ust mean a sincere one) till the
twentieth year of his age.]

[Footnote 7: See his Christian, and even ecclesiastical education, in
Gregory, (iii. p. 58,) Socrates, (l. iii. c. 1,) and Sozomen, (l. v. c.
2.) He escaped very narrowly from being a bishop, and perhaps a saint.]

[Footnote 8: The share of the work which had been allotted to Gallus,
was prosecuted with vigor and success; but the earth obstinately
rejected and subverted the structures which were imposed by the
sacrilegious hand of Julian. Greg. iii. p. 59, 60, 61. Such a partial
earthquake, attested by many living spectators, would form one of the
clearest miracles in ecclesiastical story.]

[Footnote 9: The philosopher (Fragment, p. 288,) ridicules the iron
chains, &c, of these solitary fanatics, (see Tillemont, Mem. Eccles.
tom. ix. p. 661, 632,) who had forgot that man is by nature a gentle and
social animal. The Pagan supposes, that because they had renounced the
gods, they were possessed and tormented by evil daemons.]

[Footnote 10: See Julian apud Cyril, l. vi. p. 206, l. viii. p. 253,
262. "You persecute," says he, "those heretics who do not mourn the
dead man precisely in the way which you approve." He shows himself a
tolerable theologian; but he maintains that the Christian Trinity is not
derived from the doctrine of Paul, of Jesus, or of Moses.]

As soon as Gallus was invested with the honors of the purple, Julian was
permitted to breathe the air of freedom, of literature, and of Paganism.
[11] The crowd of sophists, who were attracted by the taste and
liberality of their royal pupil, had formed a strict alliance between
the learning and the religion of Greece; and the poems of Homer, instead
of being admired as the original productions of human genius, were
seriously ascribed to the heavenly inspiration of Apollo and the muses.
The deities of Olympus, as they are painted by the immortal bard,
imprint themselves on the minds which are the least addicted to
superstitious credulity. Our familiar knowledge of their names and
characters, their forms and attributes, seems to bestow on those airy
beings a real and substantial existence; and the pleasing enchantment
produces an imperfect and momentary assent of the imagination to those
fables, which are the most repugnant to our reason and experience. In
the age of Julian, every circumstance contributed to prolong and fortify
the illusion; the magnificent temples of Greece and Asia; the works of
thos