riously related, the sacred interpreters were at liberty to select
the most convenient circumstances; and as they translated an arbitrary
cipher, they could extract from any fable any sense which was adapted to
their favorite system of religion and philosophy. The lascivious form of
a naked Venus was tortured into the discovery of some moral precept, or
some physical truth; and the castration of Atys explained the revolution
of the sun between the tropics, or the separation of the human soul from
vice and error. [18]

[Footnote 15: See the principles of allegory, in Julian, (Orat. vii.
p. 216, 222.) His reasoning is less absurd than that of some modern
theologians, who assert that an extravagant or contradictory doctrine
must be divine; since no man alive could have thought of inventing it.]

[Footnote 16: Eunapius has made these sophists the subject of a partial
and fanatical history; and the learned Brucker (Hist. Philosoph. tom.
ii. p. 217-303) has employed much labor to illustrate their obscure
lives and incomprehensible doctrines.]

[Footnote 17: Julian, Orat. vii p 222. He swears with the most fervent
and enthusiastic devotion; and trembles, lest he should betray too much
of these holy mysteries, which the profane might deride with an impious
Sardonic laugh.]

[Footnote 18: See the fifth oration of Julian. But all the allegories
which ever issued from the Platonic school are not worth the short poem
of Catullus on the same extraordinary subject. The transition of Atys,
from the wildest enthusiasm to sober, pathetic complaint, for his
irretrievable loss, must inspire a man with pity, a eunuch with
despair.]

The theological system of Julian appears to have contained the sublime
and important principles of natural religion. But as the faith, which is
not founded on revelation, must remain destitute of any firm assurance,
the disciple of Plato imprudently relapsed into the habits of vulgar
superstition; and the popular and philosophic notion of the Deity seems
to have been confounded in the practice, the writings, and even in
the mind of Julian. [19] The pious emperor acknowledged and adored the
Eternal Cause of the universe, to whom he ascribed all the perfections
of an infinite nature, invisible to the eyes and inaccessible to the
understanding, of feeble mortals. The Supreme God had created, or
rather, in the Platonic language, had generated, the gradual succession
of dependent spirits, of gods, of daemons, o