He omitted, as we might expect, the grosser and more frivolous charges against Christianity which had been formerly expressed by those who were ignorant of its real character. Indeed he seems to have been willing to recognise it as one form of religion, but declined to admit its monopoly of claim to be regarded as the only true form. Though himself a Theist,(230)—his view of Deity being more simply monotheistic than that of his predecessors, derived furtively from the Hebrew idea transmitted through Christianity; he nevertheless considered that discrepancy of national character required corresponding differences in religion.(231) In his work he seems to have repeated some of the objections of the older assailants, Celsus and Porphyry; attacking the credibility of scripture and of the Christian scheme in its doctrines and evidences. He offered in it a criticism on primæval and Hebrew history;(232) attacking the probability of many portions of the book of Genesis;(233) objecting to the Hebrew view of Deity as too appropriating in its character, and as making the divine Being appear cruel.(234) He denied the originality of the Hebrew moral law,(235) and pointed out the supposed defectiveness of the Hebrew polity; comparing unfavourably the type of the Hebrew lawgiver as seen in Moses, and of the king as seen in David, with the great heroes of Greek history.(236) The Hebrew prophecy he tried to weaken by putting it in comparison with oracles. In estimating the character of Christ, he depreciated the importance of his miracles;(237) and noticing the different tone of the fourth Gospel from those of the Synoptists, he asserted that it was St. John who first taught Christ’s divinity.(238) He regarded Christianity as composed of borrowed ingredients; considered it to have assumed its shape gradually; and regarded its progress to have been unforeseen by its founder and by St. Paul;(239) attacked its relation to Judaism in superseding it while depending on it;(240) regarded proselytism as absurd; and directed some few charges, which may have been more deserved, against practices of his day, such as Staurolatry(241) and Martyrolatry.(242) With the death of Julian the hopes of heathenism departed; and two eloquent orations of Gregory Nazianzen(243) still convey to us the Christian words of triumph. Christianity progressed, protected by the favour of the sovereigns. Heathenism no longer expressed itself in free examination of Christianity, and lingered only in the prejudices of the people. In the West it is merely seen as it pleads for toleration,(244) or makes itself heard in the murmurs which attributed the woes of the Teutonic invasions to the displeasure of the heathen gods at the neglect of their worship.(245) In the East it disappears altogether. Doubt there expires, because speculation ceases and Christian thought becomes fixed; nor will it be necessary in future to recur to the history of the eastern church.