which was again displayed at the head of the legions, announced to the people the faith of their new emperor. As soon as he ascended the throne, he transmitted a circular epistle to all the governors of provinces: in which he confessed the divine truth, and secured the legal establishment, of the Christian religion. The insidious edicts of Julian were abolished; the ecclesiastical immunities were restored and enlarged; and Jovian condescended to lament that the distress of the times obliged him to diminish the measure of charitable distributions.[1] The Christians were unanimous in the loud and sincere applause which they bestowed on the pious successor of Julian. But they were still ignorant what creed, or what synod, he would choose for the standard of orthodoxy; and the peace of the church immediately revived those eager disputes which had been suspended during the season of persecution. The episcopal leaders of the contending sects, convinced, from experience, how much their fate would depend on the earliest impressions that were made on the mind of an untutored soldier, hastened to the court of Edessa or Antioch. The highways of the East were crowded with Homoousian, and Arian, and Semi-Arian, and Eunomian bishops, who struggled to outstrip each other in the holy race; the apartments of the palace resounded with their clamours; and the ears of the prince were assaulted, and perhaps astonished, by the singular mixture of metaphysical argument and passionate invective.[2] The moderation of Jovian, who recommended concord and charity and referred the disputants to the sentence of a future council, was interpreted as a symptom of indifference; but his attachment to the Nicene creed was at length discovered and declared by the reverence which he expressed for the celestial[3]
- ↑ Jovian restored to the church τὸν ἀρχαῖον κόσμον; a forcible and comprehensive expression (Philostorgius, 1. viii, c. 5, with Godefroy's Dissertations, p. 329. Sozomen, 1. vi. c. 3. [The phrase means the policy of Constantius, cp. Schiller, ii. 349]). The new law which condemned the rape or marriage of nuns (Cod. Theod. 1. ix. tit. xxv. leg. 2) is exaggerated by Sozomen, who supposes that an amorous glance, the adultery of the heart, was punished with death by the evangelic legislator. [Jovian's Corcyræan inscription boasts that he destroyed pagan temples Ἑλλήνων τεμένη καὶ βωμοὺς ἐξαλαπάξας, C. I. G. 8608.]
- ↑ Compare Socrates, 1. iii. c. 25, and Philostorgius, 1. viii. c. 6, with Godefroy's Dissertations, p. 330.
- ↑ The word celestial faintly expresses the impious and extravagant flattery of the emperor to the archbishop, τῆς πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν τῶν ὅλων ὁμοιωσεως. See the original epistle in Athanasius, tom. ii. p. 33 [Migne's Patr. Graec., vol. 26, p. 813]. Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. xxi. p. 392 [Migne, vol 35, p. 1121]) celebrates the friendship of Jovian and Athanasius. The primate's journey was advised by the Egyptian monks (Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tom. viii. p. 221).
