A.D. 338.

DELAY OF HIS BAPTISM.

21

represented the emperor in an humble and suppliant posture of Christian devotion.66

the approach

The pride of Constantine, who refused the privileges of a catechu men, cannot easily be explained or excused; but the delay Delay of his of his baptism may be justified by the maxims and the practice of ecclesiastical antiquity. The sacrament of bap- of death. tism67 was regularly administered by the bishop himself, with his assistant clergy, in the cathedral church of the diocese, during the fifty days between the solemn festivals of Easter and Pentecost; and this holy term admitted a numerous band of infants and adult persons into the bosom of the church. The discretion of parents often suspended the baptism of their children till they could understand the obligations which they contracted: the severity of ancient bishops exacted from the new converts a noviciate of two or three years; and the catechumens themselves, from different motives of a temporal or a spiritual nature, were seldom impatient to assume the character of perfect and initiated Christians. The sacrament of baptism was supposed to contain a full and absolute expiation of sin; and the soul was instantly restored to its original purity, and entitled to the promise of eternal salvation. Among the proselytes of Christianity there were many who judged it imprudent to precipitate a salutary rite which could not be repeated; to throw away an inestimable privilege which could never be recovered. By the delay of their baptism they could venture freely to indulge their passions in the enjoyment of this world, while they still retained in their own hands the means of a sure and easy absolution.68 The sublime theory of the Gospel had

66 Eusebius in Vit. Constant. 1. iv. c. 15, 16.

"The theory and practice of antiquity, with regard to the sacrament of baptism, have been copiously explained by Dom Chardon, Hist. des Sacremens, tom. i. p. 3-405; Dom Martenne, de Ritibus Ecclesiæ Antiquis, tom. i.; and by Bingham, in the tenth and eleventh books of his Christian Antiquities. One circumstance may be observed in which the modern churches have materially departed from the ancient custom. The sacrament of baptism (even when it was administered to infants) was immediately followed by confirmation and the holy communion.

as The Fathers, who censured this criminal delay, could not deny the certain and victorious efficacy even of a death-bed baptism. The ingenious rhetoric of Chrysostom could find only three arguments against these prudent Christians. 1. That we should love and pursue virtue for her own sake, and not merely for the reward. 2. That we inay be surprised by death without an opportunity of baptism. 3. That, although we shall be placed in heaven, we shall only twinkle like little stars, when compared to the suns of righteousness who have run their appointed course with labour, with success, and with glory. Chrysostom, in Epist. ad Hebræos, Homil. xiii. apud Chardon, Hist. des Sacremens, tom. i. p. 49. I believe that this delay of baptism, though attended with the most pernicious consequences, was never condemned by any general or provincial council, or by any public act or declaration of the church. The zeal of the bishops was easily kindled on much slighter occasions."

This passage of Chrysostom, though quite fairly represented. He is stronger not in his more forcible manner, is not in other places, in Act, Hom. xxiii., and

22

BAPTISM OF CONSTANTINE.

CHAP. XX made a much fainter impression on the heart than on the understanding of Constantine himself. He pursued the great object of his ambition through the dark and bloody paths of war and policy; and, after the victory, he abandoned himself, without moderation, to the abuse of his fortune. Instead of asserting his just superiority above the imperfect heroism and profane philosophy of Trajan and the Antonines, the mature age of Constantine forfeited the reputation which he had acquired in his youth. As he gradually advanced in the knowledge of truth, he proportionably declined in the practice of virtue; and the same year of his reign in which he convened the council of Nice was polluted by the execution, or rather murder, of his eldest son. This date is alone sufficient to refute the ignorant and malicious suggestions of Zosimus," who affirms that, after the death of Crispus, the remorse of his father accepted from the ministers of Christianity the expiation which he had vainly solicited from the Pagan pontiffs. At the time of the death of Crispus the emperor could no longer hesitate in the choice of a religion; he could no longer be ignorant that the church was possessed of an infallible remedy, though he chose to defer the application of it till the approach of death had removed the temptation and danger of a relapse. The bishops whom he summoned in his last illness to the palace of Nicomedia were edified by the fervour with which he requested and received the sacrament of baptism, by the solemn protestation that the remainder of his life should be worthy of a disciple of Christ, and by his humble refusal to wear the Imperial purple after he had been clothed in the white garment of a Neophyte. The example and reputation of Constantine seemed to countenance the delay of baptism.70 Future tyrants were encouraged to believe that the innocent blood which they might shed in a long reign would instantly be washed away in the waters of regeneration; and the abuse of religion dangerously undermined the foundations of moral virtue.

69 Zosimus, 1. ii. [c. 29] p. 104. For this disingenuous falsehood he has deserved and experienced the harshest treatment from all the ecclesiastical writers, except Cardinal Baronius (A.D. 324, No. 15-28), who had occasion to employ the infidel on a particular service against the Arian Eusebius."

70 Eusebius [Vit. Constant.], 1. iv. c. 61, 62, 63. The bishop of Casarea supposes the salvation of Constantine with the most perfect confidence.

Hom. i.; compare likewise the sermon of Gregory of Nyssa on this subject, and Gregory Nazianzen. After all, to those who believed in the efficacy of baptism, what argument could be more conclusive than the danger of dying without it? Orat. xl.-M.

• Heyne, in a valuable note on this

passage of Zosimus, has shown decisively that this malicious way of accounting for the conversion of Constantine was not an invention of Zosimus. It appears to have been the current calumny, eagerly adopted and propagated by the exasperated Pagan party.-M. See also Lasaulx, Der Unter gang des Hellenismus, p. 37, seg.-8.

A.D. 338,

PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY.

23

The gratitude of the church has exalted the virtues and excused

anity.

the failings of a generous patron, who seated Christianity Propagation on the throne of the Roman world; and the Greeks, who of Christicelebrate the festival of the Imperial saint, seldom mention the name of Constantine without adding the title of equal to the Apostles." Such a comparison, if it alludes to the character of those divine missionaries, must be imputed to the extravagance of impious flattery. But if the parallel is confined to the extent and number of their evangelic victories, the success of Constantine might perhaps equal that of the Apostles themselves. By the edicts of toleration he removed the temporal disadvantages which had hitherto retarded the progress of Christianity; and its active and numerous ministers received a free permission, a liberal encouragement, to recommend the salutary truths of revelation by every argument which could affect the reason or piety of mankind. The exact balance of the two religions continued but a moment; and the piercing eye of ambition and avarice soon discovered that the profession of Christianity might contribute to the interest of the present, as well as of a future life.72 The hopes of wealth and honours, the example of an emperor, his exhortations, his irresistible smiles, diffused conviction among the venal and obsequious crowds which usually fill the apartments of a palace. The cities which signalized a forward zeal by the voluntary destruction of their temples were distinguished by municipal privileges and rewarded with popular donatives; and the new capital of the East gloried in the singular advantage that Constantinople was never profaned by the worship of idols. 73 As the lower ranks of society are governed by imitation, the conversion of those who possessed any eminence of birth, of power, or of riches, was soon followed by dependent multitudes.74 The salvation of the common people

? See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iv. p. 429. The Greeks, the Russians, and, in the darker ages, the Latins themselves, have been desirous of placing Con stantine in the catalogue of saints.

72 See the third and fourth books of his Life. He was accustomed to say that, whether Christ was preached in pretence or in truth, he should still rejoice (1. iii. c. 58)."

73 M. de Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iv. p. 374, 616) has defended with strength and spirit the virgin purity of Constantinople against some malevolent insinuations of the Pagan Zosimus.

74 The author of the Histoire Politique et Philosophique des deux Indes (tom. i. p. 9) condemns a law of Constantine which gave freedom to all the slaves who should embrace Christianity. The emperor did indeed publish a law which restrained the Jews from circumcising, perhaps from keeping, any Christian slaves (see Euseb. in Vit. Constant. 1. iv. c. 27, and Cod. Theod. 1. xvi. tit. ix., with Godefroy's Com

This is rather a strained inference from the words of Eusebius, who merely says that he gave much to relieve the poor, inviting and enticing men to the

salutary doctrine even by this means, and all but saying, in the words of Paul, "whether through opportunity or through truth, let Christ be preached."-S

24

PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY.

CHAP. XX.

was purchased at an easy rate, if it be true that, in one year, twelve thousand men were baptized at Rome, besides a proportionable num ber of women and children, and that a white garment, with twenty pieces of gold, had been promised by the emperor to every convert.75 The powerful influence of Constantine was not circumscribed by the narrow limits of his life or of his dominions. The education which he bestowed on his sons and nephews secured to the empire a race of princes whose faith was still more lively and sincere, as they imbibed, in their earliest infancy, the spirit, or at least the doctrine, of Christianity. War and commerce had spread the knowledge of the Gospel beyond the confines of the Roman provinces; and the barbarians, who had disdained an humble and proscribed sect, soon learned to esteem a religion which had been so lately embraced by the greatest monarch and the most civilized nation of the globe.76 The Goths and Germans, who enlisted under the standard of Rome, revered the cross which glittered at the head of the legions, and their fierce countrymen received at the same time the lessons of faith and of humanity. The kings of Iberia and Armenia" worshipped the God of their protector; and their subjects, who have invariably preserved the name of Christians, soon formed a sacred and perpetual connection

mentary, tom. vi. p. 247). But this imperfect exception related only to the Jews; and the great body of slaves, who were the property of Christian or Pagan masters, could not improve their temporal condition by changing their religion. I am ignorant by what guides the Abbé Raynal was deceived, as the total absence of quotations is the unpardonable blemish of his entertaining history.

75 See Acta Sti Silvestri, and Hist. Eccles. Nicephor. Callist. 1. vii. c. 34, ap. Baronium Annal. Eccles. A.D. 324, No. 67, 74. Such evidence is contemptible enough; but these circumstances are in themselves so probable, that the learned Dr. Howell (History of the World, vol. iii. p. 14) has not scrupled to adopt them.

76 The conversion of the barbarians under the reign of Constantine is celebrated by the ecclesiastical historians (see Sozomen, 1. ii. c. 6, and Theodoret, 1. i. c. 23, 24). But Rufinus, the Latin translator of Eusebius, deserves to be considered as an original authority. His information was curiously collected from one of the companions of the Apostle of Æthiopia, and from Bacurius, an Iberian prince, who was count of the domestics. Father Mamachi has given an ample compilation on the progress of Christianity, in the first and second volumes of his great but imperfect work.

According to the Georgian chronicles, Iberia (Georgia) was converted by the virgin Nino, who effected an extraordinary cure on the wife of the king, Mihran, The temple of the god Aramazt or Armaz, not far from the capital Mtskhitha, was destroyed, and the cross erected in its place. Le Beau, i. 292, with St. Martin's Notes.

St. Martin has likewise clearly shown (Addition to Le Beau, i. 291) that Armenia was the first nation which embraced Christianity (Addition to Le Beau. i. 76, and Mémoires sur l'Arménie, i. 305). Gibbon himself suspected this

truth.-"Instead of maintaining that the conversion of Armenia was not attempted with any degree of success till the sceptre was in the hands of an orthodox emperor, I ought to have said that the seeds of the faith were deeply sown during the season of the last and greatest persecution, that many Roman exiles might assist the labours of Gregory, and that the renowned Tiridates, the hero of the East, may dispute with Constantine the honour of being the first sovereign who embraced the Christian religion.” Vindication. Misc. Works, iv. 577.-M.

A.D. 338.

CHANGE OF THE NATIONAL RELIGION.

a

25

with their Roman brethren. The Christians of Persia were suspected, in time of war, of preferring their religion to their country; but as long as peace subsisted between the two empires, the persecuting spirit of the Magi was effectually restrained by the interposition of Constantine. The rays of the Gospel illuminated the coast of India. The colonics of Jews who had penetrated into Arabia and Æthiopia opposed the progress of Christianity; but the labour of the missionaries was in some measure facilitated by a previous knowledge of the Mosaic revelation; and Abyssinia still reveres the memory of Frumentius, who, in the time of Constantine, devoted his life to the conversion of those sequestered regions. Under the reign of his son Constantius, Theophilus, 79 who was himself of Indian extraction, was invested with the double character of ambassador and bishop. He embarked on the Red Sea with two hundred horses of the purest breed of Cappadocia, which were sent by the emperor to the prince of the Sabæans, or Homerites. Theophilus was intrusted with many other useful or curious presents, which might raise the admiration and conciliate the friendship of the barbarians; and he successfully employed several years in a pastoral visit to the churches of the torrid zone.80

religion.

The irresistible power of the Roman emperors was displayed in the important and dangerous change of the national religion. The Change of terrors of a military force silenced the faint and unsupported the national murmurs of the Pagans, and there was reason to expect that the cheerful subinission of the Christian clergy, as well as people, would be the result of conscience and gratitude. It was long since established as a fundamental maxim of the Roman constitution, that every rank of

77 See in Eusebius (in Vit. Constant. 1. iv. c. 9, sqq.) the pressing and pathetic epistle of Constantine in favour of his Christian brethren of Persia.

78 See Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. vii. p. 182, tom. viii. p. 333, tom. ix. p. 810. The curious diligence of this writer pursues the Jewish exiles to the extremities of the globe.

79 Theophilus had been given in his infancy as a hostage by his countrymen of the isle of Diva, and was educated by the Romans in learning and piety. The Maldives, of which Male, or Diva, may be the capital, are a cluster of 1900 or 2000 minute islands in the Indian Ocean. The ancients were imperfectly acquainted with the Maldives, but they are described in the two Mahometan travellers of the ninth century, published by Renaudot, Geograph. Nubiensis, p. 30, 31. D'Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale, p. 704. Hist. Générale des Voyages, tom. viii.b

80 Philostorgius, 1. iii. c. 4, 5, 6, with Godefroy's learned observations. The historical narrative is soon lost in an inquiry concerning the seat of Paradise, strange monsters, &c.

• Abba Salama, or Fremonatos, is mentioned in the Tareek Negushti, or Chronicle of the Kings of Abyssinia. Salt's Travele, vol. ii. p. 464.-M.

See the dissertation of M. Letronne ca this question. He conceives that

Theophilus was born in the island of Dahlak, in the Arabian Gulf. His cmbassy was to Abyssinia rather than to India. Letronne, Matériaux pour l'Hist du Christianisme en Egypte, Indie, et Abyssinie. Paris, 1832. 3rd Dissert.-M.