e artists who had expressed, in painting or in sculpture, the divine
conceptions of the poet; the pomp of festivals and sacrifices; the
successful arts of divination; the popular traditions of oracles and
prodigies; and the ancient practice of two thousand years. The weakness
of polytheism was, in some measure, excused by the moderation of its
claims; and the devotion of the Pagans was not incompatible with the
most licentious scepticism. [12] Instead of an indivisible and regular
system, which occupies the whole extent of the believing mind, the
mythology of the Greeks was composed of a thousand loose and flexible
parts, and the servant of the gods was at liberty to define the degree
and measure of his religious faith. The creed which Julian adopted
for his own use was of the largest dimensions; and, by strange
contradiction, he disdained the salutary yoke of the gospel, whilst he
made a voluntary offering of his reason on the altars of Jupiter and
Apollo. One of the orations of Julian is consecrated to the honor of
Cybele, the mother of the gods, who required from her effeminate priests
the bloody sacrifice, so rashly performed by the madness of the Phrygian
boy. The pious emperor condescends to relate, without a blush, and
without a smile, the voyage of the goddess from the shores of Pergamus
to the mouth of the Tyber, and the stupendous miracle, which convinced
the senate and people of Rome that the lump of clay, which their
ambassadors had transported over the seas, was endowed with life, and
sentiment, and divine power. [13] For the truth of this prodigy he
appeals to the public monuments of the city; and censures, with some
acrimony, the sickly and affected taste of those men, who impertinently
derided the sacred traditions of their ancestors. [14]

[Footnote 11: Libanius, Orat. Parentalis, c. 9, 10, p. 232, &c. Greg.
Nazianzen. Orat. iii. p 61. Eunap. Vit. Sophist. in Maximo, p. 68, 69,
70, edit Commelin.]

[Footnote 12: A modern philosopher has ingeniously compared the
different operation of theism and polytheism, with regard to the doubt
or conviction which they produce in the human mind. See Hume's Essays
vol. ii. p. 444- 457, in 8vo. edit. 1777.]

[Footnote 13: The Idaean mother landed in Italy about the end of the
second Punic war. The miracle of Claudia, either virgin or matron, who
cleared her fame by disgracing the graver modesty of the Roman Indies,
is attested by a cloud of witnesses. Their evidence