§ 4. JULIAN THE APOSTATE. 51
itBelf. His disappointments, however, mcrerised ins bitterness, and bad be returned victorious from the Persian war, he would probably have resorted to open violence. In fact, Gregory ]S"azianzen and Sozomen, and some heathen writers also, tell of local persecutions in the provinces, particularly at Anthusa and Alexandria, with which the emperor is, at least indirectly, to be charged. His officials acted in those cases, not under public orders indeed, but according to the secret wish of Julian, who ignored their illegal proceedings as long as he could, and then discovered his real views by lenient censure and substantial acquittal of the offending magistrates.
He first, therefore, employed against the Christians of all parties and sects the policy of toleration, in hope of their destroying each other by internal controversies. He permitted the orthodox bishops and all other clergy, who had been banished under Constantius, to return to their dioceses, and left Arians, Apollinarians, Kovatians, Macedonians, Donatiste, and so on, to themselves. He affected compassion for the " poor, blind, deluded Galileans, who forsook the most glorious privilege of man, the worship of the immortal gods, and instead of them worshipped dead men and dead men's bones." He once even suffered himself to be insulted by a blind bishop, Maris of Chalcedon, who, when reminded by him, that the Galilean God could not restore his eyesight, answered : " I thank my God for my blindness, which spares me the painful sight of such an impious apostate as thou." He afterwards, however, caused the bishop to be severely punished.' So in Antioch, also, he bore with philosophic equanimity the ridicule of the Christian populace, but avenged himself on the inhabitants of the city by unsparing satire in the Misopogon. His whole bearing towards the Christians was instinct with bitter hatred and accompanied with sarcastic mockery." This betrays itself even in the contemptuous term, Galileans, which
• SocrattiS • H. E. iii. 12.
' GibboTi Tjrell says, ch. xxiii. : " He affected to pity tne unhappy Christians, . . . but his pity was degraded by contempt, liis contempt was embittered by hatred ; and the sentiments of Julian were expressed in a style of sarcastic wit, which in{iictfi 8 deep and deadly wound whenever it issues from the mouth of a sovereign."
52 THIED PERIOD. A.D 311-590.
he constintly applies to them after the fashion of the Jews and which he probably also commanded to be given them bv others.' He considered them a sect of fanatics contemptible to men and hatefnl to the gods, and as atheists in open war with all that was sacred and divine in the world.' He sometimes had representatives of different parties dispnte in hie presence, and then exclaimed : " 'No wild beasts are so fierce and irreconcilable as the Galilean sectarians." "When he found that toleration was rather profitable than hm-tfnl to the church, and tended to soften the vehemence of doctrinal controversies, he proceeded, for example, to banish Athanasius, who was particularly offensive to him, from Alexandria, and even from Egypt, calling this greatest man of his age an insignificant manikin,' and reviling him with vulgar language, because through his influence many prominent heathens, especially heathen women, passed over to Christianity. His toleration, therefore, was neither that of genuine humanity, nor that of religious indifferentism, but a hypocritical mask for a fanatical love of heathenism and a bitter hatred of Christianity. This appears in his open partiality and injustice against the Christians. His liberal patronage of heathenism was in itself an injury to Christianity. Nothing gave him greater joy than an apostasy, and he held out the temptation of splendid reward ; thus himself employing the impure means of proselyting, for which he reproached the Christians. Once he even advocated conversion by violent measures. Wliile he called heathens to all the higher offices, and, in case of their palpable disobedience, inflicted very mild punishment, if any at all, the Christians came to be everywhere disregarded, and their complaints dismissed from the tribunal with a mocking reference to their Master's precept, to give their enemy their cloak also with their coat, and turn the other cheek to his blows.* They
' Perhaps there lay at the bottom of this also a secret fear of the name of Christ, •8 Warburton (p. .S5) suggests ; since the Neo-Platonists believed in the mysterioui viitue of names.
* 'AfftBfU, SvTiT;0e7s, i^eoi. Their leligion he calls a fiupta or airSvoia. Comp Ep. 7 (ap. Iloyler, p. 190).
• "An^pwiriffKos fyrtA^f. * Matt. V. .^P, 40.