ss the religion of the state. But the will of
the legislator was not exempt from prejudice and passion; and it was the
object of the insidious policy of Julian, to deprive the Christians of
all the temporal honors and advantages which rendered them respectable
in the eyes of the world.

A just and severe censure has been inflicted on the law which prohibited
the Christians from teaching the arts of grammar and rhetoric. The
motives alleged by the emperor to justify this partial and oppressive
measure, might command, during his lifetime, the silence of slaves and
the applause of flatterers. Julian abuses the ambiguous meaning of
a word which might be indifferently applied to the language and the
religion of the Greeks: he contemptuously observes, that the men who
exalt the merit of implicit faith are unfit to claim or to enjoy the
advantages of science; and he vainly contends, that if they refuse
to adore the gods of Homer and Demosthenes, they ought to content
themselves with expounding Luke and Matthew in the church of the
Galilaeans. In all the cities of the Roman world, the education of the
youth was intrusted to masters of grammar and rhetoric; who were elected
by the magistrates, maintained 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. As soon
as the resignation of the more obstinate 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