uggle of deeds belongs in this instance
to our subject, inasmuch as it is the overt expression of the struggle of
ideas.

Julian, as already observed, differed from previous opponents of
Christianity, in having been educated a Christian.(224) Associating when a
student at the schools of Athens with Gregory of Nazianzum and Basil, he
had every opportunity for understanding the Christian religion and
measuring its claims. The first cause of his apostasy from it remains
uncertain. One tradition states that the shock to his creed arose from
some early injury received through the fraud of a professing Christian.
Something is probably due to exasperation at the severity endured from
Constantius; and perhaps still more is due to the natural peculiarity of
his character. He was swayed by the imagination rather than the reason,
and was kindled with an enthusiastic admiration of the old heathen
literature and the historic glories of the heathen world. His very style
exhibits traces of imitation of the old models after which he formed
himself.(225) With a spirit which the Italian writers of the Renaissance
enable us to understand, his sympathies clung round heathens until they
entwined in their embrace heathenism itself. To a mind of this natural
bias sufficient grounds unhappily would easily be found to produce
aversion to Christianity, in the quarrels among sections of the church,
and in the ambition and inconsistency of the numbers of nominal converts
who embraced the religion when its public establishment had rendered it
their interest to do so; and prejudice would add arguments for rejecting
it.

Accordingly he devoted his short reign to restore the ancient heathenism.
Like Constantine, having arrived at the throne through a troublous war, he
found the religion of the state opposed to his own convictions, and
determined to substitute that which he himself professed. The difference
however was great. The religion of Constantine was young and progressive;
that of Julian was effete. It is in this respect that Julian has been
compared,(226) in his character and acts, to those who in modern times,
both in literature and in politics, have devoted their lives to roll back
the progress of public opinion, and reproduce the spirit of the past by
giving new life to the relics of bygone ages. If Julian had succeeded in
his attempt, the victory could not have been permanent.

The steps by which he strove to carry out his views were not