The victorious emperor paid a short visit to Rome. Amongst other things which he did, he caused to be erected in the forum a statue of himself, holding in his right hand a standard in the shape of a cross, with the following inscription: “By this salutary sign, the true symbol of valor, I freed your city from the yoke of the tyrant.” Maxentius was found in the Tiber, the morning after the battle. The emperor evidently felt that he was indebted to the God of the Christians and to the sacred symbol of the cross for his victories. And this, we dare say, was the extent of his Christianity at that time. As a man he had not felt his need of it, if ever he did; as a warrior he embraced it earnestly. Afterward, as a statesman, he owned and valued Christianity; but God only knows whether as a lost sinner he ever embraced the Savior. It is difficult for princes to be Christians.
Constantine now proceeded towards Illyricum to meet Licinius, with whom he had formed a secret alliance before going to meet Maxentius. The two emperors met at Milan, where their alliance was ratified by the marriage of Licinius to Constantine’s daughter. It was during this quiet moment that Constantine prevailed upon Licinius to consent to the repeal of the persecuting edicts of Dioclesian, and the issuing of a new edict of complete toleration. This being agreed upon, a public edict, in the joint names of Constantine and Licinius, was issued at Milan, A.D. 313, in favor of the Christians, and may be considered as the great charter of their liberties. Full and unlimited toleration was granted to them; their churches and property were restored without compensation, and, outwardly Christianity flourished.
But peace between the emperors, which seemed to be established on a firm foundation, was soon interrupted. Jealousy, love of power, and ambition for absolute sovereignty in the Roman empire, would not allow them to remain long in peace. A war broke out in the year 314, but Licinius was defeated with heavy losses, both in men and territory. A peace was again concluded, which lasted about nine years. Another war became unavoidable, and once more it assumed the form of a religious strife between the rival emperors. Licinius attached the pagan priesthood to his cause, and persecuted the Christians. Many of the bishops he put to death, knowing they were special favorites at the court of his rival. Both parties now made preparations for a contest, the issue of which should be final. Licinius, before proceeding to war, sacrificed to the gods, and extolled them in a public oration. Constantine, on the other hand, relied upon the God whose symbol accompanied his army. The two hostile armies met. The battle was fierce, obstinate, and sanguinary. Licinius was no mean rival; but the commanding genius, activity, and courage of Constantine prevailed, The victory was complete. Licinius survived his defeat only about a year. He died, or rather was privately killed, in 326. Constantine had now reached the height of his ambition. He was sole master—absolute sovereign of the Roman empire, and continued so until his death in 337. For a description of the political and military career of this great prince we must refer the reader to civil history; we will briefly glance at his religious course.
The religious history οf Constantine.
All that we know of the religion of Constantine up to the period of his conversion, so-called, would imply that he was outwardly, if not zealously, a pagan. Eusebius himself admits that he was at this time in doubt which religion he would embrace. Policy, superstition, hypocrisy, divine inspiration, have been in turn assigned as the sole or the predominant influence, which decided his future religious history. But it would surely be unjust to suppose that his profession of Christianity, and his public declarations in its favor, amounted to nothing more than deliberate and intentional hypocrisy. Both his religious and ecclesiastical course admit of a far higher and more natural explanation. Neither could we believe that there was anything approaching to divine inspiration, either in his midday vision or in his midnight dream. There may have been some unusual appearance about the sun or in the clouds, which imagination converted into a miraculous sign of the cross; and the other appearance may have been the exaggeration of a dream from his highly excited state: but the whole story may now be considered as a fable, full of flattery to the great emperor, and very gratifying to his great admirer and panegyrist, Eusebius. Few will now be found to give it a place among the authentic records of history.
Policy and superstition, we have no doubt, had a great deal to do with the change that was wrought in the mind of Constantine. From his youth he had witnessed the persecution of the Christians, and must have observed a vitality in their religion which rose above the power of their persecutors, and survived the downfall of all other systems. He had seen one emperor after another, who had been the open enemies of Christianity, die the most fearful death. His father only—the protector of Christianity—of all the emperors, during the long persecution, &ad gone down to an honored and peaceful grave. Facts in striking could not fail to influence the superstitious mind of Constantine. Besides, he might appreciate with political sagacity the moral influence of Christianity; its tendency to enforce peaceful obedience to civil government; and the immense hold which it obviously had on the mind of something like the one half of his empire.
The emperor’s motives, however, are no part of our history, and need not occupy us longer. But in order to have this most important period, or great turning-point in Church history clearly before our minds, it may be well to look at the state of the Church as he found it in 313, and as he left it in 337.
THE CHURCH AS CONSTANTINE FOUND IT.
Up till this time the Church had been perfectly free and independent of the state. It had a divine constitution—direct from heaven—and outside the world. It made its way, not by state patronage, but by divine power, against every hostile influence. In place of receiving support from the civil government, it had been persecuted from the first as a foreign foe; as an obstinate and pestilent superstition. Ten times the devil had been permitted to stir up the whole Roman world against her, and ten times it had to confess weakness and defeat. Had she kept in mind the day of her espousals, and the love of Him who says, “No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church,” she never would have accepted the protection of Constantine at the cost of her fidelity to Christ. But the Church as a whole was now much mixed up with the world, and far away from her first love.
We have already seen, that since the days of the apostles there had been a growing love of the world, and of outward display. This tendency, so natural to us all, the Lord in love checked, by allowing Satan to persecute. But in place of the Church accepting the trial as chastening from the hand of the Lord, and owning her worldliness, she grew weary of the place and path of rejection, and thought she might still please and serve the Lord, and walk in the sunshine of the world. This satanic delusion was accomplished by Constantine, though he knew not what he was doing. “Whatever the motives of his conversion,” says Milman, “Constantine, no doubt, adopted a wise and judicious policy, in securing the alliance, rather than continuing the strife, with an adversary which divided the wealth, the intellect, if not the property, and the population of the empire.”
The union of the church and state.
In the month of March 313, the bands of the unholy alliance between the Church and the State were published at Milan. The celebrated edict of that date conferred on the Christians the fullest toleration, and led the way to the legal establishment of Christianity, and to its ascendancy over all other religions. This was publicly displayed on the new imperial standard—the Labarum. Besides the initials of Christ, and the symbol of His cross, there was also an image of the emperor in gold. These signs, or mottoes, were intended as objects of worship for both heathen and Christian soldiers, and to animate them to enthusiasm in the day of battle. Thus he, who is called the great christian emperor, publicly united Christianity to idolatry.
But if we have read the mind of Constantine aright, we should have no hesitation in saying, that at this time he was a heathen in heart, and a Christian only from military motives. It was only as a superstitious soldier that he had embraced Christianity. At that moment he was ready to welcome the assistance of any tutelar divinity in his struggles for universal empire. We can see no trace of Christianity, far less any trace of the zeal of a new convert: but we can easily trace the old superstition of heathenism, in the new dress of Christianity. Were it not for such considerations, the Labarum would have been the display of the most daring dishonor to the blessed Lord. But it was done in ignorance. He was also anxious to meet the mind of his heathen soldiers and subjects, and to dissipate their fears as to the safety of their old religion.
The earlier edicts of Constantine, though in their effects favorable to Christianity, were given in such cautious terms as not to interfere with the rites and liberties of paganism. But the Christians gradually grew in his favor, and his acts of kindness and liberality spoke louder than edicts. He not only restored to them the civil and religious rights of which they had been deprived; the churches and estates which had been publicly confiscated in the Dioclesian persecution; but enabled them by his own munificent gifts, to build many new places for their assemblies. He showed great favor to the bishops; had them constantly about him in the palace, on his journeys, and in his wars. He also showed his great respect for the Christians} by committing the education of his son Crispus to the celebrated Lactantius, a Christian. But with all this royal patronage; he assumed all supremacy over the affairs of the Church. He appeared in the synods of the bishops without his guards, mingled in their debates, and controlled the settlement of religious questions. From this time forward, the term Catholic was invariably applied, in all official documents, to the Church.
CONSTANTINE AS HEAD OF THE CHURCH AND HIGH PRIEST OF THE HEATHEN.
After the total defeat of Licinius, already referred to, the whole Roman world was reunited under the scepter of Constantine. In his proclamation issued to his new subjects in the East, he declares himself to be the instrument of God for spreading the true faith; and that God had given him the victory over all the powers of darkness, in order that His own worship by his means might be universally established. “Freedom,” he says, in a letter to Eusebius. “being once more restored, and, by the providence of the great God and my own ministry, that dragon driven from the ministration of the state, I trust that the divine power has become manifest to all, and that they, who through fear or unbelief have fallen into many crimes, will come to the knowledge of the true God, and to the right and true ordering of their lives.” Constantine now took his place more openly to the whole world as the head of the Church; but at the same time retained the office of the Pontifex Maximus—the high priest of the heathen; this he never gave up: he died head of the Church and high priest of the heathen.
The unholy alliance, the unhallowed mixture of which we have spoken, and which is referred to and mourned over in the address to Pergamos, meets us at every step in the history of this great historical prince. But having given some explanation of the address, we must leave the reader to compare the truth and the history in a godly way. What a mercy to have such a guide in studying this remarkable period in the history of the Church!
Among the first acts of the now sole emperor of the world was the repeal of all the edicts of Licinius against the Christians. He released all prisoners from the dungeon or the mine, or the servile and humiliating occupations to which some had been contemptuously condemned. All who had been deprived of their rank in the army or in the civil service he restored, and restitution was made for the property of which they had been despoiled. He issued an edict addressed to all his subjects, advising them to embrace the gospel, but pressed none: he wished it to be a matter of conviction. He endeavored, however, to render it attractive by bestowing places and honors on proselytes of the higher classes and donations on the poor—a course which, as Eusebius acknowledges, produced a great amount of hypocrisy and pretended conversion. He ordered that churches should be everywhere built, of a size sufficient to accommodate the whole population. He forbade the erection of statues of the gods and would not allow his own statue to be set up in the temples. All state sacrifices were forbidden, and in many ways he exerted himself for the elevation of Christianity and the suppression of heathenism.
THE EFFECTS OF ROYAL FAVOR.
We now come to the consideration of that which has been the great historical problem to men of all creeds, nations, and passions; namely, whether the state which seeks to advance Christianity by the worldly means at its command, or the earthly power which opposes it by legal violence, does the greater injury to the Church and people of God on the earth? Much may be said, we admit, as to the great blessing of impartial toleration, and of the great advantages to society of the legal suppression of all wicked customs; but court favor has always been ruinous to the true prosperity of the Church of God. It is a great mercy to be unmolested, but it is a greater mercy to be unpatronized by princes. The true character of Christians is that of strangers and pilgrims in this world. The possession of Christ, and of Christ in heaven, has changed everything on earth to Christians. They belong to heaven, they are strangers on earth. They are the servants of Christ in the world, though not of it. Heaven is their home; here they have no continuing city. What has the Church to expect from a world that crucified her Lord? or rather, what would she accept from it? Her true portion here is suffering and rejection; as the apostle says, “For thy sake we are killed all the day long: we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” The Lord may spare His people, but if trial should come, we are not to think that some strange thing has happened to us. “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” Rom. 8:3636As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. (Romans 8:36); John 16:3333These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33).