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 were already numbered when the book of Jamblichos was written. Constantine was reigning, and the gods of Egypt were already being deserted by their worshippers, who transferred their devotion to Christianity in one of its austerest forms. A very few years after the work of Jamblichos was written, the emperor Valens issued an edict against the monks of Egypt, and a detachment of cavalry and infantry, consisting of three thousand men, was sent into the desert of Nitria to compel the able-bodied ascetics who had retired thither to enlist in the imperial armies. In the next generation, Gibbon tells us, "The stately and populous city of Oxyrinchus, the seat of Christian orthodoxy, had devoted the temples, the public edifices and even the ramparts, to pious and charitable uses; and the bishop who might preach in twelve churches computed 10,000 females and 20,000 males of the monastic profession. The Egyptians, who gloried in this marvellous revolution, were disposed to hope and to believe that the number of monks was equal to the remainder of the people."

We have unfortunately no history of the gradual conversion of the Egyptians to Christianity. But when we compare the notions of the Divinity as contained in the authorized books of Egyptian theology with those which we ourselves hold, we cannot but ask whether so intelligent a people never came nearer to the truth than their most recent books would appear to show.