From these schools for children, we must distinguish those _seminaries_ of the early Christians, erected extensively in the larger cities, at which adults, and especially _such as aspired to be public teachers_, were instructed and educated in all branches of learning, both human and divine. Such seminaries, in which young men devoted to the sacred office were taught whatever was necessary to qualify them properly for it, the apostles of Christ undoubtedly both set up themselves, and directed others to set up.[60] St. John, at Ephesus, and Polycarp, at Smyrna, established such schools. Among these seminaries, in subsequent times, none was more celebrated than that at Alexandria; which is commonly called a catechetic school.[61] In addition, then, to home and church schools for children, the early Christian church established seminaries for the education of workers. In reading the history of the times the course of instruction is seen to adhere closely to the Scriptures, and to draw a sharp distinction between the science of salvation and the Greek and Oriental philosophy as taught in the pagan schools. [Sidenote: Pagans feared Christian schools] Christian education was often regarded as narrow and limited by those who loved to study the mysteries of Greek wisdom; but as long as they adhered to their simple studies, and made faith the basis of their work, there was a power in the truths taught by the students of these schools, which made the pagan world, with all its great men, tremble. It is an interesting fact that as late as the fourth century, after the Christian schools had lost much of their power through the mingling of pagan with Christian methods, and the adoption of some of the pagan studies, they were still regarded as the stronghold of Christianity. When Julian, the apostate, began to reign, an attempt was made to revive paganism throughout the Roman Empire. One of his first acts was to _close the schools of the Christians_. “He contemptuously observes,” says Gibbon, “that the men who exalt the merit of implicit faith are unfit to claim or to enjoy the advantages of science; and he vainly contends that if they refuse to adore the gods of Homer and Demosthenes, they ought to content themselves with expounding Luke and Matthew in the church of the Galileans. [Sidenote: The public schools of Julian]