aintained at the public expense, and distinguished by many lucrative
and honorable privileges. The edict of Julian appears to have included
the physicians, and professors of all the liberal arts; and the
emperor, who reserved to himself the approbation of the candidates, was
authorized by the laws to corrupt, or to punish, the religious constancy
of the most learned of the Christians. [91] As soon as the resignation
of the more obstinate [92] teachers had established the unrivalled
dominion of the Pagan sophists, Julian invited the rising generation to
resort with freedom to the public schools, in a just confidence, that
their tender minds would receive the impressions of literature and
idolatry. If the greatest part of the Christian youth should be deterred
by their own scruples, or by those of their parents, from accepting this
dangerous mode of instruction, they must, at the same time, relinquish
the benefits of a liberal education. Julian had reason to expect that,
in the space of a few years, the church would relapse into its primaeval
simplicity, and that the theologians, who possessed an adequate share
of the learning and eloquence of the age, would be succeeded by a
generation of blind and ignorant fanatics, incapable of defending the
truth of their own principles, or of exposing the various follies of
Polytheism. [93]

[Footnote 89: Inclemens.... perenni obruendum silentio. Ammian. xxii.
10, ixv. 5.]

[Footnote 90: The edict itself, which is still extant among the epistles
of Julian, (xlii.,) may be compared with the loose invectives of Gregory
(Orat. iii. p. 96.) Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. vii. p. 1291-1294) has
collected the seeming differences of ancients and moderns. They may be
easily reconciled. The Christians were directly forbid to teach, they
were indirectly forbid to learn; since they would not frequent the
schools of the Pagans.]

[Footnote 91: Codex Theodos. l. xiii. tit. iii. de medicis et
professoribus, leg. 5, (published the 17th of June, received, at Spoleto
in Italy, the 29th of July, A. D. 363,) with Godefroy's Illustrations,
tom. v. p. 31.]

[Footnote 92: Orosius celebrates their disinterested resolution, Sicut a
majori bus nostris compertum habemus, omnes ubique propemodum...
officium quam fidem deserere maluerunt, vii. 30. Proaeresius, a
Christian sophist, refused to accept the partial favor of the emperor
Hieronym. in Chron. p. 185, edit. Scaliger. Eunapius in Proaeresio p.
126.]