If such was the intention of Philostratus, he was really a controversialist under the form of a writer of romance; employed by those who at that time were labouring (as already named) to introduce an eclecticism largely borrowed from the East into the region both of philosophy and religion. Without settling this question, it is at least certain that about the beginning of the next century the heathen writers adopted this line of argument, and sought to exhibit a rival ideal.(219) One instance is the life of Pythagoras by Iamblichus; another that which Hierocles wrote, in part of which he used Philostratus’s untrustworthy memoir for the purpose of instituting a comparison between Apollonius and Christ. The sceptic who referred religious phenomena to fanaticism would hence avail himself of the comparison as a satisfactory account of the origin of Christianity; while others would adopt the same view as Hierocles, and deprive the Christian miracles of the force of evidence,—a line of argument which was reproduced by an English deist(220) who translated the work of Philostratus at the end of the seventeenth century. The work of Hierocles is lost, but an outline of its argument, with extracts, remains in a reply which Eusebius wrote to a portion of it (17). Though couched in a seeming spirit of fairness, the tone was such as would be expected from one who ungenerously availed himself of the very moment of a cruel persecution as the occasion of this literary attack. But the time of the church’s sorrow was nearly past. The hour of deliverance was at hand. The emperor Constantine proclaimed toleration,(221) and subsequently established Christianity as the state-religion. Only one moment more of peril was permitted to befall it. After an interval in which Christian emperors reigned, Julian ascended the throne, and employed his short reign of two years(222) in trying to restore heathenism; and during the last winter of his life, while halting at Antioch in the course of his Eastern war, wrote an elaborate work against Christianity.(223) The book itself has been destroyed, but the reply remains which Cyril of Alexandria thought it necessary to write more than half a century afterwards; and by this means we can gather Julian’s opinions, just as from his own letters and the contemporary history we can gather his plans. The material struggle of deeds belongs in this instance to our subject, inasmuch as it is the overt expression of the struggle of ideas.