and increasing the readiness to accept the new faith beginning to make
its way. Which being so, it was ungrateful of the Christian church to
turn and rend him. It did so, partly in error. Lucian had referred in
the _Life of Peregrine_ to the Christians, in words which might seem
irreverent to Christians at a time when they were no longer an obscure
sect; he had described and ridiculed in _The Liar_ certain 'Syrian'
miracles which have a remarkable likeness to the casting out of
spirits by Christ and the apostles; and worse still, the _Philopatris_
passed under his name. This dialogue, unlike what Lucian had written
in the _Peregrine_ and _The Liar_, is a deliberate attack on
Christianity. It is clear to us now that it was written two hundred
years after his time, under Julian the Apostate; but there can be no
more doubt of its being an imitation of Lucian than of its not being
his; it consequently passed for his, the story gained currency that he
was an apostate himself, and his name was anathema for the church. It
was only partly in error, however. Though Lucian might be useful on
occasion ('When Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labours in
exposing the falsehood and extravagance of Paganism, they are obliged
to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or the wit of Lucian' [Footnote:
Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, cap. xv.]), the very word heretic is
enough to remind us that the Church could not show much favour to one
who insisted always on thinking for himself. His works survived, but
he was not read, through the Middle Ages. With the Renaissance he
partly came into his own again, but still laboured under the
imputations of scoffing and atheism, which confined the reading of him
to the few.

The method followed in the _Dialogues of the Gods_ and similar pieces
is a very indirect way of putting questions. It is done much more
directly in others, the _Zeus cross-examined_, for instance. Since the