the Catholic faith. Still, this conclusion is in no wise warranted. Constantine was never conscious of any defection from the creed of Nicæa. If he patronized some of the Arians during his later years, it was because they succeeded in making him believe that they were in harmony with the standard creed; if he persecuted some of the orthodox, it was not on account of their faith, but because he considered them guilty of mal-administration, or of an unreasonable obstinacy, to the detriment of the peace of the Church. "The credulous monarch," says Gibbon, "unskilled in the stratagems of theological warfare, might be deceived by the modest and specious professions of the heretics, whose sentiments he never perfectly understood; and while he protected Arius, and persecuted Athanasius, he still considered the council of Nicæa as the bulwark of the Christian faith, and the peculiar glory of his own reign." A similar verdict appears in the writings of historians of the fifth century. Although this [the Nicene] doctrine," says Sozomen, "was not universally approved, no one, during the life of Constantine, had dared to reject it openly."2 "It ought not," writes Theodoret, "to excite astonishment that Constantine was so far deceived as to send many great men into exile; for he believed the assertion of bishops, who skilfully concealed their malice under the appearance of illustrious qualities."3

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Were we to follow the estimate of contemporaries who enjoyed the favor of Constantine, we should be obliged to rank him among the very foremost of illus trious monarchs. The astonishing transition in their

1 Chap. xxi. 2 Hist. Eccl., iii. 1. 8 Hist. Eccl., i. 33.

estate transported not a few Christians to the point of immoderate adulation. They found themselves the friends and guests of one of the most magnificent of rulers, a monarch of imposing person, who clothed himself in all the splendor of a Solomon, always wearing in public a jewelled diadem, and a purple or scarlet robe of silk, embroidered with pearls and flowers of gold. The temptation to violate all sober judgment in the estimate of such a benefactor was not easily resisted. We read of a Christian minister, who, at the celebration of the third decennium of the Emperor's reign, pronounced "him blessed, as having been counted worthy to hold absolute and universal empire in this life, and as being destined to share the empire of the Son of God in the world to come." Even Constantine had the good taste to reject such unbounded flattery, "and forbade the speaker to hold such language, exhorting him rather to pray earnestly in his behalf, that whether in this life or that to come he might be found worthy to be a servant of God." The historian Eusebius, though he seems to have regarded the above specimen of adulation as being rather beyond the mark, did not fall much short of it himself. He speaks of Constantine as "at once a mighty luminary and a most distinct and powerful herald of genuine piety;" says that his character shone with all the graces of religion; and styles him such an emperor as all history records not. The less rhetorical Theodoret designates Constantine "a prince deserving of the highest praise, who, like the divine apostle, was not called by man or through man, but by God." The Greek Church, in the fifth

1 Euseb., Vita Cons., iv. 48.

2 Hist. Eccl., i. 2.

century, began to reckon him among the saints; and still in the Greek and Russian Church he is honored with the title Isapostolos, the "Equal of the Apostles." From the heathenism also which he helped to conquer, he received high-sounding honors; and the Roman Senate, at his death, did not hesitate to follow custom and to enroll him among the gods.

How strange the contrast between these encomiums and titles, and those dark events whose guise of tyranny is but poorly hid by the obscurity in which history has left them! Licinius, the husband of Constantia, the sister of Constantine, was put to death, in violation of a solemn pledge that his life should be spared. To be sure, there was an accusation of treasonable designs on the part of Licinius; but unproved accusations cannot count for very much under the circumstances. A few years later, Crispus, the eldest son of Constantine, a youth of high promise, amiable, martial, and enterprising, was ordered to be executed by the jealous and suspicious father. At the same time, Licinius, the son of the emperor of the same name, was sacrificed, in spite of the tears and entreaties of his widowed mother. The innocence of both of these accomplished youths is commonly regarded as beyond question. According to very full and confident testimony, the Empress Fausta, the stepmother of the murdered Crispus, was another victim. As the story goes, her machinations, in order that she might advance her own sons, had served as a chief instigation to the execution of the innocent and slandered youths; and Constantine, coming finally to understand the case, was filled with fury, and ordered her to be suffocated in an overheated bath. But Gibbon

finds something quite contradictory to this account in the references of two orations belonging to the following period. "The former celebrates the virtues, the beauty, and the fortune of the Empress Fausta, the daughter, wife, sister, and mother of so many princes. The latter asserts, in explicit terms, that the mother of the younger Constantine, who was slain three years after his father's death, survived to weep over the fate of her son. Notwithstanding the positive testimony of several writers of the pagan as well as of the Christian religion, there may still remain some reason to believe, or at least to suspect, that Fausta escaped the blind and suspicious cruelty of her husband.” 1 An astonishing list of deeds, certainly, for a saint and an Isapostolos! As a man, and a professed Christian, Constantine was not, indeed, without his merits. "From his earliest youth to a very advanced season of life, he preserved the vigor of his constitution by a strict adherence to the domestic virtues of chastity and temperance." "2 But certainly his history makes it plain, on the whole, that the first Christian emperor was quite remote from being a Christian of an enlightened and regenerate type. The stain of the purple is clearly apparent to eyes not blinded by its magnificence.

To Constantine as a general and an administrator, an eminent rank is no doubt to be assigned. "In the field," says Gibbon, “he infused his own intrepid spirit into the troops whom he conducted, with the talents of a consummate general; and to his abilities, rather than to his fortune, we may ascribe the signal victories which he obtained over the foreign and domestic foes of the 1 Chap. xviii.

2 Ibid.

1

republic." In his management of the State, there were, no doubt, defects. During his later years in par ticular, he was given to a prodigal liberality, which enriched in one direction, only to oppress in another. But, on the other hand, he gave numerous exhibitions of statesmanlike sagacity. Instances may be pointed out in which he cultivated an admirable and politic moderation. Judging him by what he accomplished, a high estimate must be placed upon his abilities; for he made himself the master of an empire in the face of formidable rivals, and carried through one of the most remarkable revolutions of history.

Upon the death of Constantine, the government of the Empire passed to his three sons,-Constantius, Constantine the Younger, and Constans; the first ruling the eastern, and the last two sharing the western division. In 340 Constantine fell in a war with Constans. This left the latter sole ruler of the West, a position which he maintained till the year 350, when he was slain in a struggle with the usurper Magnentius. The overthrow of the usurper, in 353, made Constantius master of the whole Empire.

Although Eusebius speaks of the sons of Constantine as "a trinity of pious sons, like some new reflectors of his brightness, diffusing everywhere the lustre of their father's character," 2 it is the common verdict of historians that the government suffered a marked deterioration under the successors of the great Emperor. With

1 Chap. xviii.

2 So two of his statements read when combined. Vita Cons., i. 1, iv. 40.