“In all the cities of the Roman world, the education of the youth was intrusted to masters of grammar and rhetoric; who were _elected by the magistrates, maintained at the public expense_, and distinguished by many lucrative and honorable privileges.... As soon as the resignation of the more obstinate teachers had established the unrivaled dominion of the pagan sophists, Julian invited the rising generation to resort with freedom to the _public schools_, in a just confidence that their tender minds would receive the impressions of _literature and idolatry_. IF THE GREATEST PART OF THE CHRISTIAN YOUTH SHOULD BE DETERRED BY THEIR OWN SCRUPLES, OR BY THOSE OF THEIR PARENTS, FROM ACCEPTING THIS DANGEROUS MODE OF INSTRUCTION, THEY MUST, AT THE SAME TIME, RELINQUISH THE BENEFITS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION. Julian had reason to expect that, in the space of a few years, the church would relapse into its primeval simplicity, and that the theologians, who possessed an adequate share of the learning and eloquence of the age, would be succeeded by a generation of blind and ignorant fanatics, incapable of defending the truth of their own principles, or of exposing the various follies of polytheism.”[62] Julian can not be counted as a fool; for, wishing to make the world pagan, he proceeded to do so, (1) _By closing the Christian schools where the “merit of implicit faith” was taught_; (2) _By compelling attendance of the public schools, taught by pagan teachers_, and WHERE LITERATURE AND IDOLATRY WERE COMBINED. As Gibbon says, he had _just reason_ to expect that in the course of a generation the Christians thus educated would lose their faith, cease to oppose paganism, and sink into insignificance. If a pagan emperor expected this in the fourth century, is it any wonder that Protestants to-day, allowing their children to remain in the public schools where precisely the same things are taught, in principle as Julian had his public instructors teach, should lose power and cease to be _Protestants_? From the words of Gibbon one would infer that in the days of Julian there were parents who refused to send their children to the public schools; some children who, “because of their own scruples,” refused to attend; and some teachers who ceased to teach rather than teach literature and idolatry in state schools. [Sidenote: The seminary at Alexandria] Special mention is made of the Alexandrian school, as it was located in an Egyptian city to which flocked many noted pagan scholars. Sad as it may be to do so, it is yet necessary to see how these schools, and especially this one at Alexandria, lost their simplicity as they came in contact with pagan scholars, and attempted to meet them on their own grounds. [Sidenote: Alexandria adopts philosophy of Plato]