§ 2 CONSTAJNTINE THE GREAT. 35
immorality, as in the obscene worship of Yenus in Phenicia ; or in places which were specially sacred io the Christians, as the sepulchre of Christ and the grove of Marnre; and he cansed a number of deserted temples and images to be destro^^ed or turned into Christian churches. Eusebius relates several such instances with evident approbation, and praises also his later edicts against various heretics and schismatics, but without mentioning the Arians. In his later years he seems, indeed, to have issued a general prohibition of idolatrous sacrifice ; Eusebius speaks of it, and his sons in 341 refer to an edict to that effect ; but the repetition of it by his successors proves, that, if issued, it was not carried into general execution under his reign.
"With this shrewd, cautious, and moderate policy of Conetantine, which contrasts well with the violent fanaticism of his sons, accords the postponement of his own baptism to his last sickness.' For this he had the further motives of a superstitious desire, which he himself expresses, to be baptized in the Jordan, whose waters had been sanctified by the Saviour's baptism, and no doubt also a fear, that he might by relapse forfeit the sacramental remission of sins. He wished to secure all the benefit of baptism as a complete expiation of past sins, with as little risk as possible, and thus to make the best of both worlds. Deathbed baptisms then were to half Christians of that age what deathbed conversions and deathbed communions are now. Yet he presumed to preach the gospel, he called himself the bishop of bishops, he convened the first general council, and made Christianity tlie religion of the empire, long before his baptism ! Strange as this inconsistency
' The pretended baptism of Constantine by the Roman bishop Sylvester in 324, and his bestowment of lands on the pope in connection with it, is a mediaeval fiction, still unblushingly defended indeed by Baronius (ad ann. 324, No. 43-49), but long eince given up by other Roman Catholic historians, such as Noris, Tillemont, and Valesius. It is sufficiently refuted by the contemporary testimony of Eusebius alone (Vit. Const, iv. 61, 62), who places the baptism of Constantine at the end of his life, Rnd minutely describes it ; and Socrates, Sozomen, Ambrose, and Jerome coinci le with him.
36 THIED PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
appears to us, what shall we think of the court hisho])s who, from false prudence, relaxed in his favor the otherwise strict discipline of the church, and admitted him, at least tacitly, to the enjoyment of nearly all the privileges of believei-s, before he had taken upon himself even a single obligation of a catechumen !
When, after a life of almost uninterrupted health, he felt the approach of death, he was received into the number of catechumens by laying on of hands, and then formally admitted by baptism into the full communion of the church in the year 337, the sixty-fifth year of his age, by the Arian (or properly Semi- Arian) bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, whom he had shortly before recalled from exile together with Arius.' His dying testimony then was, as to form, in favor of heretical ]-ather than orthodox Chiistianity, but merely from accident, not from intention. He meant the Christian as against the heathen religion, and whatever of Arianism may have polluted his baptism, was for the Greek church fully wiped out by the orthodox canonization. After the solemn ceremony he promised to live tlienceforth wortliily of a disciple of Jesus ; refused to wear again the imperial mantle of cunningly woven silk, richly ornamented w^ith gold ; retained the white baptismal robe ; and died a few days after, on Pentecost, May 22,
* Hence Jerome says, Constantino was baptized into Arianism. And Dr. Newman, the ex-Tractarian, remarks, that in confcrrlDg his benefaction on the church he burdened it with the bequest of an heresy, wiilch outlived his age by many centuries, and still exists in its effects iu the divisions of the East (The Ariaiis of the 4th Century, 1854, p. 138). But Eusebius (not the church historian) was probably the nearest bishop, and acted here not as a party leader. Coustantine, too, in spite of the influence which the Arians had over him in his later years, considered himself constantly a true adherent of the Kicene Aiith, and he is roiiorted by Theodorct (II. E. I. S2) to have ordered the recall of Athanasius from exile on his deathbed, in spite of the opposition of the Arian Eusebius. He was in these matters frequently misled by misrepresentations, and cared more for peace than for truth. The deeper significance of the dogmatic controversy -vaa entirely beyond his sphere. Gibbon ia right in this matter : " The credulous monarch, unskilled in the stratagems of theological warfare, might be deceived by the modest and specious professic iS of the heretics, whose sentiments he never perfectly understood ; and while he protectea Arius, and persecuted Athanasiu.*i, he still considered the council of Nice as the bulwark of tie Christian faith, and the peculiar glory of his own reign." Ch. xxi.