Emperor Julian and His Generation

The history of Julian, at all times striking, has been lately brought into revived notice. This little work was published as long ago as 1812, and much of it has since been incorporated in Neander's General History of the Christian Religion and Church. The reader will see for himself that though the writer does justice to the ambitious grandeur of Julian's enterprise (to restore the Old Worship), he does not praise it, but rather accounts for its short-lived success from the character of the age as well as the qualities of the man. He may write con amore of the hero of his book, his love of learning, his courage, his moral purity, &c., but he is not to be classed (as in the Edinburgh Review) among his "warmest defenders," except against contemporaneous calumnies and subsequent exaggerations. The impiety and folly of his attempt, his vanity and long-practised hypocrisy, are nowhere more strongly delineated. To me he has always been, and still is, "Julian the Apostate;" and notwithstanding the toleration he professed, his short reign was long enough to show that he was in a fair way to become Julian the Persecutor. I will only add one hint to the English reader, who, thanks to the soundness of our theology, may look with suspicion upon even the best of German theologians; this hint is suggested by the title of the Work, viz., that the spirit of Julian's age, rather than the history of Julian himself, is the real subject of the book here translated. - Translator's preface.