140. Gregory (Orat. iii. p. 91) charges the Apostate with
secret sacrifices of boys and girls; and positively affirms
that the dead bodies were thrown into the Orontes. See
Theodoret, 1. iii. c. 26, 27; and the equivocal candour of
the Abbe de la Bleterie, Vie de Julien, p. 351, 352. Yet
contemporary malice could not impute to Julian the troops
of martyrs, more especially in the West, which Baronius so
greedily swallows, and Tillemont so faintly rejects (Mem.
Eccles. tom. vii. p. 1295-1315).