If he stands these, he may be admitted to stand any less severe.

Let them be his account of Julian, and his method of dealing with Christianity.
The snare that was spread by Julian's apostasy for the philosophers of the last century, and their haste to fall into it, are well known.
The spectacle of a philosopher on the throne who proclaimed toleration, and contempt for Christianity, was too tempting and too useful controversially to allow of much circumspection in handling it.
The odious comparisons it offered were so exactly what was wanted for depreciating the Most Christian king and his courtly Church, that all further inquiry into the apostate's merits seemed useless.

Voltaire finds that Julian had all the qualities of Trajan without his defects; all the virtues of Cato without his ill-humour; all that one admires in Julius Caesar without his vices; he had the continency of Scipio, and was in all ways equal to Marcus Aurelius, the first of men.

Nay, more.

If he had only lived longer, he would have retarded the fall of the Roman Empire, if he could not arrest it entirely.