36 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
ante-^icene and !Nicene fathei*s attributed many conrersioiiiJ to nocturnal dreams and visions. Constantino and his friends referred tlie most important facts of his life, as the knowledge of the approach of hostile armies, the discovery of the holy sepulchre, the founding of Constantinople, to divine revelation through visions and dreams. Nor are we disposed in the least to deny the connection of the vision of the cross with the agency of divine Providence, which controlled this remarkahlo turning point of history. We may go farther and admit a special providence, or what the old divines call ^providentia »pecialissima I but this does not necessarily imply a violation of the order of nature or an actual mi/aclc in the shaj)e of an objective personal appearance of the Saviour. We may refer to a somewhat similar, though far less important, vision in the life of the pious English Colonel James Gardiner.' The Bible itself sanctions the general theory of providential or prophetic dreams and nocturnal visions through which divine revelations and admonitions are communicated to men.'
was supposed by Libanius to have been surrauuded by a whole army of gods, which, however, in the view of Gregory of Nazianzeu, was a liost of demons. See Ullmanu, Gregoiy of Naz., p. 100.
* Accordimg to the account of his friend, Dr. PliiUp Doddridge, who learned the facts from Gardiner, as Eusebius from Constautiue. When engaged in serious meditation on a f^abbath night in July, 1719, Gardiner " suddenly thought he saw an unusual blaze of light fall on the book while he was reading, which he at first imagined might have liappened by some accident in the candle. But lifting up his eyes, he apprehended, to his extreme amazement, that there was before him, as it were suspended in the air, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, surrounded with a glory ; and was impressed as if a voice, or something equivalent to a voice, had come to him, to this effect : ' 0 sinner, did I sufl'er this for thee, and are these the returns?'" After this event he changed from a dissolute worldling to an earnest and godly man. But the whole apparition was probably, after all, merely an inward one. For the report adds as to the voice : " Whether this were an audible voice, or onhj a ■•strong hnpression on hia mind^ ecpially striking, he did not seem confident, though he judged it to be the former. He thought he was awake. But everybody knows how easy it is towards midnight to fall into a doze over a duU or even a good book. It is very probable then that this apparition resolves itself into a significant dream which marked an epoch in his life. No reflecting persun will on that account doubt the seriousness of Gardiner's conversion, which was aniplj proved by his whole subsequent life, even far more than Constantino's was.
' Numbers xii. 6 : " I the Lord will make myself known in a vision, and will iDcak in a dream." Job sxxiii. 15, 16 : " In a dream, in a vision of tl e night, whcj
§ 2. CONST AJTTINE THE GKEAT. 27
Tlie facts, therefore, may have been these. Before the battle Coiistaiitine, leaning already towards Christianity as probably the best and most hopeful of the various religions seriously sought in prayer, as he related to Eusebius, the as sistance of the God of the Cliristians, while his heathen antag* onist Maxentius, according to Zosimus,' was consulting the sibjdline books and offering sacriiice to the idols. Filled with mingled fears and hopes about the issue of the conflict, he fell asleep and saw in a dream the sign of the cross of Christ with a significant inscription and promise of victory. Being already familiar with the general use of this sign among the numerous Christians of the empire, many of whom no doubt were in his own army, he constructed the Zt/Jav^ww," or rather he changed the heathen laharum into a standard of the Christian cross with the Greek monogram of Christ,' which he had
deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberiugs upon the bed, then he openeth the eara of men and sealeth their instruction." For actual facts see Gen. xxxi. 10, 24 ; xxxvii. 5 ; 1 Kings iii. 5 ; Dan. ii. 4, 36 ; vii. 1 ; Matt. i. 20 ; ii. 12, 13, 19, 22 ; Acta X. 17; xxii. 17, 18.
' Histor. ii. 16.
^ Ad0(A>pov, also \d0ovpov ; derived not from labor, nor from Kd.<pvpov, i. e. praeda, nor from Kafitlv, but probably from a barbarian root, otherwise unknown, and introduced into the Roman terminology, long before Constantine, by the Celtic or Germanic recruits. Comp. Du Cange, Glossar., and Suicer, Thesaur. s. h. v. The labarum, as described by Eusebius, who saw it himself (Vita Const, i. 30), consisted of a long spear overlaid with gold, and a crosspiece of wood, from which hung a square flag of purple cloth embroidered and covered with precious stones. On the top of the shaft was a crown composed of gold and precious stones, and containing the monogram of Christ (see next note), and just under this crown was a likeness of the emperor and his sons in gold. The emperor told Eusebius (1. ii. c. 7) some incredible things about this labarum, e. g. that none of its bearers was ever hurt by the darts of the enemy.
^ X and P, the first two letters of the name of Christ, so written upon ona another as to make the form of the cross : $ or -F , or »ik« (i. e. Christos — Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end), and similar forms, of which Miinter (Sinnbilder der alten Christen, p. 36 sqq.) has collected from ancient coins, vessels, and tombstones more than twenty. The monogram, as well as the sign of the cross, was in use among the Christians long before Constantine, probably as early aa the Antoniues and Hadrian. Yea, the standards and trophies of victory generally had the appearance of a cross, as Minucius Felix, TertuUian, Justin, and other apologists of the second century told the heathens. According to Killen (Ancient Church, p SI 7, note), who quotes Aringhus, Roma subterranea. ii. p. 567, as his authority, th«