But two such ambitious princes could not long remain as coördinate rulers, without jealousy. It is difficult to decide, which shared the greater part in producing the rupture. Constantine seems first to have meditated hostilities, and Licinius to have given the first open provocation. This provocation was the oppression of the Christians, who were regarded as favoring Constantine, while the pagans rallied around his rival. In such circumstances, war becomes the natural state, not only of the rulers, but of the people. The armies of the respective emperors, accompanied, the one with pagan, the other with Christian, priests, to implore the aid of Heaven, as if to try the comparative strength of gods as well as men, met Oct. 8, 314, at Cibalis, on the Save, in an engagement which lasted from morning till night, when victory declared for Constantine. Not long afterwards, a treaty of peace was concluded between them.

The next succeeding eight years Constantine employed in regulating the affairs of his empire. This long period of peace, however, proved to be but a season of preparation for a more desperate struggle. As Constantine assembled naval forces in Thessalonica and the Piræus, and was even passing, with his infantry, through the territory of Licinius, in order to expel the Goths, who had just crossed the Danube; Licinius summoned his whole army and navy to assemble in Thrace and the Hellespont. The hostile armies came in contact on the Hebrus, and the fleets the next day on the Hellespont; and, in both engagements, Licinius was defeated. Licinius was finally strangled, contrary, it is said, to the solemn promise of Constantine. Thus, in 324, Constantine was sole monarch of the whole Roman empire. It was in the next year, that he called the council of Nice, which condemned Arianism. We pass this topic, as it is already familiar to many readers, and as it would require a volume to do it justice.

Soon after this, Constantine committed acts of cruelty which it is extremely difficult to reconcile with a religious. character. He ordered his oldest son, Crispus, a noble youth, to be put to death. Gibbon, in ascribing this act of Constantine to jealousy, on account of his son's favor with the people, not only writes history without testi

mony, but directly in face of testimony. According to Zosimus and Victor, neither of whom was prejudiced in favor of Constantine, the emperor was misled by the calumnies of Fausta, the step-mother of Crispus, who wished thereby to prepare the way for her own son's accession to the throne. When Constantine ascertained that he had been deceived, and that Crispus was innocent of the crime alleged against him, he caused Fausta herself to be put to death, by overheating a bath in which she was shut up.

One of the most important enterprises of Constantine was the founding of the new capital of the empire, which still bears his name. Whether his object was to have a Christian capital (for Rome was the chief seat of paganism), or to strengthen the empire where it was particularly exposed to the barbarians, or to signalize himself by some lasting monument of his power, or whether, as is more probable, he was influenced by many considerations combined, he certainly selected the most favorable position in the empire. All the marks of paganism were removed from the old Byzantium; temples were converted into churches; monuments of art were collected from Italy, Greece, and Asia; the court was removed there, and other families of distinction were rewarded with landed estates in Asia Minor, for taking up a residence in Constantinople. By these, and similar means, the new capital increased rapidly, and was dedicated in 330.

It is interesting to observe some of the laws of the first Christian emperor relating to the Christians. The first freed the clergy from bearing any of the burdens of the state, a regulation which, with various modifications, has continued to the present time. Another prohibited, except in certain cases, labor on the first day of the week, the earliest civil enactment relating to that day. A third gave full liberty to individuals to bequeath any amount of property to the church. A fourth prohibited, under severe penalties, compelling any Christian to offer sacrifice. The losses sustained by the Christians, during the persecutions, were made up, and their civil disabilities. and burdens were all removed. The emperor erected, at his own expense, many splendid churches, in places

memorable in sacred history, of which we may mention those of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Mount of Olives (the last two, at the instance of his mother, Helena), Constantinople, Nicomedia, Antioch, and the Plain of Mamre. As his attachments to Christians increased, he lost his indifference towards paganism.

In distributing civil offices, he gave Christians the preference, though he by no means excluded pagans. He did not allow pagan magistrates, in their official character, to offer sacrifices. We can see no valid objection to this prohibition. It did not interfere with the rights of conscience. Every magistrate could, as a man, or private individual, worship as he pleased; and only while in another's employ was he subject to direction, and that not in a way that would violate his conscience. If properly constituted authorities have a right, in their public capacity, to recognise their dependence upon a higher power, they have the right to regulate the manner of that recognition, provided they compel no one to acts of worship. That Constantine was sufficiently lenient in this respect, appears from the ludicrous circumstance that he caused a form of public prayer to be drawn up for the use of the army, in such general terms, that both pagans and Christians could join in it. He released Christian soldiers from service on Sunday, in order that they might attend public worship; but he did not impose this duty upon pagans. He finally prohibited all sacrifices to the gods; an evident disregard of the right of private judgment in matters of religion. There is, perhaps, some palliation of this fault, in the fact, that he never enforced the law. Constantine committed one capital error, in presenting strong external inducements to conversion from paganism to Christianity. It deluged the church with hypocrites, who sought princes' favor more than their own salvation. He also gave an undue power to bishops, throughout the empire, by directing the people to yield to them implicit obedience. Equally unjustifiable was the authority he assumed, in calling ecclesiastical councils, awing them by his presence, controlling their deliberations, and, finally, executing their decisions with the terrors of civil power.

The older, and many of the later writers, are mistaken

when they say, that Constantine struck out, at once, an entirely new system of administration. All the leading features of that system were gradually introduced by the course of events, and Constantine merely gave a completeness and finish to what Providence cast before him in a rude form. The system of Augustus did by no means continue unaltered till the time of Constantine. Ever since Galba's accession to the imperial throne, the Pretorian guards were almost the sole disposers of the crown. Hadrian made very considerable changes in the form of the government, similar in character to those adopted by Constantine. Under Commodus and Severus, the præfect of the Pretorian guards united the civil office of prime minister with that of military commander. Oriental pomp and ceremony were not introduced by Constantine, but by Heliogabalus, and carried to a still greater extent by Diocletian. The latter divided the empire into four parts, and greatly weakened the power of the præfect. Even the changes of which Constantine was the author, were gradually introduced as circumstances required, some of them in the early part of his reign, without his knowing what was to follow; others, from the necessity of the case, when he removed to his new capital; and not a few, that are attributed to him, are the work of his successors. How monstrous is it, in a historian, to throw all these into one mass, as Gibbon has done, and then accuse the Christian emperor of weakness and vanity, in arbitrarily making so great an overturn in the whole empire! The division of the empire into four præfectures was a natural, and even necessary, consequence of Diocletian's measure of having four associate rulers, a state of things which had virtually existed long before Constantine came to the throne. The ministers of the four monarchs were, in fact, the four præfects, a distinction of office which Constantine is said to have originated, but which he merely retained, as a matter of convenience, though the empire was now subject to but one ruler. The office of præfect, which was originally exclusively military, lost, in the end, that character entirely, and became the highest civil office under the monarch.

We may now, in a few words, specify the last events of Constantine's life. For a considerable time, he had

been employed in subduing the barbarians on his northern frontier. His two eldest sons, Constantine and Constantius, had already been made casars; in 333, he added his third son, Constans, to the number; and two years afterward, his nephew, Dalmatius. Thus he prepared the way for a re-division of the empire, which he had spent his whole life in attempting to unite. He did, in fact, soon after, make a formal division; assigning to Constantine II, the territory of his grandfather, Gaul, Spain, and Britain; to Constantius II, the East, or Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt; to Constans, Italy and Africa; and to Dalinatius, Thrace, Macedonia, Illyria, and Achaia.

The last public enterprise of Constantine was that of preparing for an expedition against Persia. The war against the Persians, in which as a youth, he was engaged under Diocletian and Galerius, terminated in the cession of five provinces, on the part of Persia, to the Romans. A long period of peace had succeeded. But Sapor II, the enterprising and powerful Persian monarch, resolved on reclaiming those provinces. Indeed, Constantius, who, after his father's death, carried on these military operations in the East, was defeated by Sapor in nine successive battles. This rupture between the Christian empire and the Persians, exposed the Persian Christians to almost unexampled sufferings, certainly the greatest that were experienced by them after the Diocletian persecution. But just as Constantine had completed his preparations for this new war, he was suddenly attacked with disease. "In the first place,"we quote this closing scene from Manso,-"he resorted to the baths of his capital; then to those of Helenopolis, a Bythinian town, so named from his mother. But all was in vain. The disease grew more alarming, and he was taken to the church in that place, and, by the imposition of hands, received into the number of catechumens. Next, he was removed to a villa near Nicomedia. Change of place, however, could bring no relief; on the contrary, the attack, which had now lasted for about six weeks, spurned all control. The emperor, therefore, received, upon his bed, the long-neglected rite of baptism, from Eusebius, the Arian bishop of Nicomedia; and,