourse with the gods, imparts to them a knowledge
of the sacred arts, that they may find in them the ne
cessary helps for the uses of life." (Jul. ap. Cyrill. p.
189.) He considered therefore every extraordinary

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 115
kind of strength or skill in art as an attribute of some
god ; he derived the origin of the same among men
from the revelation of that god, to whom also he as
cribed the care and provision for its due preservation.
As the Greeks and Romans reverenced no god exclu-
i
sively, but all with affection; so they also enjoyed the
united gifts and imparted powers of those deities, and
were admitted to the most correct notions respecting
their nature. All the arts and sciences, whose imper
fect germs commenced in barbarous nations, (as, for
instance, astronomy among the Babylonians, geometry
among the Egyptians, and arithmetic among the Phoe
nicians,)- were, for the most part, applied by them only
to the necessary uses of life, and remained each in an
isolated, unconnected state. It was among the Greeks
that they were first combined with each other, and re
ceived a higher intellectual direction.* (p. 173.)
"Apollo -(he says, p. 155) has opened the oracles
in all parts of the world, given divine wisdom to men,
adorned cities with templesand political constitutions,
communicated civilization and instruction by means of
Greek colonies to the greatest part of the world, and
so prepared them the more readily to submit to the
Romans, who themselves were not only descended
from the Grecian race, but also derived their religious
practices and their religious faith entirely from the
Greeks." " Therefore (he asserted, p. 252) they alone
* See Appendix XVI.

116 julian's view of religion,
have treated philosophical subjects with success, have
sought for truth by the right path of rational know
ledge, and did not allow men, as most foreign nations
do, to follow blindly the teaching of incredible le
gends." On account of this want of scientific cultiva
tion (which operated upon them for the very reason
that they did not reverence all the gods who had com
municated those arts and powers to men, but one God
exclusively) the Jews (he asserts) could form no per
fectly pure idea of the divine nature, although they
honored the true God in the right way. " The God of
the Jews (he says) might perhaps have been a great
God, and yet might have hadf no good prophets and
expositors ; and the cause of this might be, that they
had not previously purified their souls by scientific
culture, and had not thereby opened the closed eyes of
their understandings, not* extricated themselves from
the surrounding darkness."f (See Fragm. Ep, ad.
Sacerd )
He believed that the religion of the Jews, inasmuch
as it was a national religion, transmitted from holy
progenitors, had something divine in its character, but
that it had been gradually adulterated through the mis
understanding and ignorance of that people. " Al
though (he says, p. 354) I am one of those who are
* This single passage is enough to show that Julian, though nomi
nally brought up as a Chriatian, waa grossly ignorant of the Scriptures
of the Old Teatament, and therefore, probably, of the New also. — T.
t See Appendix XVII.

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 117
shy of joining with the Jews in celebrating their
festivals, yet I always pray to the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob, men who, being sprung from the
holy, theosophie race of the Chaldaeans, honored that
God who, as a great and mighty Being, is gracious to
me, and to all those who honor him as Abraham did."
He also ascribed to the Jews oracles and myths which
had a hidden meaning, the perversion of which he at
tributed -to the fact, that these myths were understood
by that rude people in their literal sense. " Moses
certainly commanded the Israelites to honor only the
one God who in a special manner presided over their
nation, yet at the same time he names in connection
with him other gods, and even forbids them to speak
opprobriously of them (pp. 253 and 238) ; but the
shameless insolence of the succeeding generations (who
seemed to wish to banish all pious reverence from the
hearts of men) advanced from not honoring to blas
pheming the other gods. In all other respects, on the
contrary, the Jews agreed with the practices of the
Gentiles ; since they had temples, sacred groves,* sa
crifices, and many religious usages which required the
presence ofthe holiest sentiments."
But from the same cause which made Judaism an
object of regard to Julian, Christianity must have ap-
* We have here another proof of Julian's ignorance, or perversion of
Scripture facts ; for where is there any such prohibition of speaking ill of
false gods ? and as for " sacred groves," are they not always associated
with idolatry 1 — T.

118 julian's view of religion,"
peared to him the more pernicious ; since it was not
merely the corruption of the Christian church that
made that religion hateful to him before he made any
distinction between the Christianity of his time and
the form in which it originally appeared. [He had
probably read the New Testament with attention, in
his first search after truth, at the time when the doc
trines of the church began to be suspected by him, and
he thought he had discovered a falling off in the church
of his time from the primitive teaching of Christianity.]
Many ecclesiastical and symbolic forms, which the
Christianity of that period (already departing more
and more from its original simplicity) had adopted,
must have harmonized much more with his view of
religion, and might have helped rather to recommend
Christianity to him ; but its peculiar distinguishing
character, its spirit, elevated above all forms, to the
world that lies beyond this temporal existence, and
especially the unpresuming lowliness that formed its
very essence, were alike revolting to his imagination
and his disposition. Christianity, as he viewed it, had
nothing divine in its origin as Judaism had, but had its
rise in a mixture of corrupted Judaism and heathenism ;
and therefore he applied to the Christians the name of
Galileans, in order to show that they sprung from a
race of men, despised even among the Jews, and com
posed of a mixture of Jews and heathens, r) TaXCkaia
reov edvcav, Galilee of the Gentiles. He saw in the

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 119
Christian religion a mixture of the egotistic rudeness)
. of the Jews (which, transferring to the Deity the pas- 1
sions of men, spurned all other gods but the God of '
their nation) with that freedom from moral restraint*
and contempt of holy practices, which was prevalent
among the heathens. (Ibid. p. 238.)
When he says, " this religion claims to adapt itself
to all nations, and to men of all sorts, however differ
ent, for instance, retail dealers, publicans, dancers," it
is evident that he thought that a religion which pre
tended to such universal empire, with such adaptation
to individual cases, must introduce confusion and dis
order into society. For (he said) it would dissolve all
the sacred and peculiar bands of individual states, as
well as the ordinances instituted by the gods them
selves, and made venerable' by their high antiquity ;
nay, it must annihilate all love of country ; and there
fore he considered the fall of the Roman empire a
consequence of the establishment of Christianity.
" Through the folly of the Galileans (see his 7th Epis
tle) almost every thing' has been ruined ; but with the
good-will of the gods we will support and maintain all
once more." He was convinced that it was only
through the works of the old Greek authors (written as
* I do not pretend, nor is it necessary, to notice Julian's fallacies or
mistakes as they occur. If the German word " ungebundenheit," is here
rightly rendered, it is obvious that he refers to " the liberty with which
Christ has set us free," though he says nothing of the caution not to " use
it as a cloak for maliciousness." — T.

120 julian's view of religion,
they were under the direct inspiration of the gods) that
elevated notions could be produced in men. Accord
ing to his idea, every thing that is great and useful, of
whatever kind, originated from a communion with the
gods. Religion therefore could require no instruments
of education foreign from itself, but would be self-
sufficient to awaken and to cultivate all the powers
and talents of men, scientific, political or warlike. In
the holy Scriptures of the Christians, on the contrary,
he could find nothing in reference to the peculiar insti
tutions of political life, and none of those dazzling vir
tues which he sought to acquire. He therefore chal
lenged the Christians to make the experiment of
educating a child from its early days upwards, by
means of these writings only, as he was sure that by
the time that he had grown up into a man, he would
be no better than a slave, (p. 230.)
As Christianity began its career with the dissolution
of existing things, so (he asserted) it had in itself nothing
fixed and enduring. It withdrew more and more from
the institutions of its Founder, and mixed itself up with
new inventions o*( men ; Julian therefore asserted that
neither St. Paul, nor any of the evangelists, presumed
to speak of Christ as God. It was not till the multi
tude had begun to pay honors to the dead, that the
evangelist St. John, and this in a concealed manner,
introduced this doctrine. (Julian apud. Cyrill. 1. x.)
After which the Christians proceeded to still greater

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 121
lengths in honoring the dead. On this point Julian
believed that the Christians punished themselves ; inas
much as, being forsaken by the gods, they were subject
to the dominion of the demons, who imparted to them
that spirit of hatred and envy which was so foreign
from the nature of the gods. Hence arose the fury
with which they blasphemed the gods, threw down
their altars, and persecuted one another on account of
a difference in their opinions. Therefore it was that
some of them retired to deserts in preference to cities,
(though man was evidently made for society) being
filled with a hatred of their kind by the suggestions of
demons; nay, many of them even laid fetters* upon
themselves. In connection with Julian's peculiar views we mustf
notice the plan which he adopted with regard to reli- j
gious regulations iu his dominions. He considered the 1
prevailing coldness among the heathens, and their indif-l
ference towards the old religious institutions of theirj
country, to be a cause of the spreading of Christianity ;|
and he also looked upon the disreputable lives of the j
priests, and the contempt into which they had thereby fal-j
len, as the result of their excessive riches, and their con
sequent love of pomp and luxury. His intention there
fore was, in order to place the ancient religion once
more on a firm foundation, to organize a new polythe-
* Julian probably refers to the bodily, self-inflicted castigationa ofthe
Anchorites. (See Fragment. Epist. ad Sac. 288.)
6*

122 julian's view of religion,
istic code of worship, which, as being dedicated to the
gods, and out of regard to their spiritual operation,
should be independent of the state, and before which
all earthly rank and splendors should vanish ; in short,
that it should, by the fact of its promoting sentiments
of piety and philanthropy as well as religious infor
mation, refute the reproaches which the Christians cast
upon heathenism. Julian here also himself set the
strongest example. He not only took the title of Pon
tifex Maximus, as the other emperors had done ; but
he prided himself in the priestly quite as much as in
the imperial dignity, and discharged with equal con
scientiousness the duties of supreme priest and em
peror.* As his occupations would not allow of his daily
attendance at the temples remote from the palace, he
erected within its precincts a temple to the god of the
sun (Helios), as his especial patron and protector, and
altars to all the gods ; since it was his fondest wish to
live in constant communication with the gods, and to
commence all his enterprises with their worship. f He
sacrificed every day to the rising and the setting sun ;
when engaged in the service of the gods he laid aside
his imperial dignity, and wished not to be distinguished
by any outward show before them. He might be seen
himself running about and preparing all things for the
sacrifice. He himself brought the wood together, and
* Libanius, 245. t Ibid., 282.

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 123
himself killed the victim (p. 246) ; and in thus acting,
his object was to stimulate all the priests to the same
degree of enthusiasm, and to fill them with the same
conscientious desire to discharge the duties of their
calling. This is attested by two of his epistles addressed
to priests, which are remarkable records of his reli
gious notions and of his plan for a renovated worship.*
" Things are not yet (he writes to the high-priest of
the Galatians) as I would have them in the Hellenic
religion, and this is the fault of its professors. For that
so great an alteration should have been wrought in so
short a time is to be attributed to the miraculous power
of the gods ; yet we ought not to be contented there
with, but must try to counteract the causes through
which atheism has so sadly gained the upper hand.
These are, principally, the philanthropic treatment of
strangers, the careful provision for the burying of the
dead, and the respect gained by hypocritical pretences
to a holy life. These virtues, whose false appearancef
had been assumed by the ChristiansJ in order to de-

* Kirche in the German ; but I cannot render it " Church."— T.
tSee Appendix XVIII.
*t The heathens had early.remarked in the Christians this active bene
ficence and brotherly love, this readiness to communicate to all their
brethren from the remotest regions ; and by u. singular perversion, it
induced them to look upon them with suspicion, as brothers of a secret
order who recognized each other by mystic signs. (See Caecil. apud
Minuc.) To the cause second in order, Julian attached particular im
portance in the old religion, aa through the neglect of the honors due to
the dead he thought the manes, or infernal powers; were offended.

124 julian's view of religion,
ceive, must all be practised in earnest by the Greeks;
you must therefore oblige all the priests in Galatia to
conform to a more respectable mode of life, or else de
pose them from their priestly office. They should
never be seen in any theatre or any place of public
resort ; they should not engage in any unbecoming oc
cupation; they should establish lodging-houses for
strangers, and relieve with money not only Greeks but
also strangers of other religious persuasions. In order
to make this practicable to you, I have ordered thirty
thousand measures of corn to be given yearly to the
priests in all Galatia ; one portion for the support of
their servants, the rest for the relief of strangers and
mendicants : since it would be shameful if, while
among the Jews there are no beggars, and while the
Galileans nourished not only their own but also hea
then mendicants, the Greeks, on the contrary, do not
even support their own poor. It is your duty to re
mind them themselves to contribute more to these
means of relief, and to persuade the country people in
their respective villages to dedicate their first-fruits
to the gods.* I undertake to prove that this beneficent
spirit is by no means peculiar to the Christian, but
rather to the Grecian religion, having indeed been bor
rowed from the latter, to which it was peculiarly
adapted. A saying of Homer's occurs to me, ' that
all strangers and beggars are under the immediate pro-
* In imitation of the Christian oblations.

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 125
tection of Jupiter, under the titles of Zeus xenios,
homognios, hetairios.' What a contradiction then is
it to sacrifice to the god and at the same time to act
contrary to his acknowledged character! It is not
therefore to be laid to the charge of our religion, but
ofits professors, when they betray it by a conduct
directly opposed to its spirit, and by so doing dishonor
the gods." The priests (he said) should take a lesson from the
Christian bishops, and assert their dignity as superior
to all earthly rank, claim respect from all officers of
the state, and never humble themselves in their pre
sence. If they have any business to transact with the
governors of the province they should, in general, do it
in writing,. and rarely visit them in their houses; nor
at their public entrance into the cities should any priest
go out to meet them. No soldier should be allowed
to attend fhe magistrates within the temple, since as
soon as any one of them set foot upon the sacred
threshold, he became a private man ; the priest only
possessed authority in the interior of the temple, as the
law of the gods demanded. He exhorted the indivi
dual, whom he had made supreme priest in Asia, to
observe strictly the old laws as they were given by the
gods ; for, he said, those laws had fallen into entire '
neglect through the prevailing love of riches and lux
ury, which in their turn had destroyed all piety ; it

126 julian's view of religion,
was therefore necessary to take great care for an en
tire restoration of those laws de novo.
He begs (in his sixty-third Epistle) a philosopher
of Cappadocia to point out to him there any one person
who was truly devoted to the Hellenic religion ; since
he had hitherto seen many who were unfavorable to
it, and only a few who, though certainly desirous of
sacrificing, had yet no correct knowledge on the sub
ject. (See also Ep. iv.) He has stated his ideas re
specting the priesthood and its relation to the state,
in the fragments of an Epistle to a priest, p. 288 :
" Certainly (he says) the civil power is bound by the
laws of the state to take charge of the administration
of justice ; but the priests also ought to contribute to
wards it by their exhortations, that the sacred laws of
the gods may not be transgressed." He defended, on
the grounds already mentioned, the visible, sensible
worship and adoration of images ; yet so that not
merely the images of the gods were to be worshipped,
but also their temples, groves, and altars.
His idea also of the priestly character is a proof
that the simple and original form of Christianity (which
was directed only to the unseen, and disdained all
merely human helps for its devotions) must have been
much farther removed from Julian's view of religion
than that form of it which was exhibited in his time.
" The priests (said he) are to be honored as the ser
vants of the gods, who as mediators between us and

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 127
the gods, bring down good gifts to us from heaven ;
and since they sacrifice and pray for all, every one is
bound to honor them even much more than the rulers
of the state." He desired that the priests should be
treated with universal respect, independent of their
emoluments ; " as long as any one is a priest, and is
engaged in offering sacrifices for men and in attend
ance upon the gods, he must be treated with reverence
and pious regard."
In his character therefore of Pontifex Maximus,
he pronounced- a kind -of excommunication upon an
official person who had insulted a priest; (See Epist.
lxii.) " Even granting (he says) that an unworthy
person exercised the priestly office, yet must he be
treated with forbearance until his unfitness has been
proved, and he has been excluded from the service of
the temple. You know not, it would seem, the differ
ence between a priest and a private person, as you
have insulted one before whom you ought to rise up
from your seat. Since therefore I am, by the usage
of the country, the chief pontiff, I hereby exclude you
from all religious service for the space of three months.
If after that interval you shall appear worthy, and the
chief priest of the city shall write to me to that effect,
I will then again take counsel with the gods, and
consider whether you, shall once more be taken into
favor." " The priests (he says) must put away from them

128 julian's view of religion,
every thing that is unsuitable to them in word and
deed ; the study of philosophy is most proper for them,
especially the system of those philosophers who have
taken the gods for their guides, who teach the exist
ence and the providence of the gods, and that nothing
evil can come from them. They should not appear at
theatrical exhibitions, because of the improper pieces
that are performed there. He was anxious to place
them again in close connection with religion, and to
bring them back to their original purity and dedica
tion to Dionysos (Bacchus). During the time of the
temple-service it becomes the priests to make use of
splendid garments, but out of the temple only the or
dinary plain dress ; since it would be no trifling offence
against the gods to use profanely the holy garments
before the public, and allow them to be gazed upon
by all men as something wonderful ; as many impure
persons might come in contact with them, and thus
the sacred symbols of the gods would be desecrated.*
Julian sought to place the ancient religion in a new
connection with the moral and intellectual education
of the people, as well as to combine religious instruc
tion with the public worship ; an idea which he had
borrowed from the Christian church, since public reli
gious instruction was foreign from the polytheistic reli-
* Compare with this the Contest of Gregory the Great with John,
bishop of Ravenna, about the use of the pallium except at the celebra
tion of maas.

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. ¦ 129
gion. He. took also several other regulations from the
Christian church, which in this respect appeared to
him judicious ; for instance, the Christian penitential
ordinances, and the so called epistola formates, by
which the remotest churches corresponded with each
other ; whereby a living sympathy was promoted
among all the members of the church, and provision
was made for the kind reception of strangers of whose
character a sure testimonial was thus obtained. He in
stituted schools* in all the cities. After the example of
the Christians, teachers of religion came forward in their
public services, to explain, morally and philosophically,
the sacred traditions and myths for the benefit of the
hearers. The presidents (tjqosBqoi.) of these assemblies
appeared adorned with purple and crowned with fillets.
" I have often remarked (says Gregory, when cha
racterizing the polytheists of his time) that they affect
what is venerable and extraordinary ; as if that which
is ordinary and of daily occurrence had somewhat con
temptible in it, while the majestic had something in it
which could at once infuse faith." Gregory places in
contrast thereto the assemblies of the Christian, who
looked for the high and exalted not so much in exter
nal appearance as in the moral character. " Their
great effort (he says of the Christian teachers) is ad
dressed to the inner man ; they labor to lead their
hearers to a thoughtful mind, and they have thereby
* See Gregor. Orat. Stelit. p. 69, ed. Montagu.

130 JULIAN'S VIEW OF RELIGION,
contributed very greatly to the improvement, of the
people." He thus accurately represents the conse
quences of the attempts which were being made to
restore the ancient religion to life again by means of
allegorical teaching : " In these allegories you pro
pound your own fancies, but no one will be convinced
by you ; for a mere glance of the eye produces more
conviction. So that you have not at all profited the
hearer, while he who rests on that which meets his
eye is offended."
Julian, in farther prosecution of his plan for placing
the state in connection with religion, caused himself to
be represented in the public statues, as receiving the
crown and the purple from Jupiter appearing to him
from heaven, whilst Mars and Mercury (since he
affected at once the philosopher and the warrior) were
looking on him with favoring eyes. (See Sozom. v.
17.) He was exhibited on his coins with a bull and
an altar near him. (Socrat. iii. 17.) When his sol
diers received a donative, an altar was erected on the
place where the gift was distributed, and every one
who wished to share in it was obliged to offer incense
to the gods by way of thanks. (Gregor. loe. cit. 46.)
The decay of religion and the decline of the *arts and
sciences were, in his estimate, most intimately related
to each other ; he sought therefore to elevate both at
the same time. (Liban. Orat. x. p. 300.) He ap
pointed, wherever he could, none but persons instructed

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 131
in the ancient literature, to be his provincial lieuten-
ants,.and was greatly pleased when the cities sent dele
gates to meet him on his journeys who delivered well-
written addresses to him. Consequently, the study of '
the literature which the emperor so highly favored,
was every where pursued with fresh ardor. Many un
doubtedly desired only to turn to their own advantage
this inclination on the part of Julian, and imposed upon
him by the assumption of the philosophic mantle.*
With a view of honoring the healing art, which
" came down from heaven for the welfare of men, and
as a relief for the weaknesses 0*1" our mortal nature," he
declared all physicians, for the future, to be exempt
from personal state-burthens. (See Julian's Works, p.
998.) With the view of promoting sacred music, he
directed lads of good abilities at Alexandria, fo be edu
cated at the public expense, in order to become musi
cians ; he promised still greater rewards to those of
them who would study music in a scientific way ; al
though (as he reminded them) they would themselves
receive no trifling recompense in the mere fact, that
their souls would be purified by the influence of sacred
music, (p. 442.)
Julian showed himself in all respects a friend of an
cient forms ; since he considered them to be closely con
nected with the old religion and mental cultivation, the
* A fact which not only the partial Sozom'en (iii. 1) relates, but also
Libanius, Julian's admirer, gives us to understand, p. 308.

132 julian's view of religion,
decay of which was, according to his view, a conse
quence of the barbarism attendant upon the decline of
polytheism. And, because men no longer prayed to
, the gods alone as their lords and masters, they had be
come slaves to the caprice of an individual. On this
account he particularly revived the old republican
forms. He no longer, like the last emperors, summon
ed the senate to his palace, but took his place with the
members of the senate, himself made public harangues,
and allowed every one freedom of speech. (Liban.
298.) As supreme ruler and chief pontiff of the Roman
empire, he looked upon himself as bound to provide for
the restoration and support of all national religions ;
for he thought they were all good in their way. He
paid respect, therefore, even . to Judaism (as we have
noticed above), because it was a national religion ; and,
because he had heard from the Jews that they could
sacrifice to their God in the right manner only in their
temple at Jerusalem, he intended to have rebuilt it on
a great scale of expense. (Sozom. iii. 20.) He re
lieved the Jews from the payment of taxes with which
they had hitherto been oppressed, in order that they,
being (as he wrote to them in his twenty-fifth Epistle)
in the enjoyment of undisturbed repose on all sides,
might pray the more earnestly for the success of his
government, to the Almighty God, the Creator of all
things, who had been pleased to crown him with his

AND PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL. 133
own pure hand. As men weighed down with cares
naturally felt themselves also confined in spirit, unable
to raise their hands with freedom in the act of prayer,
he hoped they would thus be able to intercede for him
with the mighty God, who could best direct his gov
ernment to a successful issue ; so that after the conclu
sion of the Persian war he might cause the holy city
of Jerusalem (which he had wished for so many years
to visit) to be again built up,* and unite with them
within its walls to praise the Almighty.
* As Julian's chief object of aversion (like that-of all apostates and
seceders) was the reUgion which he had deserted, there was probably as
much policy as piety in his patronage of the Jews, the bitterest enemies
of Christianity  T.

134 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,

SECTION IV.
THE CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AT THE TIME OF
THE EMPEROR JULIAN, AND THE TREATMENT IT RECEIVED
AT HIS HANDS.
In order to form a better idea of Julian's conduct to
wards the Christian church, and its influence thereupon,
we must consider the internal condition of that church,
no less than its relation to the heathen. The alteration
he aimed at in both these respects was the more strik
ingly felt, from the circumstance of the church having
so lately been raised and favored by a power not its
own, and having entered into a new relation therewith.
Worldly advantages had become united with the recep
tion of Christianity ; advantages, which had induced
many persons to go over to the Christian community,
without any earnest efforts to attain to the true spirit
of Christ's religion. In earlier times Christians had
had an external contest to maintain, through which
their faith was kept alive, and they themselves were
made invincible against every assault. The contest
the church had now to maintain was quite different
and more arduous ; viz. a contest with the world, which
was no longer, as before, set in array against her, but
sought on all sides to unite itself with her. It was
through worldly desires that many persons, overpow
ering their appointed rulers, employed with insolence

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 135
the preponderance which, by an adventitious strength,
they had gained over their opponents. " The head
strong wickedness of the many (says Gregory, loe. cit.)
gave Julian power against us ; so also did the extreme
prosperity of the Christians, with the corresponding
changes which it must have introduced, the possession
of power and honor, and the daring insolence natu
rally resulting therefrom." As soon as the Christian
church has mixed itself up with that which is foreign
to it, a corresponding re-action has, at all times arisen
within itself, although the re-acting power has not al
ways been clearly defined, and although the sect, which
exhibited this reaction, has, in the course of its con
test with the dominant church, gone to the other ex
treme, and thereby fallen into an error of another sort.
A re-action of this kind was produced at this time
by the Donatists in Africa, although they proceeded -
with too little discretion, and too much excitement, to
distinguish the simple truth, and to be able to remain
firmly by it. The cry they raised amounted to this,
" The church, through its connection with worldly in
terests, had degenerated from its original purity ; it ex
ercised a power that was contrary to the spirit of
Christianity ; it sought, contrary to the teaching of the
Founder, a triumph by the help of worldly might, and
to circumscribe that liberty of conscience which God
has given to every man." An idea, therefore, arose
among them, that amid the general corruption of Chris-

136 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
tians, the true church was preserved among them alone ;
an idea which o'ccasioned that separation which must
necessarily lead them still farther, from the truth. A
Donatist accordingly asserted, that Satan, who had
hitherto conquered souls by the fear of torture, now,
in times of peace, filled them with pride by flattering
delusions, while he amused unhappy men with empty
fame, and ensnared the avaricious with the friendship
of princes and earthly presents.*
The Donatists therefore objected, at the religious
conferences at Carthage, to the Catholic definition of
the true church, viz., " that it was the universal body
of Christians dispersed through all the world." They
maintained, in opposition to it, the schismatic defini
tion, " that the Catholic name relates not to lands and
nations, but to the completeness of the sacraments, and
to the perfect, immaculate purity of the church." (p.
467, Du Pin.) This idea of the corruption of the
church through its mixture with worldly associations,
joined to the notion of Christian freedom which took
possession of the minds of the common people, pro
duced, by a strange misunderstanding, the wild ex
travagances of the Circumcellions.f [We may call to
mind here the Peasant warj of Germany, and observe
* See Optat. Miles de Schismate Donatist. ed. Du Pin. p. 299.
t For a full account of the Circumcellions of Numidia, see Gibbon's
Eome,iii. 398.— T.
X See Ranke's Hist, of Reform. Vol. ii. p, 203, for the Peasant war
— T.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 137
how similar causes have - at different times produced
similar effects.] Under the influence of such a per
suasion they wished, without distinction, to place ail
ranks and conditions on the same footing ; they seized
upon the rich proprietors ; they made the great men,
whom they met upon the highways, descend from their
carriages, put the slaves in their places, and compelled
the masters to run before them as slaves (loe. cit. p.
56). • The Donatists, moreover, were not displeased at
the altered condition of the Christian church through
Julian's succession to the Imperial government. It
was quite right, according to their notions, that the
temporal power was again separated from the church,
and that things were thus brought back into their ori
ginal state. They therefore presented an address tp
him, in which they spoke of him as the only ruler by
whom justice was regarded.*
The Christian emperors (being deficient in a clear
view of the relation of the church to the state and the
proper limitations of both, and unable to conceive it
right for any thing to be done in their dominions inde
pendently of their decision) had claimed to exercise
the greatest influence upon ecclesiastical affairs. In,
consequence of this, the parties which understood howj
to take advantage of circumstances most adroitly, and
could accommodate themselves best to the, inclinations
of those princes, got the upper hand. Such was the
* Augustin. Eipst. 166. Ed. Bas.

138 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
iparty of Ursacius, Valens, and Acacius; and these
Iwere naturally the most fluctuating in respect of theo
logical opinions. On the contrary, those men who, like
'Athanasius, maintained a firm and consistent system,
and defended it with firmness of character, without
regard to time and circumstances, were subjected to
extreme opposition. Julian, however,* recalled the
¦exiled ecclesiastics, and gave all parties among the
Christians equal liberty, with the hope that by their
mutual contentions they would destroy one another,
and not be able to unite for the purpose of a common
defence. It now appeared (as the consequence of the
removal of external pressure) that the artful practices
through which many Christian teachers had labored
for the predominance of their party, were all in vain,
and that the final victory of one side or the other must
now depend on their own strength.
With respect to the relation in which the Christians
then stood towards the heathen, we must recollect
that, before the sole reignf of Constantius, the two
parties engaged in a contest with each other, and that
their relative position was very different in different
provinces. After an actual religious war (for such it
was, although the external occasion of the war be
tween the princes was quite of another kind) the
Christian party had gained the upper hand ; and the
* Socrat. iii. 1.
t i. c. his coming to the entire power, which he had at first shared
with his brothers. — T.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 139
result was such as usually attends upon victory in a
religious war. The victorious party occasionally be
haved with arrogance to the conquered ; and, under
the government of the Christian emperors, sometimes
tumultuous bodies of Christians, sometimes individual
bishops, tore down splendid temples and altars in many
places. Of course the displeasure of the heathens at
seeing their holy places destroyed before their eyes
must have risen the higher, because they were forced
to conceal it, and highest of all in places where, as the
greater number, they felt conscious of their prepon
derance, and yet dared not make use of it. With this
tone of feeling it required no imperial edict to excite a
persecution. Let but the external pressure cease to
act, let the emperor allow a glance of favor towards
the old religion to escape him, the offended parties
rushed unbidden to wreak a furious vengeance for
their long-endured oppression.* We must always
keep in view this relation of the two parties to each
other, if we would judge fairly of Julian's conduct
towards Christianity and the Christian church.
Gregory Nazianzen justly observes, that an empe-

* Similar scenes were exhibited even under the later emperors. In
the reign of Honorius, e. g., soon after he had solemnly forbidden the
public exercise of heathen worship, a savage insurrection of the heathens
against the Christians broke out in the Numidian city of Calame, where
the latter formed the minority. The immediate cause waa a festive pro
cession, which the heathen population conducted in front of the church
doors of the Christians. (See Augustin. Epist. 2U2. Ed. Baa.)

140 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
ror who would have ventured to attack the .Christian
church at that period, must have excited an appre
hension of a civil war ; and also, that many of the
consequences, usually attendant upon internal religious
divisions, had actually exhibited themselves already.
" To wish (he says)* to shake the Christian church, is
nothing else than to throw into disturbance the whole
Roman empire, and to stir up danger for the entire
state, discord between nations and cities, separation of
families and houses ; all this must follow in the train
of that master-evil; in fact, it has already followed
therefrom." This struggle could not but break out
first and most violently in Asia Minor, where through
the flourishing study of ancient literature and the Pla
tonic philosophy in Ionia, the old religion was most
warmly supported, where the splendid temples operated
most strongly on the minds of the people, and where
the destruction of some of them had most violently
excited the general indignation. The same might be
said of Alexandria, where the population were in the
most unsettled state, and most easily led to any violent
expression of fanaticism. Under the last emperor the
heathens in this city had experienced the greatest op
pression from the cruel Arian bishop, George, who by
acting the part of a delator, or public accuser, and for
having caused many temples to be thrown down, had
made himself an object of general hatred. At last, as
" Orat. SteUt. p. 41.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 141
he was passing one day by an ancient temple of Tvyr),
the Goddess of Fortune, he said in the hearing of the
Pagans, " How much longer shall this tomb stand
here ?" The Christians, Before the eyes of the Pagans,
derided the mysteries of Mithra, the god of the Sun,
having caused a church to be built in the place where
these mysteries were wont to be celebrated. All this
provoked the rage of the heathens, which broke out
with the more violence because they had so long been
obliged to repress it. The results were scenes of blood
shed in the city and sad divisions in families. George
was the victim of these embittered feelings, though
the Christians might have saved him, had he not made
himself an object of hatred to the greater part of the
Alexandrian Christians by his persecution of the Atha-
nasian party.*
The popular fury was in a great measure occa
sioned by cruel and inhuman executions of individual
Christians (if we may here venture to trust the ac
counts of the Christian historians) in the cities of the
Lesser Asia, and especially of Phrygia, where the
Pagan party appears to have been by far the majority.*)*
These savage persecutions fell generally upon indivi
duals only, as upon Marcus, bishop of Arethusa, who
had endeavored, in the preceding reign, to bring the
Hellenistic inhabitants to adopt Christianity, not by
* Ammian. 15. 11. Socrat. iii. 2.
tSee Sozom. v. 9—11. Greg. Naz. loe. cit. pp. 50—54.

142 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
dint of instruction;* but by compulsory measures.
We may instance also the case of some Christians in
the Phrygian city of Mero, who had dashed to pieces
the images which had shortly before been re-erected in
a temple ; as well as that of Basilius, a presbyter of
Ancyra, who, not satisfied with exhorting the Chris
tians of the neighborhood to be true to the faith, drew
upon himself the anger of the people by interrupting
a heathen sacrifice. We must connect with this the
fact, that Julian every where attached great consid
eration to the persons of the priests ; that they un
doubtedly excited the people to frequent violence
against the Christians ; and, that wherever he could,
he appointed as governors those persons who were
zealously devoted to the old religion, or at least affected
to be so, in order to please the emperor.
That no general persecutions arose from these tu
multuous executions, that a contest between the par
ties was not produced by the support which the Chris
tians gave to their zealous teachers, seems to prove
that in these cities the Pagans constituted by far the
majority of the population, and that only a few per
sons were to be found there who had gone over to
Christianity from a free disinterested attachment.
Those few examples of a bloody persecution of the
* Upo9vp6r£pov ii Kara ireidoi, says Sozom. Gregory is not so impartial,
who saya that he made use of no other means than the excellence of his
life and the force of his eloquence.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 143
Christians could therefore, under these circumstances,
afford no well-grounded cause of accusation against
Julian. Indeed, persecutions and* compulsory conver
sions were by their very nature contrary to his princi
ples ; and not only to his principles of policy, as the
Christian historians assert, (forasmuch as he had seen
in former persecutions how greatly the death of mar
tyrs contributed' to the spreading of their religion,)
but also to his religious and philosophical principles.
His notion of the gods was that they could not pro
perly be said to take offence at any thing, as if they
were revengeful beings, delighting in punishment ;
since envy and hatred were unknown to them, and
proper only for demons.
He thus writes to a priest : " Those Christians only
ought at once to be punished who are rebellious against
the emperor ; since in not serving the gods they have
already punished themselves ; and having relinquished
the protection of the gods, they are driven on by
wicked demons."* He considered it an affront to the
gods, " when Christians, who had been dedicated by
baptism to the service of demons, visited the temples
with impure minds, and were forced to sacrifice to the
gods against their will. They ought beforehand (as he
himself had done on his assumption of the government)
to release themselves by an expiatory offeringf from
the pollution of baptism." Yet he wrote thus from
* Fragment. Ep. ad Sacerdot. + 'ATrorpoTroioi,.

144 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
Antioch (in August'A. d. 362) to the citizens of BoWa :
" He exhorted as well the Pagan as the Christian inha
bitants not to annoy or disturb one another ; that men
should be operated upon not by violence, but by in
struction and argument ; the unhappy deserved com
passion rather than hatred ; the highest good consisted
in the true reverence of the Deity ; the greatest evil
was a godless mind ; it was by that very godlessness
that those persons were mostly' punished, who turned
away from the gods to pay honors to the dead and to
their remains." (p. 437. Compare Ep. xliii.)
To this was added, that Julian was very reluctant
to give occasion, in any way, for the suspicion that his
religious impressions arose more from a superstitious
fear of the gods, than from a pious and thoughtful
mind.* It may also be asked, " whether (with his
views of religion, and state, and science in their mutual
relation, and agreeably to his plan of placing religious
and political regulations in the same close connection
in which they were associated of old) he was not
obliged to rob the Christians of many civil advantages,
which he considered to have been inseparably attached
to the original national religion ?" It was natural that
Julian, who no longer acknowledged the Christian as
the dominant church, should deprive it of all those pri
vileges which the Christian emperors had conceded to
* 'Xrri S.io-iSaipovias paWov 5) Siavoias e-oifiovs Kai Xetioyicp.vris- Orat- 7 .
p. 204.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 145
it ; and certainly most of them had been occasionally
abused. Accordingly, he took away from the churches
the allowance of corn which had been assigned to
them ;* from the clergy, immunity from state-burthens.f
and exemption from attendance in the courts of law ;
indeed the bad consequences of those privileges might
well induce- him to do this, since many persons, to the
injury of the state, and from merely external consider
ations, had sought exemptions from these duties by
assuming the clerical character. J He also took from
them the jurisdiction which to a certain extent had
been conceded to them, as well as the right of making
wills aqd receiving legacies ; a privilege which, before
the time of Constantine, had been interdicted to the
clergy, as a secret -association. § He might have had
good reason for reproaching them with having abused
these privileges in order to assume dominion, to appro
priate the goods of others, and bring every thing into
their own power. Indeed later church-writers|| com
plained thereof, and expressed their disapprobation and
regret, not so much at the act of Valentinian in cur
tailing these rights of the clergy, as at the fact of their
having deserved it.
The effect of Julian's wish to place the affairs of

* See Sozom. v. 15. + Liturgiis.
{Julian, Ep. ii. p. 380. § 'Eraip.ia.
II Ambrose, Ep. 52. Hieronym. Ep. 51. devita et moribus clerico-
rum, (quoted in Gibbon, iv. 273.)— T.
7*

146 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
state once more in the closest connection with religion,
would at once be to bring the Christians into many cri
tical collisions. He caused himself (as has been already
mentioned) to be represented in his images in strict
association with the gods, not perhaps at first to irritate
the Christians (as Gregory accuses him of doing), but
to show his gratitude to the gods, and, perhaps also,
with the view of accustoming men, by familiarizing
their eyes to such sights, to consider the state and the
national religion as things most closely interwoven with
each other.. When now the Christians took offence at
this, and refused, because of it, to pay the customary
mark of respect* to the images of the emperor, the ma
gistrates, with a show of justice, though in fact with
great injustice, might easily consider them _disobedient
to the laws of the state in thus refusing due honor to
its head. His object (according to Gregory, loe. cit.
p. 45) actually succeeded with the multitude, who,
without being aware of it, paid homage at. once to the
image and to the gods. Some, however, who refused
to comply, were punished as offenders against the im
perial majesty ; nevertheless, this is not sufficient
ground for an accusation against Julian himself, since
Gregory does not accurately state the attending cir
cumstances, nor make it clear whether such punish
ment ought not to be laid to the charge of particular
governors. * irpooKvviyrts.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 147
The facts of the case,* probably, refer (like many
others) to the soldiers only. The emperor, it is clear,
had an especial interest in causing them to pay homage
to the gods, since he was convinced that success in
war could come only from the gods, that they alone
could give courage and strength, and that the Christian
religion, on the contrary, made men effeminate and
powerless. It is undoubted, even according to the con
fession of Libanius, that he committed the highest offi
ces to pagans, from whom alone he expected fidelity,
and. by whose help only he could hope to attain his
great object, the union of the state with the public re
ligion. According to the Christian historiansf (though
the charge is perhaps expressed by them in too general
terms) he every where excluded the Christians from all
appointments of authority, whether as. judges or ma
gistrates. Socrates, indeed, quotes as Julian's assigned
motive, that it was because the doctrines of their reli
gion forbade them to use the sword against those who
had deserved capital punishment. This, however, I
might only have been irony and ridicule, after Julian's I
accustomed manner, to indicate, how little of earnest- |
ness there was in the professed principles of the Chris- j
tians, how greatly they thereby deceived men, and j
how widely their lives were at variance with those;
principles, and how little their doctrines, when taken '
in their strictness, were applicable to social life.
* According to Sozom. v. 17. t Sozom. v. 18. Socrat. iii. 13.

148 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
It may, however, have been seriously intended by
Julian ; he had perhaps heard that Christian governors
had entertained religious scruples against the infliction
of capital punishment, and had asked advice* thereon
from Christian teachers ; that these teachers had, by
their intercession, released many criminals from the
punishment assigned to them by the laws ; and he
therefore believed that the order of things as fixed by
the laws was in -danger of being disturbed, f Another
edict, by which the Christians were forbidden to insti
tute public schools of rhetoric and literature, is liable
to be unfairly judged of, unless we at the same time
take into our consideration Julian's view of religion
and science. He was convinced that the great writers
of antiquity had produced all their works solely by the
aid of the gods, to whom every art is dedicated ; that
therefore a belief in these gods, and proper notions re
specting them, were not merely by accident, but ne-
* Thus Studius, an officer ofthe empire, submitted his doubta on the
aubject to Ambro8e, biahop of Milan. (See Ambroae's Epist. 25.) It is
certain, however, that these intercessions of the bishops (though in par
ticular cases they might have been injurious through the abuse of social
order, owing to the caprice of a despotic government, the defective con
stitution of the provinces, the rank of the parties at court, and the com
motions thereby excited) were on the whole exercised for very salutary
purposes. (See Augustine's Ep. 225, and many other vouchers in his
Epistlea.) Chriatianity, breathing as it does a spirit of mercy and kind-
neas, first generally introduced into the adminiatration of juatice a more
moral aspect, and a milder procedure corresponding therewith, according
to the different circumstances of the different nations which were subject
to her instruction.
t See Augustin, Epist. 53.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 149
cessarily connected therewith, so that the one could
not have arisen without the help of the other.
"The gods" (he says in his edict), — "the gods
were taken as the guides of their respective talents by
Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides ; one attached
himself to Mercury, another to the sacred Muses. It
seems incorrect, therefore, that those who despised the
gods whom these great men honored, should act as ex
positors of their works. If they esteemed for their
wisdom the writings which they undertook to explain,
they should first desire to imitate the pious reverence
of the writers of whom they would be the expositors.
But if they think that they have erred in the weightiest
matters, they had better confine themselves to the task
of expounding Matthew and Luke in the churches of
the Galileans.'' He asserted in another place, that a
person who had been brought up solely in the study of
such writings must prove himself unfit for every thing
else, and incapable of every exalted sentiment in actual
life. It appeared therefore to him unjust in the ex
treme, that Christianity, which despised the gods, and
yet could not support itself by its own strength, should
make use of their gifts in order to appropriate to itself
that in which it was deficient.
Already, in the third century, Porphyry makes it a
matter of accusation against Origen, that he made use
of the philosophy of the Greeks in order to give a bet
ter appearance to his religious teaching ; that he intro-

150 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
duced Platonic notions into the same by means of alle
gorical interpretation;* and Julian, during the early
part of his education in Cappadocia, had had especial
opportunities of becoming acquainted with the school
of Origen, which was then predominant. He looked
upon those writings partly as religious documents, and
believed therefore that he ought not to allow them to
be made despicable to the youth of his country, by
means of public teachers who borrowed from them
just what pleased them, that is, only their external
form. " All teachers of youth (he said), and especially
the Sophists, who profess to be not only teachers of
the outward expression, but also of moral and political
philosophy, ought to be men of honest intentions, who
would not bring with them opinions at variance with
the established religion. But those Christian teachers,
by means of the praise they bestowed upon the ancient
classics, allured the young men to them, and in this
manner deceived them, whilst they implanted their
own wrong notions in their minds."
Let this edict of a polytheist Emperor, who wished
to re-establish the old constitution of the state, be
compared with the judgment of a cotemporary Chris
tian teacher, Tertullian (for the regulations were still
in force), who forbade the Christians to institute schools
of literature, because they could not avoid being mixed
up with the religious regulations of the state, and be-
* See Euaeb. Hist. Eccl. vi. 19.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 151
cause they would be obliged to learn the genealogies
of the gods and take part in the celebration of their
festivals.* The same authority however held it to be
allowable, nay even necessary, to attend the schools of
literature, because, without the profane sciences the
sacred ones could not be properly learnt. Just so
Julian also, though on opposite principles, permitted
all young men who wished it to attend those schools.
Gregory indeed finds bitter fault with Julian for having
grudged to the Christians that which is the common
right of all rational beings, as if it were the peculiar
privilege of the Hellenists. And so it must have ap
peared to the Christians, though not necessarily so to
Julian, who looked upon this Classical learning as the
*•-. *>*property of a particular god and of the nation devoted
to his worship.
Julian nevertheless was disposed, upon quite differ
ent grounds, to permit the Christians, like every body
else, to enjoy without interruption all the other advan
tages of civil society ; since he considered it a point
of honor to re-establish in the state the former order of
legitimate government, and to banish that arbitrary
rule which had prevailed under the last emperors. He
therefore expressed his displeasure at the insurrection
of the people of Alexandria in which George had been
murdered ; and this he did, though he approved of
* For instance, the Quinquatria, Minervalia, &c... Tertullian, de
Idololatria, p. 733.

152 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
their cause,* and ascribed it to his special regard for
them that he did not punish them severely. We do
not find however any instance of his actually punishing
the townspeople who had ill-treated the Christians ; for
the Emperor was always pleased at a display of en
thusiasm in the cause of the gods and of zeal against
their enemies. He believed also that they had deserved
such treatment by their previous acts of violence ; his
exhortations, therefore, could by themselves have but
little effect.
We must make an especial distinction between
Julian's conduct to the Christians in general and his
behavior to the bishops. He believed that " the for
mer, who had hitherto erred only from ignorance of
the truth and from being deceived by their teachers,
would easily allow themselves to be led back again to
the religion of their fathers " He therefore sought to
corrupt them with bribes, and to accustom them by
degrees to the worship of the gods ; indeed he seems to
have hoped that, " as the Christian doctrines were not
firmly imprinted in their minds, they would gradually
be cured of their error by the divine power associated
with that service." But he could have no such hope
in regard to the bishops, " who were so confirmed in
their erroneous views and so zealous in ' defending
them." It was not therefore his design (as he himself
says) to allow the banished bishops to recover the pos-
* Epist. 10.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 153
session of their offices in the church, but only to return
home to their country. In his first edict against
Athanasius, who still defended the Christian doctrines
with undaunted and unwearied zeal, he at first only
expressed his displeasure that, having been banished
by the command of the late emperor, he had, in his
insolence and without waiting for the imperial permis
sion, immediately resumed his bishoprick, to the great
vexation ofthe Alexandrians. He accordingly banished
him from the city. (See Epist. 26.)
In his second edict (Ep. 6) he expressed very f
plainly the reason of his displeasure ; viz., that Atha- j
nasius was spreading a contempt for all the gods, and]
had carried his audacity so far as to persuade respect
able females of the Hellenistic religion to submit to;
baptism. By his last edict (Epist. 51) he banished himi
entirely from Egypt, and wrote afterwards to the
people of Alexandria, that if they wished still to con-i
tinue in the error of the Galileans, they should at least \
be agreed among themselves ; and as to Athanasius,
they need not long for, or regret him, since they could
find many persons among his scholars equal to him in/
religious knowledge, who could take the direction ofj
their spiritual instruction as well as he. But if they
longed after him on account of his cleverness and sa
gacity in other respects, he would have them know
that he was banished on that very account; as it
would be hazardous to leave a restless man, who

154 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
thought it a great thing to put his life in danger, at the
head of such a population. This indeed was generally
a sufficient reason with Julian for thinking that he
ought to be severe with the bishops, because he made
it so great an object to enforce the legitimate order of
things ; and he looked upon them as disturbers of the
public peace, who paid no regard to human authority.
In this spirit he wrote to the citizens of Bostra :
" The clergy, because they can no longer exercise
their former power and dominion, endeavor to put the
people in commotion and cause an insurrection, in con
tempt of my imperial commands ; I exhort therefore
all the citizens to take no part in the tumultuary pro
ceedings of the clergy, nor allow themselves to be
urged on by them to throw stones, or to any other act
of disobedience to the authorities. You may however
assemble together as much as you please, and join in
such prayer as ye may think good." The clergy of
this city had justified themselves before" the emperor on
this charge of insurrection, by explaining to him, that
the Christians, though equal in number to the polytheist
inhabitants, were kept quiet by their means. Julian
made use of it in order to make them objects of sus
picion with the laity as their accusers, and called upon
the citizens to expel them as such from the city. He
might indeed occasionally have had his bad opinion of
the bishops confirmed by their conduct, as when Mavis,
bishop of Chalcedon, publicly denounced him in Con-

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 155
stantinople as a godless man ; and he punished him at
the time for the offence.*
In all these cases we ought tp remember Julian's
peculiar character, as it expressed itself in the other
particulars of his conduct. Undoubtedly he had un
dertaken the task of re-establishing justice and legiti
mate order in the administration of government, after
they had been so capriciously destroyed in the pre
ceding reigns. It was his wish to extend the enjoy
ment of equal rights to all his subjects ; but his ardent
nature could easily, on particular occasions, be inflamed
to violent passion and unjust partiality, which hurried
him into actions unsuitable to his character.*!* He was
however conscious of his failing ; he was sorry for ¦
such behavior, and exhorted his prefects and his friends
to call his attention to the fact, whenever he suffered
himself to be carried away by passion or party feel-
ing.J In general therefore he remained true to his
principles of religious toleration, and could act agreea
bly to them (as far as they consisted with his religious
opinions), and yet at particular moments he could be
led away by his impetuosity to act contrary to those
principles, A contradiction might accordingly display
itself in his conduct, which gave occasion for the
charge brought against him by Gregory Nazianzen,
" that these principles were but empty declamation ; '
— which certainly was not the case.
* Sozom. v.4. t Ammian. 22. 3. X Ammian. 22, 10,

156 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
Thus we read that the emperor (when he took upon
himself the duty of administering justice at Antioch,
and even pronounced sentence on the disputed mat
ters) could not resist the temptation of asking the con
tending parties, " What religion they professed ?"*
Yet his justice showed itself the more remarkably,
since, according to the narrative of the same historian
we have referred to, it does not appear that he ever de
cided in a single case contrary to what was just ;
though on the part of the Christian who lost his cause,
his question might well give occasion for the suspicion,
that Julian had acted unjustly towards him on account
of his religion. To this may be added the ironical,
jeering answers which he occasionally made to the
complaints of the Christians. For instance, when he
ordered the church property of the Arian Christians
(who, contrary to all established order, had committed
acts of violence against the Valentinians) to be taken
from them, " in order (as he rudely said) that they
might make the path to heaven easier, according to the
precept of their admirable Founder." Or when in re
ply, to some Christians, who complained to him of un
just treatment, he answered, " that they ought, accord
ing to the instructions of the Gospel, to submit with
patience to every offence." As to his threats, he seems
to have sought to alarm rather in sport than in earnest ;
reports nevertheless might well arise, that he intended
Marcellin. ibid.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 157
to prevent the Christians from all public assembling
together, from the exercise of all civil rights, and
generally from all tbe advantages of political associa
tions.* It belonged to Julian's character (agreeably to the
motto of his family, " a proposito nusquam decli-
nare,"\) never to permit himself to be driven from his
plans by any obstacle in the execution of them, but
rather to persevere, in them so much the more zeal
ously ; and especially in a plan which had sprung from
the very inmost recesses of his mind. Had he lived a
longer life, he would probably (whilst following up his
favorite idea, and embittered by the opposing spirit of
the times) -have excited the most violent commotions,
till perhaps he would himself have fallen a sacrifice to
his own idolized conception.
The conduct of Julian during his residence in An
tioch (in the year of our Lord 362, before he set out
upon his expedition against the Persians) gives a good ,
idea of the man himself, in altered times, and with men
of different minds, pursuing the idea of olden times,
that was ever floating before him. He affected to ap
pear in the simple greatness of ancient heroes, himself
administering justice, and, in the very centre of ori
ental luxury and splendor, occupied solely with the
cares and concerns of government. He would have
* Sozom. v. 18. Gregor. loe. cit. p. 57.
t Ammian. 22, 14.

158 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
men serve only the gods and the laws, and the latter
only as being hallowed by the former.* He utterly
declined the barbarian title of decmoT-rigj maintain
ing that all persons should appear on a par before the
gods. He himself assisted, as a. servant of the priests,
in bringing in the victims ;j* and unattended, during
violent rain, in the open air, sacrificed to the presiding
gods in order to avert from the city the evils of an un
productive season. J When he saw many of the most
distinguished inhabitants pouring into the temple, not
so much for the purpose of worshipping the gods as to
flatter the emperor, (whom they received with loud ac
clamation as in a theatre,) § he made them feel his dis
pleasure at their adulation offered not to the gods but
to man, reminding them that even the gods should not
be addressed with flattery, but with the reverent wor
ship of a calm mind.
By the complete contrast of his manners and prin
ciples with the tone of mind of those with whom he
was residing, he drew upon himself the ridicule and
hatred of the higher classes, who took no great inter
est in the matter of religion, and became odious to the
common people as an enemy to Christianity ; so that
both parties longed again for the rule of Christianity
and Constantius, or, as they briefly expressed it in
* See Julian's Misopogon, p. 343.
t Ammian. 22, 14. % Liban. Legat. Julian. 163.
§ Misop. 344. Liban. 41.

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 159,
Greek characters,* for X and for K. He had under
taken to restore in all their splendor the oracle and. the
worship of Apollo, which had been celebrated of old
in the grove of Daphne,*)* near Antioch. He caused,
therefore, the temple to be surrounded with a magnifi
cent peristyle, and the bones of the martyr Babylas
(over which the Caesar Gallus had built an oratory, in
order to turn away the religio loci from Apollo to
Christ) to be exhumed. No sooner was this done,
than men and women, young children and gray-headed
Christians, bore away the coffin in solemn procession
to another place, singing as they went the Psalms
which refer to the destruction of idolatry. J
He hoped to see the festival of the Daphnian Apol
lo, the national feast of the Antiochians, again cele
brated with the greatest splendor after its long discon
tinuance. Let us hear his own words which best ex
press the disappointment of his expectation : " I has
tened from the temple of Jupiter to the sacred grove,
in the hope that I should there be gratified with the
greatest display of your riches-.and your love of show.
I already pictured to myself the festive processions,

* In his Misopogon, Julian complains that the people (of Antioch)
returned him evil for good, and calumniated him for the good name he
had acquired ; that they accused him of having turned all things topay-
turvy : bn irap' Ipov ra rov Koapov irpdypara dvarlrpairrai, Kai hn iroUpti rip Xf-
ir6.os 61 .pas eiasial rov Kdirira. — T.
t See Gibbon, iv. 118.— T. t See Sozom. v. 29.

160 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH,
and saw by anticipation the victims and the holy
choirs, the rows of youths attuning their voices in
honor of the god, and dressed in garments of dazzling
whiteness. But when I entered the grove I saw no
burning of incense, no wafer-cakes, no victims! I
was at first amazed, though I endeavored to believe
they were only on the outer skirts of the grove, wait
ing, out of compliment to me as the Pontifex Maximus,
for a signal from me for their entrance. -When, how
ever, I inquired of the priest, ' What offering does the
city intend to bring to-day in honor of the annual fes
tival of the god ?' he answered me, ' I bring from my
own house a goose, as an offering to Apollo ; but the
city has prepared nothing for him !' "
The emperor, whom this scene must have sorely
annoyed, reprimanded the Senate in a set speech :
"Every one of you (he said) allows his wife to give all
she has to the Galileans ; you support the poor amongst
them hy your goods, and thereby promote greatly the
spread of atheism among the people. You give large
and splendid entertainments on your own birthdays, and
yet no one brings even a little oil for the lamps at the
festival now, after so long an interval, revived, nor the
smallest offering for the god." As the emperor entered
the temple in this state of feeling, he fancied that the
god, through the medium of his image, gave him indi
cations, that, being offended at the absence of religious
feeling in the people of Antioch, he would no longer

AND ITS TREATMENT BY JULIAN. 161
fill their temple with his presence. Soon after the fire
broke out which consumed the temple and the image
of the god. All these circumstances taken together
so greatly exasperated Julian against the Christians,
that, without any ground of evidence, he considered
them as the authors of the conflagration. He caused
the principal church at Antioch to be shut up ; he or
dered the Christian chapel, which had been built near
the temple of Didymean Apollo, near Miletus, to be
thrown down; and acted towards the Christians of
Antioch with more severity than he had ever been ac
customed to do.
Julian continued consistent with himself to the last.
Regardless of his own safety, in a contest for a notion
which had taken possession of him (viz., the subjuga
tion of the barbarians, the Persians), he found in battle
(a. d. 363) a brilliant heroic death, suitable to those
ideas of former times that were ever present to his
soul. His faith in the divine origin and destiny of man,
(a faith which may itself be divine, though the dogmas
by which it is materialized are of men,) and his belief
in the wisdom of remote antiquity, inspired him with
an enthusiasm which raised him above the things of
time, and did not leave him to his last moment. As he
rushed into the thick of the fight, unmindful of the
danger to which he exposed himself, he received a mor
tal wound from a hostile javelin. As soon as his wound
had been bound up and the violence of the pain some-
8

162 CONDITION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
what relieved, he hastened back to the support of his
troops; but the powers of his body could not keep
pace with his will. Having been carried back to his
tent, his first care was to console his friends ; he ex
horted them not to lament for their commander, who
was going to heaven and to the stars. He then, as
long as he could breathe with sufficient ease, conversed
with the philosophers Maximus and Priscus (who al
ways accompanied him) on the exalted nature of the
soul. When respiration at length became difficult, he
took a draught of cold water, and expired — at the early
age of thirty-two.* * See Ammian. Marcell. xxv. 3.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

No. I. j*p. 19.)
Philosophy began and ended its first career with skepticism ; but the
skepticism with which it began was very different from that with which
it ended. Religious ideas were at first propagated among men by tra
dition, independent of all speculation, which does not appear to have
come in contact with them, at their first awakening. As in the natural
course of things, man is every where led by that which lies most re
mote to that which is nearest and most "interesting to him ; as he is
awakened to a consciousness of himself by the contrast of an external
world which he cannot penetrate, (although this internal consciousness,
according to the course of nature, precedes the external one,) so his
first attempt at speculation was produced by the opposition exist
ing between the unity of the human mind and the plurality of
the world external to it.
" Because they were astonished," says Aristotle in his Metaphy
sics, i. 2, " men first began to philosophize ; and their wonder was at
first excited by that only which was less difficult of comprehension,
that, for instance, which lay before their eyes ; they then advanced
gradually farther and farther, and proposed questions- concerning
greater things, such as the sun, moon, and stars, and so at last con
cerning the origin of the universe. Then began the attempt to com
prehend generally how the variety of appearances which they saw
around them, can be combined with the unity that reveals itself
in this ever-recurring state of change ; and how the scene on which
this alteration takes place remains still the same, while every thing
therein is subject to change in ever-varying forms, but still accord
ing to fixed and uniform laws." The first philosophers, therefore,

,166 appendix.
believed that matter* was the cause of all changes, since they observed
that every thing proceeded from it and again returned to it. This,
that was thus the foundation of all existences, 'seemed itself ever to
exist the same, only presenting itself in different forms and appear
ances. They looked therefore upon this matter as ' the element of
all, and upon all other things and appearances only as metamorphoses
and different affections thereof; while, in fact, nothing really
originated, or ceased to be.t This was the first, or materalizing
Pantheism. The human understanding, advancing farther, found that even
this fundamental unity was only an arbitrary abstraction, a creation
of the human mind, and that no such unity existed any where ; but,
on the contrary, that every thing which appeared to be one was at
the same instant also a plurality ; that in short nothing exists, but
that there is every where a perpetual movement only and progres
sive growth; that neither in nor out of man is there any thing fixed
or durable, but every where and always a mere state of fluctuation.
This was the first dogmatic skepticism, which looked upon non-ex
istence as the only certainty ; , and from this system, so destructive of
all natural sentiment, arose the Sophistic School of the time of So
crates. Both parties, as well the pantheistic materialist as these
skeptic philosophers, tended necessarily to the destruction of piety
and morality. To this was added (since the phenomena of the poli
tical world are wont to be in strict connection with those of the moral
and intellectual world) that capricious arrogance, which through
the unbridled democracy of Athens, and the civil wars of the Greeks,
despised the restraints of law, and disregarded divine and human
rights alike.J
At this time, and in opposition to this mode of thinking, arose
the true philosophy which reduced man's arrogant understanding to
its proper limits, brought man back again to himself and to the con
sciousness of that which is nearest and most deeply seated in him,
as well as of that which is highest above him, independent Of and ex
alted beyond all power of reflection. At the same time it carried in
itself the proof of its certainty, while it united with this inner con
viction a corresponding confirmation of the traditions and ordinances
of the ancient religion. Such was the spirit and object of the So-
* Principium ex quo. t Metaphys. i. 3. t See Thucyd. iii. 82.

APPENDIX. 167
cratic philosophy. Plato expressly mentions two parties, one of
whom taught that nothing was real but what could be grasped with
the hands, that even acting and being were nothing ; the other main
tained, that all was but motion (that which put, or was put in mo
tion, being nothing), and that we must wholly strike out from our
language all expressions that implied any fixity or real existence.*
The later skepticism was very different from the arrogance of the
earlier; being the skepticism of the understanding directed against
its own dogmatism, and brought to a consciousness of its utter
groundlessness and uncertainty. No. II. (p. 25.)
This resembles the argument on which Romanism always rests
its pretensions ; viz., that the man who does not secure for himself a
firm basis for his faith as it is offered to him by the authority of the
Church, must for ever be doubting and seeking, and yet can never
arrive at any thing like certainty. " Si quia alia tanta ab aliis sunt
instituta, propterea in tantum quaerere debemus, in quantum possu
mus invenire, semper quaremus et nunquam omnino credemus. Ubi
enim erit finis quaerendi ?" (See Tertullian, Prescript, adv. Hare-
tic.) Bossuet also appealed to the same argument (in his Reflexions
sur un ecrit de M. Claude), " that according to the teaching of Pro
testants there is a time in the life of every Christian when he must
necessarily be in doubt whether the Holy Scriptures be from God,
or not ; while, on the contrary, in him who is born in the lap of the
Church, faith in her, aiid in all that is handed down through her, pre
cedes all inquiry." In this manner the authority of a standing
Church has always flattered the efforts and longing after repose in
the individual who dreads a struggle with himself and shrinks from
a state of doubt. But does it not seem agreeable to the general
analogy of actual life, that men should arrive at repose only through
a previous contest ? and that the great event which presented itself
as the Redemption in the history of man (its common centre and
point of unity) should still anew make itself known to men as their
means of safety and release from this alcov irovnoos, this wicked
world ? * Theetet. Bip. Edit. Vol. ii. p. 76, et seq.

168 APPENDIX.
No. III. (p. 44.)
Origen answered Celsus by a striking allegory, taken from the
narrative of the building of the Tower of Babylon : " In the begin
ning all men spoke one language, the language of truth ; but through
their departure from heavenly pursuits they lost this, and therefore a
variety of different languages was introduced. And so it went. on,
till Christianity brought back that universal language, and released
men from the peculiar laws to which particular nations had been
hitherto subject." — Contra Gels. v. p. 398.
No. IV. (p. 57.)
Though it may have appeared so to the men of that time under the
guidance of their feelings ; and though, in fact, ancient philosophers
accompanied their denial of a Providence with the assertion, " that
God contemplated himself only, because the contemplation of things
external to himself involved a going out from himself and a dividing
of the divine consciousness ;" yet I will not say that such an asser
tion, taken in and by itself, must necessarily be accompanied with
such a denial. The two erroneous propositions — " That God con
templates only himself, and no existences which are not himself,"
and, " That God must go out of himself in order to contemplate
other beings, and, in order to care for them, must make use of the
mediation of some other," were thus corrected through the medium
of Christian teaching : " God's consciousness, however, is not, like
man's, a faculty given to him, and of which,, as being distinct from
his original being, he has come into possession. But at one and the
same moment (to speak after the manner of men) he emphatically
is, and establishes himself as God ; and, being thus established, he
orders all other beings which exist only by virtue of his appoint
ment."* But man, on the contrary, starting from the position in which he
finds himself, transfers to the Deity his notions of being and con
sciousness, and, still farther, of internal and external consciousness
(which constitute the narrow sphere to which man's operations are
confined). The consequence is, that he falls either into the lesser
* 'E» apxi >V ° My°S, Kal h \6yos rjv irpos rov 6.6v xal Beds i}V b \6yos
rrdvra Si airov iyevero. »

APPENDIX. 1(J9
danger of a positive, or the greater danger of a negative, abstract
anthropomorphism, while he virtually denies the existence of a
Providence.

No. V. (p. 61.)
The new direction of Christian philosophy here touched upon,
showed itself most strikingly in Augustin. He thus expresses him
self :* " The error of the old philosophers (who thought that they
could not admit the idea of an original creation, but only a course
of still repeated periods in which the Universe revolved, for fear of
attributing any temporal variation to the understanding and will of
God), originated in their attempt to measure by their human, variable
and limited understanding, the completely unchangeable, and in every
respect infinite understanding of God, who can number the innu
merable without the process of a change of thought. They, form a
conception not of God (whom they are hot able to conceive), but of
themselves instead ; they compare not ' him with himself, but them
selves with themselves. When however He is at first said to be in a
state of repose and then afterwards in a state of operation (though
I, for my part, know not how this can be understood by men, inas
much as, according to their present powers of conception, they can
think of nothing new without experiencing a corresponding change),
this first and afterwards doubtless was not in Him, but in the things
which were called by Him out of nothing into being."
No. VI. (p. 62.)
The idea of a necessarily existing, natural principle, external to
the Deity, a principle from whose influence the necessity of evil in
this lower world originated, — this idea of the antagonism of two
worlds, was more closely connected with polytheism than might
appear at first sight. It seemed necessary to fill up the interval
between the two opposite degrees of existence, the highest degree,
viz. the being of the Godhead, and the lowest, or natural existence ;
as the liberty of beings in the world of mortals was found to be
limited, a higher world of beings was necessarily imagined, a world
* De Civ. Dei, xii. 17.
8*

170 APPENDIX.
to which no evil can gain admission, because it is exalted above the
natural principle.
Polytheism did not actually consist in a denial of the Divine
Unity ; for the notion of this Unity is necessary to the mind of man,
and inseparable from it. Indeed, it always lay at the foundation of
all polytheistic' religions, though more or less obscurely, and reflect
ing men have ever arrived at a consciousness of it. Polytheism
consisted much more in the facts, that this unity was not felt to be
present in actual life nor applied to the various relations of society ;
that men did not endeavor to raise themselves, their minds and
hearts, immediately to the Supreme Godhead, but imagined, between
it and themselves, a series of beings emanating, after their nature,
from the Godhead, and nqt; like man (who thus directed his regard
to them), exposed to the danger of falling.
The idea, therefore, of a God, must have been completely inter
woven with the existence of a nation ; and when monotheism be
came the prevailing belief, as among the Jews, there must neces
sarily arise a visible theocracy, founded thereupon ; nor could that
notion ever become general among all the races of mankind except
by the establishment of an invisible theocracy through the agency
of Christianity. Now the great fact on which such a theocracy
was founded was the Incarnation of God.- in the Person of his Son.
Men now caught at the idea of a Mediator between God and them
selves, one who. partook of their own nature, who redeemed them
from the dominion of evil and made them free ; they looked upon
the Son of God as God himself, as him who held them in connection
with God ; and the Spirit of God, God himself, as the source of
power to hold communion with God.
A Constantine, a Chlodwig,* and, generally speaking, the un
civilized heathen nations which passed over to Christianity, con
ceived at first that they were but placing themselves under the care
of a mightier God, the God of the Christians, who, when they had
in vain cried to their former deities, had granted them help in war
and protected them in time of danger. Prolix, philosophical de
monstrations of the unity of the Godhead might well have produced
no effect upon them; but when they had become accustomed,
* " Chlodwig" is the same as Cledovix, usually called Cionis.— T.

APPENDIX. 171
through the teaching of the Christian Church, to think of one only
God in all the . relations of life, polytheism of its own accord gra
dually disappeared.
Plotinus, in answer to the Gnostics, says (Ep. ii.), " Man should
not only strive after the chief good, but also believe that there exists
above him a series of perfect beings, ascending in a gradual suc
cession up to the first source of Divine Existence ;'*'-— the. Chris
tians, in fact, who rejected this notion, must have app'eared- to the
polytheists as arrogant and egotistical. Plotinus acknowledged one
First Cause of all being, f.am,X_vg. xiav navxaiv, neql bv Ttctvta lott,
yet he adds, that the greatness of this very Deity is shown most of
all in the number of the gods ; " He cannot know the power of God
who would contract the. Divinity into one, but he who exhibits it in
its multifarious revelation, so that God, himself remaining the same,
produces many others, all of whom are conformed to his will, ex
isting through him and by him." We may compare with this what
the same writer says in the same treatise, of the necessarily confined
powers of the human soul in. relation to the free Spirit of God, as it
reveals itself in the regular course of the heavens, by way of illus
tration and voucher for what has been said above : " There can be
none of those things there which make men vile here ; there is no
wretched body clogging and retarding the soul." (Ibid. p. 206.)
With that distinction of two worlds, and with the assumption of
a necessarily existing, natural principle, descending from the God
head to the lowest scale of being, was connected also a distinction
between man and man in respect to their relation to the Deity.
" Among them also (says Plotinus, in the treatise we have already
quoted) there must necessarily be a graduated scale ; for the life of
men is of a twofold character, that of the best among them and that
of the great mass, the former alone being directed to the supreme
good ; and again, the mode of life is twofold in the human being, in
those who have a regard for virtue and obtain a portion of that good,
and, on the other hand, in the vulgar herd who, as laborers and
handicraftsmen, minister to the wants of the higher and nobler class."
It was only through the teaching of " God manifest in the flesh,"
and of the redemption wrought by Him, that this line of demarka-
tion was removed, and a common way to the highest happiness, a
communion with God even in this life, was opened to all men alike,
without distinction.

172 APPENDIX.
This opposition of Christianity to the existing tone of thought,
whether philosophical, moral, or religious, displayed itself especially
in the different sects which arose in the Christian Church of the first
centuries ; since they were nothing but attempts made to accommo
date Christianity to the various modes of human thought, and even
to amalgamate it with them. Their attack, therefore, fell chiefly on
its characteristic and distinguishing doctrines ; for instance, the crea
tion and the connection of the world with God as its Creator ; the
redemption ; the incarnation of the Son of God " in the form of a
servant ;" a universal belief adequate to the wants of all mankind ;
morality as the basis of religion, and the close connection of practice
with theory.
In the first heresies in relation to the doctrine of the creation,
there was a fluctuation between pantheism, dualism, and the attempt
to deduce the duality from the unity through the assumption of an
accident* Hermogenes took the idea from the omeipov, a natural
principle on which the creation was grounded, the raw material
which, though perfectly undefined in itself, was organized by the
power of the Deity, and from which the defects in the creation orig
inated; he sought to a*Void the anthropomorphic representation, "that
God then first begun to form this matter," by teaching " that these
two principles (God's plastic power and boundless matter) differing
according to their respective natures, operated the one upon the
other by their mere existence, without any commencement in time."
" God in making use of that inorganic matter did not in the full sense
of the word create the world, but only in appearance and by an ap
proximation of himself towards it ; like the impression which beauty
makes by its mere appearance, or like the effect produced by the
magnet by merely approaching an object."f
Philosophy, without giving any strict explanation of its origin,
was yet driven to the task of bringing this a-rreipov (on which the
older philosophers had supported themselves) to some sort of agree
ment with the improved system, and to form deductions therefrom.
From this attempt proceeded the view to which such an explanation
must necessarily lead the human understanding; viz., that in the
successive gradations of being, developing itself from its highest ,
* In the German — " durch die Annahme eines Falls." — T.
t See Tertullian, Opp. p. 355.

APEENDIX. 173
source, this pure limitation and negation of being was the last ; be
cause after it there could follow no other existence. And, secondly,
that this limitation and negation (the aireipov) was evil itself in the
abstract, and became the cause of all defect or evil in the lower de
partments of creation.
The Gnostics, on the contrary, did not consider natural evil as
something necessary and self-existing, but deduced the beginning of
the actual creation from a withdrawal (entfurnung) of the Supreme;
and therefore they came into collision with the former system, that
of Plotinus. According to the poetico-philosophical system of Va
lentinus, one of the profoundest of them, " there arose among the
spirits that had emanated from God a desire to search into the nature
ofthe incomprehensible, eternal Father, and to penetrate, beyond the
limits of their individual existence, into his being and essence. Now
when these emanations aspire beyond their individuality, they are in
danger of destroying themselves; and from this idle attempt to op
pose the law of nature is produced an unsubstantial monstrosity,
fluctuating between existence and non-existence, the first analogon
to matter. This irregular being had spread its influence from the
highest to the lowest order of emanations or Eons ; but in each of
them this rebellious movement was afterwards subdued through the
power of the redemption, though it had eventually acquired too
great strength to be altogether annihilated; and therefore the lower,
visible world, was formed out of these same emanations.* Some
followers of Valentinus endeavored to find a still higher link, from
which the chain of emanations proceeded ; they pretended to explain
the origin of the inscrutable being (BvSos) which possessed the ex
ercise of self-consciousness, for they conceded to it ivvola, or the
understanding of its own thoughts ; and they considered that the Su
preme of all was probably an unconscious, unthinking original.f
Epiphanes of Alexandria seems to have carried out, in his teaching,
the pantheistic system to the greatest lengths ; for, antecedentl-i) to all
intelligent beings, he maintained that there was, as the first source of
existence, an Incomprehensible Unity} (eine unbegreifliche Einheit),
* Compare the mythic part of the account as it is given in Irenaeus,
with the philosophical in Origen.— Dial. c. Marcion. Sect. iv.
t Jlpoapxrl dvEVvdrjros-
X MoviT-ns irpoav.vv6-i.TOS atfriTos Ktu ay-ov6f.ao-TO. ¦

174 APPENDIX.
from whence proceeded the self-conscious Unity (die sich ihrer selbst
bewusste Einheit), and, through that, all other beings*
The pantheistic principle displayed itself also in the injurious ef
fect upon morals produced by the practical working of its doctrines.
It considered all moral and civil laws as destructive of that commu
nity and union for which all nature is striving ; it accounted all pro
perty, all claims whatever to individual appropriation, to be an un
natural limitation ; that until man could elevate himself to a due sense
of that Supreme Unity, he must remain subject to the individual
for,ns to which the creation is confined, and must still run through
all those forms, returning again and again into life under different
appearances, until he has raised himself to a dominion over those
forms and to the knowledge ofthe Supreme Unity, and so, at length,
be permitted to return thereto. The soul of Christ was asserted to -
have been distinguished only by its retaining a clearer remembrance
of that One Supreme, and therefore by a dominion over all the va
rious forms of the creation and over its laws (for thus, probably,
were his miracles accounted for) ; and every other soul also, by fol
lowing him, might raise itself to the same dignity ; but through faith
and love only can man attain to the highest happiness, all other indi
vidual actions being, in and by themselves, neither good nor bad.f
No. VII. (p. 64.)
This idea of the exalted dignity of every thing human, and ofthe
honor paid to the Godhead " in the form of a servant," showed itself
also in the rites of Christian worship as it departed more from1 its
* Clemens^ Alexand. therefore calls him the author ofthe -yvixsii
/-ovcio-tIkt.. t Compare Irenaeus, i. 3, and 26. Clemens Alex. Stromata. Traces
of a pantheistic view of mythology among the Greeks (according to
which the histories of their gods were looked upon as merely allegorical
representations of the metamorphoses of the universe) are met with in
Plutarch, de 'Ei apud Delph. iz. 9. Irenasus, here referred to (ii. 4), calls
Valentinus the Gnostic " worse than a pagan." After a formal discus
sion of gnostic speculations, " concludit mundi opificium soli Deo aseri-
bendum esse," and asserts that their 44 Pleroma, Bythus, Sige, et Vacuum
— una cum professoribus vacua esse et inania." — T.

APPENDIX. 175
original simplicity. The enthusiastic defenders of image worship
felt this ; and it was this feeling which gave them an assurance that
in their adoration of saints and relics they were not falling into the
sin of idolatry. This feeling was expressed very strongly in the
answer of John of Damascus to the objection raised upon the prohi
bition of image-worship in the commandments given to the Jews.
" It is true," he says, " that the Israelites of old built no temple dedi
cated to any name of man ; they solemnized no festivals in memory
of departed men; since man's nature was still under the curse,
death was still a sentence of condemnation ; the dead body, and who
soever touched it, were looked upon as unclean. But now, since the
Godhead has been united with our nature as a quickening means of
grace, that nature has been ennobled and raised to an imperishable
condition. Therefore the death of the saints is commemorated as a
festival, temples have been built in honor of their names, and images
designed to represent them. Formerly the temples were adorned
with forms and figures of irrational creatures, but now with the
images of saints who made themselves, by their holy life, true and
hving temples of God who dwelt within them." Orat. ii.
No. VHI. (p. 65.)
The feeling with which both philosophers and rulers regarded
Christianity, was influenced by the extension which that eclecticism
obtained. Some who sought for traces of divinity in all religions,
without distinction, looked upon Christianity also as a sort of theos
ophy, though they censured the intolerance of Christians with regard
to all other religions. Thus, to take an instance, Amelius, a philo
sopher of the New Platonic school, quoted the" first words of St.
John's Gospel, and -understood by the Ad-yos-, the creating Spirit that
mediates between things temporal and eternal, between essential be
ing and derived.* So, also, the emperor Heliogabalus was led, by
this prevailing idea, to form a plan for making the worship of his
Syrian Deity the dominant religion for the whole world, while he
placed all other religions in connection therewith, and wished to
bring them over to it by degrees, as so many different forms of the
same. He therefore called all other deities servants of this god,
* Euseb. Prop. Evang. xi. 19.

176 APPENDIX.
and intended to transplant the Mysteries and holy vessels of all relir
gions (including the sacred things of Jews and Christians) to his
temple at Rome, and to make his priests supreme directors of the
universal religion.*
The respect felt by the emperor Alexander Severus for Chris
tianity, proceeded from a similar view. It is well known that he had
in his palace two places set apart for sacred uses, in one of which
(where he worshipped as soon as he rose in the morning) were the
busts of " really divine men," as Abraham and Orpheus, of Christ
also, and of Alexander the Great ; in the other the busts of those
who, though great, " yet remained within the bounds of human na
ture" — as Virgil, Cicero, Achilles. f On the occasion of a dispute
for the possession of a public place between the Christians and the
purveyors of dressed meat, he decided that.it was better that the Deity
should, at least, after some fashion, be always honored there, than
that it should be appropriated to cooks' shops.} He therefore also
formed a plan of erecting a temple to Christ, and to have his name
enrolled amongst the gods.
The emperor Constantine also is known to have advanced by
degrees from honoring Christianity as one of the best forms of reli
gion, and Christ as one of the mightiest Gods, to a full conviction
that Christianity was the only true religion, and that it alone should
be the established worship in his empire. Sopatros, a supporter of
the ancient religion and of the Platonie philosophy, lived in familiar
intercourse with him,*i which may account for the view he at first
took of the doctrinal disputes of Christians. When he had relin
quished the polytheistic view of religion, it might still appear to him
a matter of indifference how men defined the relation in which Christ
stood to the Deity. He wrote thus to Alexander, bishop of Alex
andria, as well as to Arius : — " Such inquiries as Were not dictated
by necessity nor prescribed by any divine precept, but were occa
sioned only by an idle and unprofitable spirit of disputation, must
not lightly be exhibited before their public assemblies, even if they
were engaged in as an exercise of intellectual ability." Again, he
* See Ml. Lampid. Vit. Heliogab., ch. 3 and 7.
t Ibid, ch 29 and 31.
X Vit. He liogab. ch. 49. . § See Eunap. Vit. Mdes.

^ APPENDIX. ]77
spoke of the weakness of human nature which was unable to ex
plain such things, and he referred to the example of the philosophers,
all of Whom (agreeably to the eclecticism of that day) held one
doctrine in common with each other, though they were far removed
from one another on individual points. " How much more then
were the servants of the Most High God bound to agree together
in their religious opinions of that great God, who, as the common
Redeemer of all, had given to all a common source of light." Since
all men cannot have the same inclinations, the same disposition, the
same opinions, he thought if enough if they only agree in one faith
in the Divine Providence. His plan was, not only to unite the whole
empire under one sceptre, but also to connect all his subjects to
gether through one religion ; and this, " because it would tend most
to the good of his empire, if all the worshippers of God agreed with
each other in their mode of worshipping him." He probably believed
that Christianity was the best adapted for such a purpose, as con
taining all the best features of all other religious systems.*
With this same view (which indeed prevailed even in the fifth
century) the philosopher Themistius, though not a Christian, could
live on intimate terms .with the Christian emperors, as well as
with the emperor Julian. He maintained also a friendly intercourse
with, the Christian theologians (especially those ofthe school of
Origen) who promoted the study of ancient literature. He exhorted
Julian, on his accession to the throne, since he was raised by the
Deity to the same station whef-e Hercules and Bacchus once stood,
to be at once philosopher and governor, and to purify the world from
the evil with which it was deluged.f He endeavored to persuade
the Christian emperors of his time to exercise a tolerant forbearance
towards all religious parties. He praised the emperor Jovian for his
toleration, in a manner which shows his active efforts to withdraw
him from intolerance of all kinds. " God," he says, " has implanted
in the nature of all men a talent or capacity for religion, but has left
the manner of worshipping him to the will of each individual. .The
differences in religious worship and their contending claims, con
tributed very greatly (according to the plan of Providence) to keep
alive amongst men a constant reverence for. God. All religions had
* Ep. Constantin. ap. Euseb. Vit. Constant, ii. 64, et seq.
t Ep. Themist. ad Julian, p. 254. Julian. Opp. Ed. Spanh.

178 APPENDIX.
but one object, but the way that led to it was different in each, and,
according to the constitution of human nature, it must necessarily
be so." (Themist. Orat. v.) By similar arguments, brought for
ward with all the ardor of conviction, he tried to appease the fury
with which the emperor Valens, as an Arian, persecuted the party
of Athanasius.* This turn of mind on religious matters was displayed also by the
historian Marcellinus,f who endeavored to find something divine in
all religions, and paid respect to the doctrines of Christianity and to
those Christian priests who fulfilled its requirements. He considered,
in this view, the controversies of Christians to be the corruption of
Christianity. He said of Constantine, " that he had mixed the per
fect and simple character of Christianity with weak and effeminate
superstitions, and had stirred up many controversies which arose
from subtle speculations, foreign from the dignity that became that
religion.} Others, indeed, were not so fair-dealing towards Christianity ;
partly because they attributed a divine origin to that form of religion
alone which had been handed down to the nations from olden time,
and because they were embittered against Christ's religion by the
previous oppression which Polytheism had undergone ; partly from
reasons already mentioned ; as, for instance, Libanius, and others of
the New-Platonic school. Evidences of that religious eclecticism
in the age of Augustine are to be found in his Epistles.*) " We
invoke," he says in his last Epistle, " the power of God, distributed
through the works of creation, under many different names, because
his proper name is unknown to us all." It is interesting to follow
in the development of Augustine's character his transition from
Platonic eclecticism to the catholic Christian Church. At a later
period|[ he stated his view of the Greek philosophy, of which we
give a concise abstract here, for the sake of the truth on which it is
founded : " Whilst seeking for the ' highest good ' in aught else than
God, man could not but fall into the error of looking for it either in
what affects his body or in the faculties of his soul ; and whilst he

* See Socrates, Ecc. Hist. iv. 32.
t A cotemporary of Julian. — T. X Socrat. xxi. 16.
"j Augustin. Epist. 21 and 43. || Epist. 56.

APPENDIX. 179
acknowledged such a chief good, he could neither discover the ac
tual rule of truth that extends over soul and body, nor yet the true
source of all things. The two most celebrated forms in which this
error was exliibited, were those of the Epicureans and the Stoics.
The Platonists, on the other hand, had discovered in the Divine
Wisdom the source of all happiness and of every true good, as
well as the origin of all being, and the only unerring standard of
truth; since, however, they were not able to master the true doc
trine of man's sensual nature on the one side, nor the vain egotism
of human reason on the other, they contented themselves at first
with combating these different and opposite semblances of the truth,
and adopted the dry husk of skepticism. Both these species of
error; therefore, opposed themselves to the preaching of St. Paul at
Athens. But when the truth, as it is displayed with divine power in
Christianity, became known, those errors at length disappeared, and
Platonism, laying aside the empty shell, and venturing again to ap
pear in its pure form, became, and continues to be, the only phi
losophy in connection with Christianity."
No. IX. (p. 72.)
I introduce here the allegorical narrative in which Julian de
scribes bis own history and fortunes* — " A certain rich man (Con
stantine) who had partly inherited from his father, and partly ac
quired great riches, by right or wrong (for he paid little regard to
the gods), divided this vast wealth among his sons, on whose educa
tion he had bestowed no care, from an idea that riches were all in
all for them. Now as one of these sons wis hed to possess the whole
of the property, there soon arose among them scenes of murder and
sad confusion. The ancient shrines of their forefathers, which the
father had already treated with contempt, were now thrown down
by the sons, and robbed of the gifts which their ancestors had
dedicated. " On the site of the destroyed temples modern tombsj were
erected, since fortune (Tvxn) had forewarned them that, as they had
despised the gods, they would soon require many sepulchres.
* See his 7th Oration.
t That is, chapels built over the graves of the martyrs.

180 APPENDIX.
When, therefore, every thing divine and human was thus outraged,
Jupiter was moved by the state of things, and looking to the god of
the sun (Helios), he said, ' Wilt thou still forbear to take vengeance
upon this proud and insolent man, who by deserting thy worship
hath brought himself and all his family into such an unhappy state ?
Or dost thou think, because thou dischargest not, thine arrows
against his race, that therefore thou art the less to be blamed for
this misfortune ? for this house is abandoned by thee.' — The fates
were then obliged, in compliance with the will of Jove, to spin a
new tljread of life ;* and again he addressed Helios, ' Behold this
child ; he is nearly related to those sons, but has been thrown aside
into a corner and despised. He is nephew to that rich man, and
cousin to his heirs ; henceforth he is thy son. Swear to me, there
fore, by my sceptre and thine own, that he shall be thy special care,
that thou wilt watch over him, and wilt heal his present sickness ;
for thou seest how the child is covered with soot and dirt,f and what
danger there is that the fire implanted in him by thee should go out.
Take him therefore to thyself, and educate him.' — Helios rejoiced
when he heard this of the bey, in whom he saw a faint spark of his
own immortal nature still remaining ; and from that time he took
charge of his education, and bore him away from scenes of bloodshed
and the din of battle. Jupiter also commanded Minerva (born without
mother and ever-virgin goddess) to educate the boy in conjunction
with Helios.
, "When now the youth was grown up, and looked back upon
the mass of evil which had befallen him from the hands of his own
kinsmen and cousins, he * was so astounded at its amount that he
resolved to throw himself down to Tartarus. Helios, however, so
benevolently inclined towards him, and Minerva (who watches over
men), hilled him into a deep sleep, and drew him off from these
thoughts. On again awaking, he went into a solitary place, and
then, resting for a while upon a stone which he found there, he
reflected by himself how he could escape from such overwhelming
evils, unrelieved by the appearance of a single good. Upon this
Mercury (who was indeed of a kindred nature with him) appeared
* For Julian himself.
t An implied insult, probably, to the rites and doctrines of Christi
anity in which Julian was educated. — T.

APPENDIX. 181
to hiirf in the form of a young man, greeted him in a friendly
manner, and spoke thus : ' Come hither, and I will guide thee to a
level path, if thou canst but surmount this short space of rough and
steep ground where thou seest all others stumbling and at length
turning back.'
" The youth followed him thither with much circumspection,
carrying with him a sword, a shield, and a dart ; but his head was
still uncovered, and he came to a smooth untrodden path full of
fruits and flowers. Mercury, upon that, led him to a large and
lofty mountain, and said, ' On the summit of this mountain is seated
the father of the gods ; take heed then (for there is great danger
even here) that thou worship him with reverent devotion, and ask
ever of him what thou wishest for ; let thy wish however and thy
choice, my son, be that which is not only good, but the best.
Mercury having thus spoken, disappeared ; the young man, wishing
to ask his advice as to what he should pray for to the father of
the gods, but seeing him no more, reflected within himself that the
counsel already given, though not complete, was yet good. ' I
will, therefore (said he to himself), at once pray for that which is
best for me, even though I see not clearly the father of the gods.
0 father Jupiter (he continued), or under whatever name thou art
best pleased to be invoked, show me the way that leadeth up to
thee ; for that bright region which surroundeth thee (if I may judge
from the charms of that to which we have ascended) seemeth far
too beautiful to confine thy splendor.'
" As he thus prayed he fell into a sleep, or trance ; and he
beheld Helios himself, the invisible god, of whom the sun in the
heavens is the visible symbol. Beside himself at this sight, the
young man spoke thus, 'To thee, O father of the gods,. I hence
forth entirely devote myself, in gratitude for all this which thou
hast shown me.' Clinging with his hands to the knees of Helios,
he besought, him to take him into his protection. The god on this
summoned Minerva before him : but first of all he asked to see the
weapons he had brought with him ; and, observing that he had only
a sword, a shield, and a javelin, ' Where then, my son, is your gor-
goneum and your helmet V ' Even these (he answered) have I obtained
with much difliculty and exertion ; for no one took part with me,
who lay neglected and despised in the house of my "kinsmen.'

182 APPENDIX.
' What then (said the great god Helios) sayest thou to the' neces
sity which is laid upon thee of returning, at all hazards, to that
house again ?' Then the young man begged that he would not
send him back thither, but rather keep him with him, lest he might
never again return to him, hut sink under the evils that awaited him
there. As he persisted still in asking this, even with tears, Helios
said to him, ' Thou art yet young and unconsecrated ; come then to
us that thou mayest receive consecration. Then shalt thou abide
there in safety, for there thou must necessarily abide to expiate all
those godless doings ; but remember, thou canst call me and Minerva
and the other gods to your aid.'
" The young man on hearing this stood in silence ; at length the
great god Helios led him to an eminence which was full of light
towards the top, but at the foot of it was spread a sheer mist,
through which, as well as on the adjoining water, the light and splen
dor of Helios only dimly penetrated. ' Seest thou,' he asked, ' thy
cousin, the heir to the property ?'¦ and he said, ' I see him.' — ' And
seest thou also these herdsmen ? What doth the heir appear now to
be doing? and what the herdsmen?' — The young man answered,
' He sleepeth much, and giveth himself up secretly to a life of plea
sure ; among the herdsmen are some well conducted and attentive
to their duty, but most of them are rude and worthless, who con
sume and sell the herds, and injure their master doubly ; since they
so ruin the herds that they can only expect from him moderate
wages, and then they murmur and complain of him ; as if it would
not be better to earn their full and complete wages, than thus to
injure the herd intrusted to them.' ' What now,' added the god,
' if I, together with Minerva, at the suggestion of Jupiter, should
make thee ruler over all instead of this heir ?' On this the youth
again resisted, and begged permission to remain where he was.
But Helios said, ' Be not disobedient, lest I become as indignant
and displeased with thee as I now love and esteem thee.'
" On this he answered, ' O great Helios, and I call Minerva and
Jove himself also to witness, do with me what ye will.' Mercury
then, again becoming visible to the youth, inspired him with courage,
since he felt that he had now recovered his former guide. ' Receive
then,' said Minerva, ' these kindly meant admonitions. Observe that
this heir 'takes no pleasure in the best of his herdsmen ; but the bad

APPENDIX. 183
ones, and those who take the trouble to flatter him, have succeeded
in making him their slave. This is the cause that he is not loved by
the good servants, while he suffers much wrong from these pretended
friends. Take thou then especial heed, that when thou art come into
possession, thou prefer not the flatterer to the true friend. Listen
also, my son, to this, my second suggestion ; that voluptuary yonder,
who spends the greater part of his time in sleep, is generally cheated
and imposed upon ; be thou, therefore, sober and vigilant, that the
flatterer deceive thee not under the show of Candor. Hearken to
yet a third piece of advice : take good heed to thyself, and yield not
to a shy excess of modesty, except before us and those of men who
are like us ; for you cannot but see how injurious a false shame has
proved to him.'
" Helios then took up the discourse, and said : ' The friends whom
thou choosest, treat as friends ; view them not as slaves or servants,
since you perceive how distrust of his friends hath plunged this man
into ruin. Love those whoare subject to thee as we love thee. Ex
tend to every good man the friendship which thou sharest with us,
for we are indeed thy benefactors, friends, and protectors.'
" At hearing this the young man cheered up, and professed him
self ready to obey the gods in all things. ' Come on then,' said He
lios to him, * only take good courage, since we will every where be
with thee : I and Minerva and Mercury, nay, along with us, all the
gods who are in Olympus, in the air, or on the earth ; in short, the
whole family of the gods. Therefore be devout towards us* true to
thy friends, affectionate to thy dependents ; and, while thou exer-
cisest thy authority over them for their improvement, be neither a
slave to thine own desires nor yet to theirs.
" ' In addition to the armor thou broughtest with thee, receive
this torch from me, that its strong light may illuminate thee on earth,
and that thou mayest not miss the light which thou hast enjoyed here.
Take also the gorgoneum and helmet of Minerva, and Mercury will
give thee his golden wand. Furnished with such armor, go travel
ovdr every land and every sea, fearlessly obeying our laws. Nor let
any one there induce thee to forget these our admonitions ; for by
following them thou wilt be at once beloved and honored by us, re
spected by all our faithful servants, and -feared by all wicked men.
Know then that thy body was given thee for this sole purpose, that

184 APPENDIX.
by thy means, out of our regard to thy fathers, we may purify their
house. Therefore remember that thou hast an immortal soul, which
is descended from us ; so that, at length, by imitating our example
thou mayest thyself become a god, and with us ever behold the face
of our father.^ " No. X. (p. 74.)
Julian himself, in his Epistle to the Athenians, says that he spent
six years at that place with his brother Gallus, until the latter was
called to the imperial court ; this then was about a. d. 350.* Sozo-
men, loco citato, expressly speaks of his departure thence for Con
stantinople, and from thence to Nicomedia, iii this order. Socrates
makes him go in the first instance from Constantinople to Nicome
dia, entirely omitting the intervening period of his residence in Cap
padocia ; and therefore he mixes up together his first and his second
sojourn at Constantinople.
So also does Libanius ; and what he says, in his panegyric of
Julian, that he (Libanius) began to teach in Constantinople at the
same time when Julian began to study philosophy, applies to his first
residence there. On the other hand, what he saysf of the curiosity
and attention which Julian excited, and the consequent uneasiness of
the emperor, belongs only to the second.
No. XI. (p. 77.) ,
Julian according to his own declaration (in his Ep. li. ad Alex.)
was a sincere Christian up to his twentieth year. This coincides
with the year 351, in which he came to Nicomedia. According to
Libanius (see his Panegyric) he actually hated the gods, until the
prophecies which he met with there produced a change in his opi
nions. Indeed, Augustine* says that a Greek oracular response was
extant in his time, to this effect : " Peter by magic arts hath caused
that Christ should be worshipped for three hundred and sixty-five
years ; but after the lapse of that time Christianity shall cease to
exist." * Compare Sozom. v. 2, Gregor. Naz. Orat. i. Stelit., and Ammian.
Marcellin. xv. 2.
t In his treatise, In necem Juliani.
* De Civit. Dei, xviii. 53.

APPENDIX. 185
The same Libanius, in his oration on Julian's death, says that the
discourse of a philosopher of the Ne,w Platonic school wrought this
conversion. We may combine together the two statements of So
crates and Sozomen. As to what Gregory Nazianzen relates (Orat.
i. Stelit.), ' that be had already expressed his aversion to Christianity
to his brother, by constantly defending the cause of the ancient reli
gion in his rhetorical exercises with him, under the pretext of
" making the worse appear the better cause,"* — it is not at all pro
bable, since during his residence in Cappadocia, where alone he
could have held these disputations, he was still a sincere Christian.
Nor does the account of Ammianus (xxii. 9), " that the well-
known Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, was Julian's instructor du
ring his residence in that city," quite agree with chronological
dates ; since Eusebius was appointed Bishop of Constantinople be
fore the Synod of Antioch, A. D. 341, at which he was present in
that character, and died soon after.f
No. XH. (p. 79.)
According to Eunapius (in his Life of Maximus), Julian he-
came acquainted with Maximus subsequent to his intercourse with
Chrysanthius. The account, as given by Eunapius, is intrinsically
not improbable ; it is at least characteristic of that period : " The
philosopher Eusebius^, who was much with Chrysanthius, was wont
to conclude his philosophical investigations with the remark, ' This
is the truth as" it really exists; magical operations, on the contrary,
only deceive the senses, and are performed by sorcerers who have
suffered themselves to be carried away by the discovery and applica
tion of certain powers and properties of matter.' "
Eager to learn the,,prbper application of such language, Julian
was at length told by Eusebius, that they referred to Maximus, who
imagined that the greatness of his natural endowments allowed him
to despise the ordinary way of demonstration .' " You need not,
however," added the philosopher, " be astonished at this, but rather
by elevating your powers of reason above the delusions of mere
* rdv Um. Uyov n-p-l-m. rroiciv, " To make the worse appear the
better cause."
t See Sozom. iii. 4 and 7.
9

186 APPENDIX.
sense, look upon such operations upon the senses as really implying
nothing great." Julian, however, immediately took leave of him,
with the striking words — " You may stay here with your books, but
you have described to me the very man I am seeking for ;" and so
saying, he hastened to Ephesus in -search of Maximus.
But, according to Sozomen* (who is the most accurate writer
concerning the life of Julian), the great change in Julian's opinions
was at the first completely wrought by the' instructions and the pro
phecies of Maximus at Nicomedia, who had been induced by the re
putation of Julian to go thither. And indeed it quite agrees with
the character of Maximus, that he should first have conceived the
idea of gaining over so promising a youth of the imperial family to
his religion, and with the fact of his having made a collection of
oracular predictions. To this may be added, that Julian himself
calls him his instructor in the study of the ancient poets, which, after
the symbolic method of exposition then prevalent, was combined with
the study of philosophy and theosophy ; a method which most rea
dily afforded opportunities of refuting the charges brought by the
Christians against heathenism, and of recommending the latter under
the most favorable aspects.f
The Oration above referred to, was delivered by Julian} during
his expedition against the Persians. It was Maximus who. (accord-
ing to the testimony of Eunapius himself, and also on the authority
of an Epistle addressed to him) was invited to court at the very be
ginning of his reign, and remained constantly with him to his
death.} It is probable therefore that by the expression (in note*)
" the philosopher here present," Maximus is to be understood : since
in the speech addressed to the emperor by;Libaniusl| Nicocles is
spoken of as one not present. The description*!! -however of "the
absent follower, who, after the preparatory instructions of Maximus,
* And also according to Socrates.
t Orat. vii. p. 235 ; and he speaks of him as actually present—
Tovrovi rov tpi\oa-6a)ov.
t According to Libanius, in Julian, nee. p. 300. Part II. ed.
Paris. § See Ammian. xxv. 3.
|| In the Legal, ad Julian.
IT Julian loe. cit.

APPENDIX. 187
had initiated Julian in the mysteries of philosophy, agrees altogether
with what we know of Chrysanthius. While Maximus enjoyed
greatly the splendor of the palace and the , respect which was paid
him by the emperor, Chrysanthius, on the contrary, steadily refused
to come to court, notwithstanding Julian's frequent invitations.
Some well-grounded passages of history, the well-known charac
ters of Chrysanthius, Maximus, and Julian himself, and the influ
ence exercised over the latter by Maximus, may have given occasion
for the getting up of this account.
Does not the language* of Libanius tend to prove that Maximus
produced the change of religion in Julian by his philosophical in
structions at Nicomedia ; and that in order to confirm him in that
change, he took him from Nicomedia, where he was too closely
surrounded and watched by the Christians, to go with him into
Ionia 1 "I bless that day," he says, " as the commencement of the
world's freedom, and that place (Nicomedia) where this change was
brought about, and that physician of his soul, who, when the pro
fession of heathenism was forbidden by the laws, nobly exposed
himself to the greatest danger of that period, and sailed safely with
his pupil through the Cyanean rocks."f
Julian himself} speaks of the dangers and sufferings which
threatened him on the part of his relations and friends, when he first
on his journey to Ionia went over to the Hellenic religion.
No. XIII. (p. 106.)
Julian found the philosophic doctrine of the relation of the na
tural to the divine (of nature to the Deity) in the myth of Cybele
and Atys ; how through one efficient, energizing power, extending
from the Supreme to the last of the gods (who is placed next in
order before material forms) even to the limits of all existence, the
whole is formed and kept in perpetual order. Cybele, accordingly,
is the second in the rank of Deity ; from the highest or Supreme
Deity (the source of all being, stretching out beyond and over all
individual existence), she receives full and complete life and energiz
ing power. She thereby produces life of the second degree, i. e.
* See his Panegyr. in Jul. cons. t Ibid. p. 234.
X Epist. ad Themist. p. 259.

188 APPENDIX.
the casuative (or creative), spiritual (or immaterial) gods. Of these
Atys, the last produced, (who receives in his own person the ener
gizing power of all the rest, and extends it to the material beings
over whose formation he presides,) remains united through her
with the one Supreme. In proportion however as he turns away
from her to the plurality of ^existences over which he is placed,
he loses his connection with the Supreme Unity, and is car
ried away by the endless attractions of matter. This process
goes on till Providence again draws him back to the unity, while
she gives figure and shape to matter throughout its appointed or
ganized forms. (The emasculation of Atys seems to point to this.)
The return of Atys to the Supreme Unity was indicated by the
sounding trumpets of the Corybantes.
The moral application of this myth to men consists in this : that
the gods admonish us, even in our inner man, to restrain all capri
cious disregard of law and order, to subdue that inner man by means
of the higher law, and to bring it back to that law, and, if possible,
to the One Supreme himself. Then Julian speaks (p. 171) of the
festival of expiation, called Hilaria ;* " Nevertheless the order of
things was at no time different from what it is now. Atys is still
subject to his mother, is still working out a succession of existences
in the world, and is still forming within himself the indefinite and
endless by means of ideal forms definite in themselves."
In the text of the Spanheim edition of Julian, and of the sub
joined translation, the sense here is altogether mistaken. Accord
ing to that version, Julian is made desirous of showing the similarity
of the birth of Bacchus with that of Hercules. This, however, is
quite contrary to his meaning ; since his object is to refute those who
maintain that the former of these gods was, like the latter, raised
from the human to the divine nature in consideration of his godlike
services. With this view he places the two narratives by the side of
each other, and shows that Hercules, amidst his extraordinary pow
ers, yet exhibits always a likeness to human nature, but that this like
ness is not to be found in the character of Bacchus. He then ob
serves, that this distinction should preserve men from the danger of
looking upon Bacchus as a deified mortal rather than a real and true
* This festival was celebrated at Rome, in connection with the wor
ship of Cybele, at the vernal equinox. See Ovid's Fast i. iv. 337. — T.

APPENDIX. 189
god. The passage therefore, in p. 21 9, instead of ottoS yap f, yeveeri.
io-riv, should be ov yap, k.t.X, and should be translated " neque enim
talis generatio Bacchi est, qualis Herculis." And at p. 220, instead
of (tara T.t rots avtspmnois rrpoo-eoiKev, it should belnterrogatively,
Kara ti, k.t.X ; and translated — " humanarum rerum simile quid num
continet ?" No. XIV. (p. 108.)
At a later period (that of the disputes about image worship) the
same reasons were adduced in defence of the practice, and that by
deep-thinking men ; for instance, that in the type man worships the
archetype ; that the sensual nature of man could not immediately be
elevated to the notion of the Invisible, it therefore seeks to bring it
objectively home to him by means of appropriate representations.
We may compare with this a remarkable passage in Damascenus.
" The apostles," he says, " beheld the Lord with their bodily eyes,
as others saw the apostles and martyrs. I also long to see them
with body and soul, since I am formed of a twofold nature ; and I
therefore pray to the Visible Image, not as God, but as to a venerable
representation of The Venerable. Thou, forsooth, more exalted and
independent of sense than I am, despisest all sensible representation ;
but I, who am but a man, and have a human body, take a pleasure in
thus associating with the saints after a sensible manner, and in thus
seeing them with my bodily eyes." See Damasc. Opp. p. 717.

No. XV. (p. 113.)
The comparison of the Christians with this species of cynics
seems to have suggested itself before Julian's time, and was com
monly made ; Lucian, accordingly, who has drawn the picture of
such a cynic in tbe person of Peregrinus Proteus, speaks of them as
finding a very favorable reception with the Christians.
No. XVI. (p. 115.)
Celsus asserted that the Barbarians certainly find out religious
precepts, but the Greeks had the talent of examining the discoveries of
the Barbarians, of fixing their value, and employing them in the ser-

190 APPENDIX.
vice of virtue. To this Origen replied, " that the remark served ad
mirably for the defence of Christianity ; since any one who came
with a mind rightly educated in Greek science to the study of Chris
tian doctrines, would upon examination discover the truth thereof,
apply them to the business of life, and also prove the truth of Chris
tianity by means of a philosophical method, after the manner ofthe
Greeks." See Origen contr. Cels. i. 2.
No. XVIL (p. 116.)
At the time of Origen, as he relates, veneration for the three pa
triarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was so general, that all magi
cians, both in their writings and in their conjurations, called upon
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and ascribed especial power
to this designation of the Deity.
No. XVIII. (p. 123.)
Lucian, in his Peregrinus Proteus, had already spoken of the ac
tive beneficence of the Christians towards all their brethren in the
faith, as a means by which many persons had been induced to adopt
it. Christianity certainly first took away the narrow distinctions
which had existed between different nations and different classes. —
The monasteries also were already, in the last half of the fourth cen
tury, the frequent means of promoting the union of the lower with
the higher classes, and the spread of a more general education.
Slaves, whom their masters, as a meritorious act, had set free, there
came in contact with the rich and the distinguished who had retired
thither ; and there under careful superintendence they were gradu
ally prepared for the free use of their natural powers, and the filling
of a higher station.*
Julian also could not have denied that a venerable life distinguished
the Christian clergy, even though he pronounced these venerable
manners to be only a sort of hypocrisy.
An historical -writer,-)- and certainly no partial witness in this re-
* See Augustin. de Opere Monachor.
t Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote not long after the time of
Julian.

APPENDIX. 191
spect, while describing the worldly life of the bishops of Rome, adds
this remark : " It would indeed be happy for them if they lived after
the pattern of some ofthe provincial bishops, who by their temper
ance, the poorness of their clothing, and their downcast eyes, recom
mend themselves as truly modest men, both to the God whom they
serve and to their sincere followers and admirers."

THE END.