IN taking up the defence of the old against the new religious institutions of the Roman Empire, the Neo-Platonists were simply continuing the attitude of earlier philosophical culture. From the time when the new religious phenomenon was first consciously recognised—that is to say, from about the beginning of the second century—it had aroused an instinctive antagonism among men who were as far from believing the pagan myths as the Christians themselves. The outlines of the apology for paganism, so far as it can be recovered, remain from first to last without essential modification. Celsus, writing in the second century, conceives the problem to be that of reconciling philosophical theism with diversities of national worship. It may be solved, in his view, by supposing the supreme Deity to have allotted different regions to subordinate divine powers, who may either be called gods, as by the Greeks, or angels, as by the Jews. Then, to show that the Christians have no philosophical advantage, he points to the declarations of Greek thinkers that there is one supreme God, and that the Deity has no visible form. On the other side, he insists on the resemblances between Hebrew and Greek legends. Greek mythology, he remarks, has in common with Christianity its stories of incarnations. In other religions also resurrections are spoken of. Such are those of Zamolxis in Scythia and of Rhampsinitus among the Egyptians. Among the Greeks too there are cases in which mortal men have been represented as raised to divinity. Noah's flood may have been borrowed from Deucalion's, and the idea of Satan from the Greek Titanomachies. The more intelligent Jews and Christians are ashamed of much in Biblical history, and try to explain it allegorically. What is supposed to be distinctive of Christian ethics has been put better, because more temperately, by the Greek philosophers.

Plato holds much the same view about the difficulty there is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. He declares likewise that evil is never to be returned for evil. The reproach of idolatry against the non-Judaic religions is a calumny. Statues are not regarded as deities, but only as aids to devotion. To the highest God, as all agree, only the worship of the mind ought to be offered. But why should not hymns be addressed to beneficent visible powers like the sun, or to mental attributes such as Wisdom, represented by Athena? Piety is more complete when it has regard to all the varied manifestations of divinity in the world.

On their side, the Christians were quite willing to appeal to philosophers and poets who had had ideas of a purer religion than that of the multitude. All such ideas, they maintained, were borrowed from the Hebrew Scriptures. Philo had previously taken that view; and Numenius, among men who attached themselves to the Hellenic tradition, was at least thought to have been ready to allow something of the same kind. Theodoret, early in the fifth century, is sarcastic upon the ignorance displayed by the pagans of his time, who are not aware of the fact, to be learned from their own sages, that the Greeks owed most of their knowledge of the sciences and arts to the "barbarians". As against unmodified Judaism, the Christians could find support for some of their own positions in the appeal to religious reformers like Apollonius of Tyana; who, condemning blood-offerings as he did on more radical grounds than themselves, was yet put forward by the apologists of paganism as a half-divine personage. So far did this go that Hierocles, the Proconsul of Bithynia who wrote against the Christians in the time of Diocletian, gave his ecclesiastical antagonist Eusebius occasion to treat the part of his book that dealt with Apollonius as the only part worth replying to. And Porphyry, in whom the Christians saw their most dangerous adversary, himself made a distinct claim to what we should now call religious as distinguished from philosophical liberty in the matter of food and of sacrificing. Nor was any objection usually raised by the authorities to reforming sects that aimed at personal holiness. The Roman Government even looked upon it as part of its own function to repress savage rites, such as human sacrifices. Whence then sprang the repugnance almost uniformly to be observed in the statesmen, philosophers and men of letters who were brought into contact with the new religion? For they were quite prepared to appreciate a monotheistic worship, and to welcome anything that afforded a real prospect of moral reform.

We might be tempted to find the cause in the want of culture among ordinary Christians. Julian, for example, who detested the "uneducated Cynics" of his time, can think of nothing worse to say of them than that they resemble the Christian monks. The only difference is that the Cynics do not make a business of gathering alms; and perhaps this is only because they can find no plausible pretext. It is those, he adds, who have shown no capacity for rhetorical or philosophical culture that rush straight to the profession of Cynicism. Yet, he goes on to admit, there is really, as the Cynics claimed on their own behalf, a "shorter path" to philosophic virtue than the normal one of intellectual discipline. The shorter path is, however, the more difficult; requiring greater and not less vigour of mind and firmness of will. Of those who took it were the elder Cynics like Diogenes. The true as distinguished from the false Cynic remained, in fact, for Julian as for Epictetus, a hero among philosophers. This was part of the Stoical tradition continued into Neo-Platonism. And, as we know, it was a commonplace with philosophic preachers to make light of mental accomplishments as compared with moral strength. Besides, the Christians had among them men of rhetorical training who were not without knowledge of philosophy. The antagonism therefore cannot be accounted for altogether on this line.

The truth is that the Graeco-Roman world had a perception, vague at first but gradually becoming clearer, of what was to be meant by Christian theocracy. When Tacitus spoke of the "exitiabilis superstitio," he had doubtless come face to face, as Proconsul of Asia, with nascent Catholicism. In the fourth century, the new types of the fanatical monk and the domineering ecclesiastic were definitely in the world, and we may see by the expressions of Eunapius the intense antipathy they aroused. Already in the second century, Celsus, while he treated the Gnostic sects, with their claims to a higher "knowledge," as having a perfect right to the Christian name, was evidently much more struck by the idea of a common creed which was to be humbly accepted. This was the distinctive idea of that which he recognises as the "great Church" among the Christians. It is remarkable that, in dealing with the claims of Christianity generally, and not with the strange tenets of some speculative sects, the defender of the established order in the Roman State treats philosophy as the true wisdom by which everything is to be tested, and reproaches the revolutionary innovators on the ground that they say to their dupes, "Do not examine." Celsus was probably a Roman official; and he may have seen already some of the political aims of the new society. For of course the word "catholic" as applied to the Church was not intended to remain without a very tangible meaning. The Christian apologists of the second century are already looking forward to spiritual control over the public force of the Empire. A verse of the New Testament by which the claim was held to be made is pointed to by Julian in arguing that the Christians are not legitimate successors of the Israelites. Christ, according to the view of the Church, was the prophet that Moses foretold, of whom it was said, "that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people" (Acts 3. 23). The Church possessed the teachings of Christ, and was a living body with the right to declare them authoritatively. The true religion was not now, as under an earlier dispensation, for one chosen race, but for the whole world. Hence the whole world was bound to hear and to obey it. The reply of Julian was that the application of the prediction supposed to have been made was false. Moses never had the least idea that his legislation was to be abrogated, but intended it for all time. The prophet he meant was simply a prophet that should renew his own teaching of the law. The law was for the Jews only, and the Christians had no claim to represent them. The Jewish religion had its proper place as one national religion among others. It was open even to those who were not born under it to adopt it as their own if they chose; but they should have submitted to all its obligations. The care of the Jews about religious observances, and their readiness to face persecution on behalf of them, are contrasted by the Emperor in one place with the laxity and indifference of the Greeks. They are in part pious, he says, worshipping as they do the God who rules the visible world, whom we also serve under other names. In this only are they in error, that they arrogate to themselves alone the worship of the one true God, and think that to us, "the nations," have been assigned none but gods whom they themselves do not deign to regard at all.

Julian, we see, had no hostility to Hebrew religion as such. On the contrary, he agrees with Porphyry in showing special friendliness to it in so far as its monotheism may be taken to coincide with that of philosophy. The problem presented to the Empire by Judaism, so difficult at an earlier period, had now become manageable through the ending of all political aspirations on the part of the Jewish community. The question as to the respective merits of Hebrew and Greek religion, if no new question had arisen, would soon have been reduced to a topic of the schools. The system, at once philosophical and political, of the classical world in its dealings with religion, was not of course "religious liberty" in its modern sense. In a congeries of local worships, mostly without definite creeds, the question of toleration for dissentients had scarcely arisen. The position reached by the representatives of ancient thought, and allowed in practice, was that the national religions might all be preserved, not only as useful, but as adumbrations of divine truth. To express that truth adequately is the business of philosophy and not of popular religion. Philosophy is to be perfectly free. This is laid down explicitly by Julian. Thus, according to the system, philosophy is cosmopolitan and is an unfettered inquiry into truth. Religion is local and is bound to the performance of customary rites. Those who are in quest of a deeper knowledge will not think of changing their ancestral religion, but will turn to some philosophical teacher. At the same time, the religions are to be moralised. Priests are to be men of exemplary life, and are to be treated with high respect. The harmony of the whole system had of course been broken through by Christianity, which, after the period of attempted repression by force, had now been for more than a generation the religion of the Empire. Julian's solution of the problem, renewed by his reversal of the policy of his uncle, was to grant a formal toleration to all. Both sides are forbidden to use violence, which is entirely out of place where opinions are concerned. Nevertheless, for dignities, "the pious"—that is to say, the adherents of the old religions—are to be preferred. Christians are not allowed to be public teachers of Grecian letters; the reason assigned being that the Greek poets, historians and orators treat the gods with honour, whereas the Christians speak dishonourably of them. It is unworthy of an educated or of a good man to teach one thing and to think another. Let them either change their views about the theology of the Greeks or confine themselves to the exposition of their own.

By this policy there is no reason to think that the Emperor was putting back a process by which captive Greece might again have led the conqueror captive. The Church absolutely needed the elements of culture if it was to rule the world; and it could find them only in the classical tradition. It was now in more or less conscious possession of its own system, which was precisely the antithesis of the system which Julian desired to restore. A religion had been revealed which claimed to be true for all. Philosophy, so far as it was serviceable, could be treated as a preparation for it or as an instrument in defining its doctrines, but could have no independent standing-ground. Letters, in the hands of ecclesiastics, could furnish the grammatical and rhetorical training without which the reign of a "spiritual power" would have been impossible. The new system, however, was as yet far from being fully at work. Christian pupils, we must remember, continued to frequent the pagan schools much later. Thus there was evidently no insuperable prejudice by which they would have been universally excluded from a liberal education not subjugated to ecclesiastical authority. If then by any possibility the advance of the theocratic idea could have been checked, it is clear that the Emperor took exactly the right measures. The classical authors were to be seen, so far as public authority could secure it, under the light of the tradition to which they themselves belonged. Pupils were not to be systematically taught in the schools of the Empire that the pagan gods were "evil demons," and that the heroes and sages of antiquity were among the damned. And, hopeless as the defeated party henceforth was of a change of fortune, Julian's memory furnished a rallying-point for those who now devoted themselves to the preservation of the older culture interpreted by itself. Marinus, in writing the biography of Proclus, dates his death "in the 124th year from the reign of Julian." Thus the actual effect of his resistance to that system of ecclesiastical rule which afterwards, to those who again knew the civic type of life, appeared as a "Kingdom of Darkness," may have been to prolong the evening twilight.

All who have studied the career of Julian recognise that his great aim was to preserve "Hellenism," by which he meant Hellenic civilization. Of this the ancient religion was for him the symbol. The myths about the gods are not to be taken literally. The marriage of Hyperion and Thea, for example, is a poetic fable. What the poets say, along with the divine element in it, has also much that is human. Pure truth, unmixed with fable, is to be found in the philosophers, and especially in Plato. On the Jewish religion, the Emperor's position sometimes appears ambiguous. He easily finds, in the Old Testament, passages from which to argue that the God of Israel is simply a tribal god like those of the nations. His serious opinion, however, seems to have been that the Hebrew prophets had arrived at an expression, less pure indeed than that of the Greek philosophers, but quite real, of the unity of divine government. In one passage--than which no better could be found to illustrate the antithesis between "Hebraism" and "Hellenism"—he compares them to men seeing a great light as through a mist, and unable to describe what they see except by imagery drawn from the destructive force of fire. While himself regarding the divinity as invisible and incorporeal, he treats as prejudice their denunciations of the making of statues. The kind of truth he would recognise in popular polytheism he finds not altogether inconsistent with the Hebrew Scriptures, which speak of the angels of nations. National deities, whether to be called angels or gods, are interpreted as a kind of genius of each race. The various natural aptitudes of peoples suppose a variety in the divine cause, and this can be expressed as a distribution made by the supreme God to subordinate powers. That is the position taken up by Julian in his book against the Christians—which is at the same time a defence of Hellenism. From the fragments contained in Cyril's reply—of which perhaps half survives—it has been beautifully reconstructed by C. J. Neumann. A summary of the general argument will serve better than anything else to make clear the spiritual difference that separated from their Christian contemporaries the men who had received their bent in the philosophic schools.

Evidently neither Julian's work nor any other was felt to be so peculiarly damaging as Porphyry's. By a decree of the Council of Ephesus (431) and by a law of Theodosius II (448), Porphyry's books, though not those of Celsus, Hierocles or Julian, were sentenced to be burned. In the changed form of the law in Justinian's code, the books written by any one else to the same purpose are brought under the decree, but not by name. The difference between Julian's line of attack and Porphyry's, so far as it can be made out, is that Julian, while much that he too says has an interest from its bearing on questions of Biblical criticism, pays no special attention to the analysis of documents. He takes for granted the traditional ascriptions of the Canonical books, and uniformly quotes the Septuagint. Porphyry is said to have known the Hebrew original. We have already met with his view on the Book of Daniel; and so characteristic was his inquiry into questions of authorship and chronology, that Neumann is inclined to refer to him an assertion of the late and non-Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, quoted by Macarius Magnes about the end of the fourth century from an unknown philosopher. What line was taken either by Julian or by Porphyry on the primitive teaching of Christianity itself, hardly anything remains to show. Of Porphyry, as was said, all the express refutations have disappeared; and of the later books of Cyril's reply to Julian there are left only a few fragments. We learn from one of these that the Catholic saint, with his expert's knowledge of the text, pointed out that the saying "Father, forgive them" in Luke 23, 34 is spurious. "The Apostate" had apparently quoted it against anticipations of the mediaeval treatment of the Jews. On the cult of martyrs, the Bishop of Alexandria's reply is not without point, as Julian would have been the first to allow. The Greeks themselves, he says, go in procession to the tombs and celebrate the praises of those who fought for Greece; yet they do not worship them as gods. No more do we offer to our martyrs the worship due to God, nor do we pray to them. Moreover, the gods of the Gentiles were men who were born and died, and the tombs of some of them remain. Connected with this recurrence to the "Euhemerism" which the Christian Fathers sometimes borrowed from Greek speculators on the origin of religion, is a quotation from Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras; introduced, Neumann conjectures (p. 80), to prove that the Greeks had no right to be incredulous about the declaration (1 Peter 3. 19, 20) that Christ preached to the spirits in prison; since Pythagoras is represented as having descended into the Idaean cave (here apparently identified with the underworld) where the tomb of Jupiter was.

On the relation of Christianity to its Hebrew origins, and on these as compared with the poetry and philosophy of Greece, a coherent account of Julian's view can be put together. He seems to have begun by speaking of the intuitive knowledge men have of God. To such knowledge, he says,—perhaps with an allusion to the elements of Gnostic pessimism that had found their way into orthodox Christianity,—has usually been attached the conviction that the heavens, as distinguished from the earth, are a diviner part of the universe, though it is not meant by this that the earth is excluded from divine care. He entirely repudiates the fables about Cronos swallowing his children, and about the incestuous marriages of Zeus, and so forth. But, he proceeds, the story of the Garden of Eden is equally mythical. Unless it has some secret meaning, it is full of blasphemy, since it represents God as forbidding to his creatures that knowledge of good and evil which alone is the bond of human intelligence, and as envious of their possible immortality. In what do stories like that of the talking serpent—according to the account, the real benefactor of the human race—differ from those invented by the Greeks? Compare the Mosaic with the Platonic cosmogony, and its speculative weakness becomes plain. In the language of the Book of Genesis there is no accurate definition. Some things, we are told, God commanded to come into being; others he "made"; others he separated out. As to the Spirit of God, there is no clear determination whether it was made, or came to be, or is eternal without generation. According to Moses, if we are to argue from what he says explicitly, God is not the creator of anything incorporeal, but is only a shaper of underlying matter. According to Plato, on the other hand, the intelligible and invisible gods of which the visible sun and moon and stars are images, proceed from the Demiurgus, as does also the rational soul of man. Who then speaks better and more worthily of God, the "idolater" Plato, or he of whom the Scripture says that God spoke with him mouth to mouth?

Contrast now the opinions of the Hebrews and of the Greeks about the relations of the Creator to the various races of mankind. According to Moses and all who have followed the Hebrew tradition, the Creator of the world chose the Hebrews for his own people, and cared for them only. Moses has nothing to say about the divine government of other nations, unless one should concede that he assigns to them the sun and moon for deities (Deut. 4. 19). Paul changes in an elusive manner; but if, as he says sometimes (Rom. 3. 29), God is not the God of the Jews only, why did he neglect so long all but one small nation settled less than two thousand years ago in a portion of Palestine? Our teachers say that their creator is the common father and king of all, and that the peoples are distributed by him to presiding deities, each of whom rules over his allotted nation or city. In the Father, all things are perfect and all things are one; in the divided portions, one power is predominant here, another there. Thus Ares is said to rule over warlike nations, Athena over those that are war­like with wisdom, and so forth. Let the appeal be to the facts. Do not these differences in the characters of nations exist? And it cannot be said that the differences in the parts are un­caused without denying that providence governs the whole. Human laws are not the cause of them, for it is by the natural characters of men that the laws peculiar to each people are determined. Legislators by the lead they give can do little in comparison with nature and custom. Take the case of the Western races. Though they have been so long under Roman rule, you find extremely few among them showing aptitude for philosophy or geometry or any of the sciences. The cleverest appreciate only debate and oratory, and concern themselves with no other branch of knowledge. So strong is nature.

The cause assigned by Moses for the diversity of languages is altogether mythical. And yet those who demand that the Greeks should believe the story of the tower of Babel, themselves disbelieve what Homer tells about the Aloadae, how they thought to pile three mountains on one another. One story is neither more nor less fabulous than the other. While Moses thus tries to account for the varieties of human speech, neither he nor any of his successors has a clear cause to assign for the diversity of manners and customs and constitutions, which is greater than that of languages. What need to go through the particulars: the freedom-loving and insubordinate ways of the German tribes; the submissiveness and tameness of the Syrians and Persians and Parthians, and, in a word, of all the barbarians towards the East and the South?

How can a God who takes no providential care for human interests like those of legal and political order, and who has sent no teachers or legislators except to the Hebrews, claim reverence or gratitude from those whose good, both mental and physical, he has thus left to chance? But let us see whether the Creator of the world—be he the same as the God of the Hebrews or not—has so neglected all other men.

First, however, the point must be insisted on, that it is not sufficient in assigning the cause of a thing to say that God commanded it. The natures of the things that come into existence must be in conformity with the commands of God. If fire is to be borne upwards and earth downwards, fire must be light and earth heavy. Similarly, if there are to be differences of speech and political constitution, they must be in accordance with pre-existing differences of nature. Any one who will look may see how much Germans and Scythians differ in body from Libyans and Aethiopians. Is this also a mere command? Do not air too and geographical situation act together with the gods to produce a certain complexion? In reality, the commands of God are either the natures of things or accordant with the natures of things. To suppose these natural diversities all ordered under a divine government appropriate to each, is to have a better opinion of the God announced by Moses, if he is indeed the Lord of all, than that of Hebrew and Christian exclusiveness.

Julian now turns to the detailed comparison. The admired decalogue, he observes, contains no commandments not recognised by all nations, except to have no other gods and to keep the Sabbath Day. For the transgression of the rest, penalties are imposed everywhere, sometimes harsher, sometimes milder, sometimes much the same as those of the Mosaic law. The commandment to worship no other gods has joined with it the slander that God is jealous. The philosophers tell us to imitate the gods as far as possible; and they say that we can imitate them by contemplating the things that exist and so making ourselves free from passion. But what is the imitation of God celebrated among the Hebrews? Wrath and anger and savage zeal. Take the instance of Phinehas (Num. xxv. 11), who is represented as turning aside God's wrath by being jealous along with him.

In proof that God did not care only for the Hebrews, consider the various gifts bestowed on other peoples. Were the beginnings of knowledge given to the chosen race? The theory of celestial phenomena was brought to completion by the Greeks after the first observations had been made in Babylon. The science of geometry, taking its origin from the art of mensuration in Egypt, grew to its present magnitude. The study of numbers, beginning from the Phoenician merchants, at length assumed the form of scientific knowledge among the Greeks, who, combining this science with the others, discoversed the laws of musical intervals.

"Shall I, the Emperor continues, mention the names of illustrious Greeks as they occur, or bring them under the various heads,—philosophers, generals, artificers, lawgivers? The hardest and cruellest of the generals will be found dealing more leniently with those who have committed the greatest crimes than Moses with perfectly unoffending people. Other nations have not wanted legislators in sacred things. The Romans, for example, have their Numa, who also delivered his laws under divine inspiration. The spirit from the gods, Julian allows in a digression, comes seldom and to few among men. Hebrew prophecy has ceased; none remains among the Egyptians; the indigenous oracles of Greece have yielded to the revolutions of time and are silent. You, he says, turning to the Christians, had no cause to desert us and go over to the Hebrews for any greater gifts they have to boast of from God; and yet, having done so, you would have done well to adhere to their discipline with exactitude. You would not then have worshipped, not merely one, but many dead men. You would have been under a harsh law with much of the barbarous in it, instead of our mild and humane laws, and would have been worse in most things though better as regards religious purity. But now you do not even know whether Jesus spoke of purity. You emulate the angry spirit and bitterness of the Jews, overturning temples and altars and slaughtering not only those who remain true to their paternal religion but also the heretics among yourselves. These things, however, belong to you and not to your teachers. Nowhere did Jesus leave you such commands or Paul.

To return: the gods gave Rome the empire; to the Jews they granted only for a short time to be free; for the most part, they made them alien sojourners and subject to other nations. In war, in civil government, in the fine and useful arts, in the liberal sciences, there is hardly a name to be mentioned among the Hebrews. Solomon, who is celebrated among them for his wisdom, served other gods, deceived by his wife, they say. This, if it were so, would not be a mark of wisdom; but may he not have paid due honour to the religions of the rest of the world by his own judgment and by the instruction of the God who manifested himself to him? For envy and jealousy are so far from angels and gods that they do not extend even to the best men, but belong only to the demons.

If the reading of your own scriptures is sufficient for you, why do you nibble at Greek learning? Why, having gone over to the Hebrews, do you depart further from what their prophets declare than from our own manners? The Jewish ritual is very exact, and requires a sacerdotal life and profession to fulfil it. The lawgiver bids you serve only one God, but he adds that you shall "not revile the gods" (Exod. 22. 28). The brutality of those who came after thought that not serving them ought to be accompanied by blaspheming them. This you have taken from the Jews. From us you have taken the permission to eat of everything. That the earliest Christian converts were much the same as those of today is proved by what Paul says of them (1 Cor. 6. 9-11). Baptism, of which the Apostle speaks as the remedy, will not even wash off diseases and disfigurements from the body. Will it then remove every kind of transgression out of the soul?

The Christians, however, say that, while they differ from the present tley are in strictness Israelites according to the prophets, and agree with Moses and those who followed him. They say, for example, that Moses foretold Christ. But Moses repeatedly declares that one God only is to be honoured. It is true that he mentions angels, and admits many gods in this sense; but he allows no second God comparable with the first. The sayings usually quoted by the Christians from Moses and Isaiah have no application to the son of Mary. Moses speaks of angels as the sons of God (Gen. 6. 2); Israel is called the firstborn son of God (Exod. 4. 22), and many sons of God (i.e. angels) are recognised as having the nations for their portion; but nothing is said of a Firstborn Son of God in the sense of the Christian doctrine.

At this point comes a disquisition on the agreement, in all but a few things, of Hebrew and of Greek religion. According to Cyril, Julian argued that Moses commanded an offering, in the form of the scapegoat (Levit. 16. 8), to unclean demons. In not following the general custom of crificing, the Christians stand apart from the Jews as well as from all other nations. But the Jews, they will say, do not sacrifice. The reason, however, is that they do not think it lawful for them to sacrifice except at Jerusalem, and that they have been deprived of their temple. And they still keep up customs which are in effect sacrificial , and abstain from some kinds of meat. All this the Christians neglect. That the law in these matters was at some future time to be annulled, there is not the slightest suggestion in the books of Moses. On the contrary, the legislator distinctly declares that it is to be perpetual.

That Jesus is God neither Paul nor Matthew nor Luke nor Mark ventured to assert. The assertion was first made—not quite distinctly, though there is no doubt about the meaning—by the worthy John, who perceived that a great multitude in many of the Grecian and Italian cities was taken hold of by this malady, and who had heard, as may be supposed, that the tombs of Peter and Paul were secretly objects of adoration at Rome. In their adoration of tombs and sepulchres, the Christians do not listen to the words of Jesus of Nazareth, who said they were full of all uncleanness (Matth. 23. 27). Whence this comes, the prophet Isaiah shall say. It is the old superstition of those who "remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments", for the purpose of divining by dreams. This art the apostles most likely practised after their master's end, and handed it down to their successors".

"And you", Julian proceeds, "who practise things which God abominated from the beginning through Moses and the prophets, yet refuse to offer sacrifices". Thence he returns to the point that, if the Christians would be true Israelites, they ought to follow the Jewish customs, and that these on the whole agree more with the customs of "the Gentiles" than with their own. Approval of animal sacrifices is clearly imlied in the account of the offerings of Cain and Abel. Circumcision, which was enjoined on Abraham and his seed for ever, the Christians do not practise, though Christ said that he was not come to destroy the law. "We circumcise our hearts," they say. "By all means", replies Julian, "for none among you is an evildoer, none is wicked; thus you circumcise your hearts". Abraham, he goes on to intelrpret the account in, Genesis 15, practised divination from shooting-stars, and auoury from the flight of birds. The merit of his faith therefore consisted not in believing without but with a sign of the truth of the promise made to him. Faith without truth is foolishness.

Incomplete as the reconstruction necessarily remains, there is enough to show the general line the Emperor took. It was to deny any ground, in the Old Testament as it stood, for the idea of Christianity as a universalised Judaism. All else is incidental to this. If then no religion was meant to be universal, but Judaism, in so far as it excludes other religions, is only for Jews, the idea of Christian theocracy loses its credentials. Divine government is not through a special society teaching an authoritative doctrine, but through the order of the visible universe and all the variety of civic and national institutions in the world. The underlying harmony of these is to be sought out by free examination, which is philosophy. Of philosophy, accordingly, and not of polytheism as such, Julian was the champion. And if the system he opposed did not succeed in finally subjugating the philosophy and culture for which he cared, that was due not to any modification in the aims and ideals of its chiefs, but to the revival of forces which in their turn broke the unity of the cosmopolitan Church as the Church had broken the unity of the Roman State.