to note the impolicy of an edict which Julian’s own admirer Ammianus wishes ‘buried in eternal silence.’  Its effect on the Christians was very marked.  Marius Victorinus, the favoured teacher of the Roman nobles, at once resigned his chair of rhetoric.  The studies of his old age had brought him to confess his faith in Christ, and he would not now deny his Lord.  Julian’s own teacher Proaeresius gave up his chair at Athens, refusing the special exemption which was offered him.  It was not all loss for the Christians to be reminded that the gospel is revelation, not philosophy—­life and not discussion.  But Greek literature was far too weak to bear the burden of a sinking world, and its guardians could not have devised a more fatal plan than this of setting it in direct antagonism to the living power of Christianity.  In our regret for the feud between Hellenic culture and the mediaeval churches, we must not forget that it was Julian who drove in the wedge of separation.

[Sidenote:  Julian’s toleration.]

We can now sum up in a sentence.  Every blow struck at Christianity by Julian fell first on the Arianizers whom Constantius had left in power, and the reaction he provoked against heathen learning directly threatened the philosophical postulates of Arianism within the church.  In both ways he powerfully helped the Nicene cause.  The Homoeans could not stand without court support, and the Anomoeans threw away their rhetoric on men who were beginning to see how little ground is really common to the gospel and philosophy.  Yet he cared little for the party quarrels of the Christians.  Instead of condescending to take a side, he told them contemptuously to keep the peace.  His first step was to proclaim full toleration for all sorts and sects of men.  It was only too easy to strike at the church by doing common justice to the sects.  A few days later came an edict recalling the exiled bishops.  Their property was restored, but they were not replaced in their churches.  Others were commonly in possession, and it was no business of Julian’s to turn them out.  The Galileans might look after their own squabbles.  This sounds fairly well, and suits his professions of toleration; but Julian had a malicious hope of still further embroiling the ecclesiastical confusion.  If the Christians were only left to themselves, they might be trusted ‘to quarrel like beasts.’

[Sidenote:  Its results.]

Julian was gratified with a few unseemly wrangles, but the general result of his policy was unexpected.  It took the Christians by surprise, and fairly shamed them into a sort of truce.  The very divisions of churches are in some sense a sign of life, for men who do not care about religion will usually find something else to quarrel over.  If nations redeem each other, so do parties; and the dignified slumber of a catholic uniformity may be more fatal to spiritual life than the vulgar wranglings of a thousand sects.  The Christians closed their ranks before the common