religion, pillaged and destroyed many temples, gave the booty to the church, or to his eunuchs, flatterers, and worthless favorites, and prohibited, under penalty of death, all sacrifices and worship of images in Home, Alexandria, and Athens, though the prohibition could not be carried out. Hosts now came over to Cliristianity, though, of course, for the most part with the lips only, not with the heart. But this emperor proceeded with the same intolerance against the ad herents of the Nicene orthodoxy, and punished them with con- fiscation and banishment. His brothers supported Athanasius, but he himself was a fanatical Arian. In fact, he meddled in all the affairs of the church, which was convulsed during his reign with doctrinal controversy. He summoned a multi- tude of councils, in Gaul, in Italy, in Illyricum, and in Asia ; aspired to the renown of a theologian ; and was fond of being called bishop of bishops, though, like his father, he postponed baptism till shortly before his death. There were those, it is true, who justified this violent sup- pression of idolatry, by reference to the extermination of the § 3. JULIAN THE APOSTATE. 39 Canaanites under Joshua.' But intelligent church tcachei-s, like Athanasius, Hosius, and Hilary, gave their voice for toler- ation, though even they mean particularly toleration for ortho- doxy, for the sake of which they themselves had been deposed and banished by the Arian power. Athanasius says, for ex- ample : " Satan, because there is no truth in him, breaks in with axe and sword. But the Saviour is gentle, and forces no one, to whom he comes, but knocks and speaks to the soul : Open to me, my sister ? ' If we open to him, he enters ; but if we will not, he departs. For the truth is not preached by sword and dungeon, by the might of an army, but by persua- sion and exhortation. How can there be persuasion where fear of the emperor is uppermost? How exhortation, where the contradicter has to expect banishment and death ? " With equal truth Hilary confronts the emperor with the wrong of his course, in the words: ""With the gold of the- state thou burdenest the sanctuary of God, and what is torn from the temples, or gained by confiscation, or extorted by punishment, thou obtrudest upon God." By the laws of history the forced Christianity of Con- stantius must provoke a reaction of heathenism. And such reaction in fact ensued, though only for a brief period imme- diately after this emperor's death. § 4. Julian the Ajpostate, and the Reaction of Paganism. A.D. 361-363. SOURCES. These agree in all tlie principal facts, even to unimportant details, but differ entirely in spirit and in judgment ; Julian himself exhibiting the vanity of self-praise, Libanius and Zosimus the extreme of passionate admiration, Gregory and Cyril the opposite extreme of hatred and abhorrence, Ammianus Marcellinus a mixture of praise and censure. ' So Julius Firmicus