Julian the Apostate

“ Now as the first step towards the invocation of Saints was set on foot by the persecution of Decius, and the second by the persecution of Dioclesian; so this third seems to have been owing to the proceedings of Constantius and Julian the Apostate. When Julian began to restore the worship of the heathen Gods, and to vilify the Saints and Martyrs; the Christians of Syria and Egypt seem to have made a great noise about the miracles done by the reliques of the Christian Saints and Martyrs, in opposition to the powers attributed by Julian and the heathens to their Idols. ”

“ It seemed to Julian that the god benignly stooped still lower, to receive the 333 offering of the last adorers—the weak priest, the apostate Emperor, and the deaf-mute son of the sibyl.
"This is my reward," thought Julian. "I wish for no other glory, nor guerdon, O Apollo! I thank thee for the curses of the crowd; and for thy grace, in making me live and die alone, like thyself! There, where the populace prays, there is no god! Thou art here, in this sanctuary profaned. O god, scorned by mankind, now art thou far more beautiful than of old when they adored thee! ”

“ When he grew older, and was left more to himself, he fell into the hands of the heathen philosophers, who were very glad to get hold of a prince who might one day be emperor. So Julian's mind was poisoned with their opinions, and he gave up all belief in the Gospel, although he continued to profess himself a Christian for nine years longer. On account of his having thus forsaken the faith he is commonly called the Apostate.
At length, when Julian was at Paris, early in the year 361, Constantius sent him some orders which neither he nor his soldiers were disposed to obey. ”

“ Reign Of Julian.—Part I. The Religion Of Julian.—Universal Toleration.—He Attempts To Restore And Reform The Pagan Worship—To Rebuild The Temple Of Jerusalem—His Artful Persecution Of The Christians.—Mutual Zeal And Injustice.
The character of Apostate has injured the reputation of Julian; and the enthusiasm which clouded his virtues has exaggerated the real and apparent magnitude of his faults. Our partial ignorance may represent him as a philosophic monarch, who studied to protect, with an equal hand, the religious factions of the empire ”

“ In his Jovian (an answer to S. Johnson’s Julian the Apostate, 1683) , he endeavoured to show that the Roman empire was not hereditary, and that the Christians under Julian had recognized the duty of passive obedience. ”

“ CHAPTER X The author is surprised at meeting Julian the apostate in Elysium; but is satisfied by him by what means he procured his entrance there. Julian relates his adventures in the character of a slave.
As he was departing I heard him salute a spirit by the name of Mr. Julian the apostate. This exceedingly amazed me; for I had concluded that no man ever had a better title to the bottomless pit than he. But I soon found that this same Julian the apostate was also the very individual archbishop Latimer. ”

“ The corpse of Julian was transported from Nisibis to Tarsus, in a slow march of fifteen days; and, as it passed through the cities of the East, was saluted by the hostile factions, with mournful lamentations and clamorous insults. The Pagans already placed their beloved hero in the rank of those gods whose worship he had restored; while the invectives of the Christians pursued the soul of the Apostate to hell, and his body to the grave. ”

“ The Emperor Julian, usually known as the Apostate, who hoped to re-establish the old Roman Olympian religion, wrote to Oribasius, one of the great physicians of this time, who was also an important official of his household, that these Christians had established [Pg 9] everywhere hospitals in which not only their own people, but also those who were not Christians, were received and cared for, and that it would be idle to hope to counteract the influence of Christianity until corresponding institutions could be erected by the government. ”

“ But if, as is the case, one of them had believed in Christ, the other had apostatized from Christ, why is the Christian despised while furthering the interests of unity, the apostate praised while favouring deceit? Constantine ordered that the basilicas should be taken from you, Julian that they should be restored. Do you wish to know which of these actions is conducive to Christian peace? The one was done by a man who had believed in Christ, the other by one who had abandoned Christ. O how you would wish that you could say, It was indeed ill done that supplication should so be made to Julian ”

“ Afterward when Julian, the infamous apostate,
was chosen emperor, though he had been shorn for the priesthood,
he proclaimed an edict, being full of wickedness,
that the Christians should own nothing in the world.
Then he banished Gallicanus the man of God ”

“ During the reign of the apostate Julian, Christianity was discouraged, but not persecuted; his premature death, however, removed the last impediment to its final triumph, which was consummated in the reign of the great Theodo'sius. 14. Under that emperor the last vestiges of the pagan worship were destroyed, its idols overthrown, its altars demolished, and its temples closed. The world had become ripe for such a revolution, as the temples had been long before almost universally abandoned. ”

“ High personal character, no common intellectual gift, great military renown, supreme political power, perfect knowledge of his adversary, absolute and unflinching devotion to his own cause—all these united to make Julian the most formidable antagonist which the Church ever had, or might be expected to have. His career showed what Paganism could do, and what it could not do. The ability of the champion only exposed the helplessness of the cause. And again, a full blaze of light is poured upon this one man and this one reign such as rarely falls to any period of ancient history. ”

“ Whatever might have been the religious feelings of his boyhood, it was only now that Paganism asserted its power over his mind. The incident that decided his apostasy is eminently characteristic of the man and of the period. It happened in the year 351, the same year as that in which Gallus was invested with the purple, when Julian himself was twenty years of age. In the course of conversation one of his teachers happened to speak of Maximus, a famous philosopher, whom he described as possessing great natural gifts, and as accompanying his teaching by demonstrations. ”

“ Although, on becoming Emperor, he favoured those who remained faithful to the old religion, Julian did not oppress the followers of the new, holding that the intrinsic superiority of paganism would eventually secure its triumph. His confidence was misplaced. The classical ritual was no longer acceptable to serious men, and the Neo-Platonic mysticism which endeavoured to transform sensuous polytheism into a spiritual philosophy possessed no attraction for the multitude. ”

“ The important secret of the apostasy of Julian was intrusted to the fidelity of the initiated, with whom he was united by the sacred ties of friendship and religion. The pleasing rumor was cautiously circulated among the adherents of the ancient worship; and his future greatness became the object of the hopes, the prayers, and the predictions of the Pagans, in every province of the empire. From the zeal and virtues of their royal proselyte, they fondly expected the cure of every evil, and the restoration of every blessing ”

“ Apollonius of Tyana was set up as a parallel to the Saviour of the world, and Philostratus undertook to construct a legend on the subject of this new deity. Thereafter came the Emperor Julian, who would have been himself deified if the javelin which slew him had not also struck the last blow at Cæsarian idolatry. The enforced and decrepit rebirth of a religion which was dead in its forms was a literal abortion, and Julian, who attempted it, was doomed to perish with the senile offspring which he strove to bring into the world. ”

“ The library of George was very large and complete and contained philosophers of every school and many historians, especially, among these, numerous books of all kinds by the Galilaeans. Do you therefore make a thorough search for the whole library without exception and take care to send it to Antioch. ”

“ In this spirit Julian applied himself to his task.
This task was two-fold. He must depress Christianity, and he must reanimate and reform Paganism. In his relation to Christianity he avowed himself on principle favourable to absolute toleration. "I do not wish the Galileans," he wrote, "to be put to death or to be beaten unjustly, or to suffer any other wrong. We ought rather to pity than to hate those who are unfortunate in matters of the greatest importance." ”

“ But they insinuated, with sullen resolution, that their submission was no longer the effect of weakness; and that, in the imperfect state of human virtue, the patience, which is founded on principle, may be exhausted by persecution. It is impossible to determine how far the zeal of Julian would have prevailed over his good sense and humanity; but if we seriously reflect on the strength and spirit of the church, we shall be convinced, that before the emperor could have extinguished the religion of Christ, he must have involved his country in the horrors of a civil war. ”

“ This extraordinary man now resolved to restore paganism, and to abolish and utterly annihilate Christianity. Publicly, and with imposing ceremonies, he made a renunciation of the Christian religion, and committed himself to the care of the pagan gods. As the conversion of the Emperor Constantine was one of the most signal events in the history of the Church, so was the apostasy of the Emperor Julian one of the memorable events in the history of mankind. A bolder act of infidelity and atheism has perhaps never been recorded in the annals of our race. ”

“ Suddenly, half-waking, Julian remembers that he is in the heart of Persia; that he is the Roman Emperor; that he alone is responsible for the lives of sixty thousand legionaries; that the gods are no more, that he has thrown down the altar of sacrifice. He shivers, and an icy chillness invades his body. He is falling, falling through the void, with nothing, nothing in the universe to arrest his fall. ”

“ Thus Julian pressed on inexorably till death, endeavoring to crush the religion of Jesus, and to reinstate the gorgeous but senseless mummeries of paganism. Intellectually, Julian was a remarkable man both in native vigor of mind and in rich mental culture. Those portions of his works which have descended to us prove that he possessed talent, wit, and rhetorical ease and fluency. It seems as though God allowed such men to assail Christianity, that it might be seen that the religion of Jesus could triumph over the highest intelligence combined with unlimited despotic power. ”

“ He also sought to infuse paganism with the morality and missionary zeal of Christianity. But his efforts were in [pg 328] vain; the pagan cults had lost their appeal for the masses, and the only converts were those who sought to win the imperial favor by abandoning the Christian faith.
Persian war and death, 363 A. D. In his administration of the empire Julian pursued the same policy as in Gaul. He checked the greed of government officials, abolished oppressive offices, and in every way tried to restrain extravagances and lighten the burdens of his subjects. ”

“ Julian went into the temple, and contemplated the marvellous statue of Dionysus. His eyes, weary with human deformity, reposed on the pure lines of that divine body. He became oblivious of the crowd as if he were alone—the only man amidst a herd of animals.
The Emperor proceeded to the sacrifice. The people watched with amazement the Roman Cæsar, as Pontifex Maximus, in his zeal for religion doing the work of a slave—splitting wood, bringing twigs, drawing water, and cleansing the altar.
A rope-dancer said to his neighbour—
"Look how he keeps at it! He really loves his gods!" ”

“ He seemed to feel that he was swimming against the tide, however, and fell in battle [128] against the Persians (363) saying, "Thou hast conquered, Galilean." [128:1]
Julian's sudden death with one stroke precipitated the decline and fall of paganism. ”

“ His enemies having surrounded him in the fight, God sent Mercurius in the spirit, after he had received the crown of martyrdom, and he speared Julian in the neck with his spear, and he died. Before Julian the infidel died, he took a handful of his own blood, and scattered it in the air, saying, “Jesus, take this soul of mine which Thou hast given to me”; and straightway he died an evil death. And those believing men brought the bodies of the saints, John the Baptist, and Elisha the prophet, to the city of Alexandria, to Saint Abba Athanasius, and he rejoiced over them with a great joy ”

“ Actuated by these motives, and apprehensive of disturbing the repose of an unsettled reign, Julian surprised the world by an edict, which was not unworthy of a statesman, or a philosopher. He extended to all the inhabitants of the Roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration; and the only hardship which he inflicted on the Christians, was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow-subjects, whom they stigmatized with the odious titles of idolaters and heretics. ”

“ If he had only lived longer, he would have retarded the fall of the Roman Empire, if he could not arrest it entirely. We here see the length to which "polemical fury" could hurry a man of rare insight. Julian had been a subject of contention for years between the hostile factions. While one party made it a point of honour to prove that he was a monster, warring consciously against the Most High, the other was equally determined to prove that he was a paragon of all virtue, by reason of his enmity to the Christian religion. ”