rious fragment, without beginning or end, (p. 288-305.) The supreme
pontiff derides the Mosaic history and the Christian discipline, prefers
the Greek poets to the Hebrew prophets, and palliates, with the skill of
a Jesuit the relative worship of images.]

[Footnote 38: The exultation of Julian (p. 301) that these impious sects
and even their writings, are extinguished, may be consistent enough with
the sacerdotal character; but it is unworthy of a philosopher to wish
that any opinions and arguments the most repugnant to his own should be
concealed from the knowledge of mankind.]

[Footnote 39: Yet he insinuates, that the Christians, under the pretence
of charity, inveigled children from their religion and parents, conveyed
them on shipboard, and devoted those victims to a life of poverty or
pervitude in a remote country, (p. 305.) Had the charge been proved it
was his duty, not to complain, but to punish.]

[Footnote 40: Gregory Nazianzen is facetious, ingenious, and
argumentative, (Orat. iii. p. 101, 102, &c.) He ridicules the folly of
such vain imitation; and amuses himself with inquiring, what lessons,
moral or theological, could be extracted from the Grecian fables.]

[Footnote 41: He accuses one of his pontiffs of a secret confederacy
with the Christian bishops and presbyters, (Epist. lxii.) &c. Epist.
lxiii.]

The enthusiasm of Julian prompted him to embrace the friends of Jupiter
as his personal friends and brethren; and though he partially overlooked
the merit of Christian constancy, he admired and rewarded the noble
perseverance of those Gentiles who had preferred the favor of the gods
to that of the emperor. [42] If they cultivated the literature, as well
as the religion, of the Greeks, they acquired an additional claim to the
friendship of Julian, who ranked the Muses in the number of his tutelar
deities. In the religion which he had adopted, piety and learning were
almost synonymous; [43] and a crowd of poets, of rhetoricians, and
of philosophers, hastened to the Imperial court, to occupy the vacant
places of the bishops, who had seduced the credulity of Constantius. His
successor esteemed the ties of common initiation as far more sacred than
those of consanguinity; he chose his favorites among the sages, who were
deeply skilled in the occult sciences of magic and divination; and every
impostor, who pretended to reveal the secrets of futurity, was assured
of enjoying the present hour in honor and afflue