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and that a white garment, with twenty pieces of gold, had been promised by the emperor to every convert. 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 (not the spirit, but) the form 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 a 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."*

Such is the account handed down to us by the pen of the historian, of the life and actions of the first of the Christian emperors. But, whatever great and good qualities were possessed by Constantine, he certainly possessed some which were neither great nor good. Even his conversion to Christianity, which he attributed to the miraculous interposition of heaven, will not bear a rigorous scrutiny: it carries with it abundant traces of political stratagem; and his subsequent life was not such as to dissipate all suspicion of his sincerity. His conduct towards Licinius was a tissue of perfidious baseness. After abdicating the imperial throne, he was received by Constantine with singular demonstrations of kindness, and sent by him into Thessaly, with an assurance that he should live unmolested so long as he created no new disturbance: yet the deposed monarch was soon after strangled by his order! Another foul stain upon his character was his unjust and cruel treatment of his own son Crispus, whom he commanded to be put to death, without allowing the prince an opportunity of clearing himself of an accusation which had been insidiously preferred against him. Of a kindred cast was the cruelty with which he conducted himself towards his nephew, the young Licinius, whom he caused to be killed in the twelfth year of his age. These atrocities have confounded some of his partisans; and, among others, Jerome has pronounced them the effect of "an unheard-of cruelty.' That he favoured the professors of Christianity-took their

* Gibbon's Decline and Fall, &c., ch. xx.

cause under his special protection, and lavished his bounty upon the Clergy, is beyond dispute; but all this he may have done from motives of policy, without having any solid conviction of the truth of Christianity. Constantine was well aware of their increasing number, and of the declining state of Paganism, and he no doubt thought that to profess and protect the former would be the most effectual means of uniting mankind under his government.

As to his conduct in the affair of the Nicene council, it was pregnant with incalculable evils to the cause of genuine Christianity. It laid the foundation of a system of persecution, the complexion of which was altogether new: professed Christians tyrannizing over one another, and inflicting cruelties on each other, which, in process of time, came to exceed any thing they had ever sustained from the heathen. Constantine himself wrote letters enjoining submission to the decrees of the council, and urging, as a reason for it, that "what they had decreed was the will of God; and that the agreement of such a number of holy bishops was by inspiration of the Holy Spirit." His first letters were mild and gentle, but he was soonspersuaded into severer measures; for, out of his great zeal to extinguish heresy, he issued edicts against all such as his favourite bishops persuaded him were the authors or abettors of it, particularly against the Novatianists, Valentinians, Marcionists, and others, whom, after reproaching with "being enemies of truth, destructive counsellors," &c., he deprived of the liberty of meeting for worship, either in public or private places, and gave all their oratories to the orthodox. And with respect to Arius, and the discomfited party, he not only banished the former, but stigmatized the latter with the title of "Porphyrians," and commanded that all their books and writings should be committed to the flames, that there might remain to posterity no vestiges of their doctrine; and, to complete the climax, he enacted that if any person should dare to keep in his possession any book written by Arius, and should not immediately burn it, he should no sooner be convicted of the crime, than he should suffer death. Such were the acts of the last days of Constantine the Great, the deplorable consequences of which, as they respected the profession of Christianity, will form the subject-matter of some succeeding Lectures.

LECTURE XIX.

Preliminary observations-Prophetic intimations of the grand Apostacy-Influence of the Clergy in maturing it—Genuine Christianity must be regulated by the New Testament—Christ the alone legislator in his churches-National establishments of his religion necessarily Antichristian-Corrupt State of Christianity previous to the times of Constantine-Inquiry into the grounds of an Ecclesiastical Establishment in Britain-Dr. Paley and Mr. Cunningham quoted-Their principles shown to be Antiscriptural and untenable-Christianity allows not the application of force-The true grounds of dissent stated— Distinction between genuine and counterfeit Christianity.

THE elevation of Constantine to the imperial throne-his conversion to Christianity, real or pretended--and his taking the Christians under his patronage and protection, are most important occurrences in the annals of the church, and could not fail to produce an entire revolution in the state of the Christian profession. For three hundred years Christianity had had to encounter the most determined opposition that could be raised against it by the unbelieving Jew and the bigoted heathen-to the former of whom it was a stumbling block, and to the latter foolishness; yet in defiance of every obstacle with which it was assailed, whether from Jew or Gentile, it not only maintained its ground, but continued to gain strength in its progress, by means of its own intrinsic evidence and the over-ruling Providence of its great author. So long as it was the object of persecution to the ruling powers, and those that openly professed it could only

do it at the peril of their liberty, property, character, and life, it is not easy to conceive what possible inducement any persons could have to make the profession of it, and avow themselves its advocates, except a conviction of its divine authority. The Saviour himself had warned his followers that they should be hated of all men for their attachment to him-they were instructed to lay their account with shame, reproach, and suffering, from an ungodly world, nor had they any encouragement to expect that "the offence of the cross would cease," so long as the world continued to lie in "the wicked one." "If ye were of the world," said Jesus, "the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." And again, “I have given them thy word; therefore the world hateth them." These are his own sayings, and they sufficiently indicate the opposition which was to exist between his religion, while maintained in its purity, and the course of this present evil world. The apostles uniformly inculcated the same lesson upon their disciples; they taught that it was "through much tribulation they must enter the kingdom;" and that, "if any man would live godly in Christ Jesus, he should suffer persecution." We find no trace in all the New Testament, or the slightest intimation, that the world would at any future period become better affected to the doctrine of the cross-the enmity of the two seeds, which has existed from the beginning, we have reason to believe will continue, in one shape or other, to the end. Persecution from the hands of the civil magistrate may, no doubt, greatly vary at different periods of time. In this respect, He who is head over all things to his church-who has the hearts of all men in his hands, and who turns them as the rivers of water-who causes the wrath of man to praise him, and at his pleasure restrains its overflowings and binds up the remainder-HE acts sovereignly in all the affairs of his kingdom; at one time permitting his churches to enjoy rest and peace, so that they are allowed to sit under their own vine and fig-tree, none molesting or making them afraid; anon, when he finds them abusing their liberty, growing careless, lukewarm, and taking up with this world as their portion, he, in mercy to their souls, sends his judgments among them, unsheathes the sword of the civil magistrate, and,

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in various ways and forms and degrees, awakens their attention to the gospel of his grace, reclaims their wanderings, and shows them that this is not their true rest.

It is nevertheless a fact that the holy apostles during their continuance with the churches gave them repeated intimations that an awful apostacy, or falling away from the spirit of the primitive profession, would take place in the latter days, and concerning which they left the most solemn warning in their writings. They witnessed the spirit of error secretly operating in the churches under their own eye; and, in a particular manner, apprised them that this monstrous evil (the Antichristian apostacy) should not only be engendered but matured and consummated through the influence of corrupt teachers. False teachers, they said, "should bring in damnable heresies, and many should follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth should be evil spoken of and through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandize of you." And, to mark with indignation the atrocity of their conduct in "making a gain of godliness," it is added, "whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not," 2 Pet. ii. 2, 3. Such is the awful anathema denounced by the Spirit of inspiration on avaricious and ambitious clergymen! It is of the same description of persons that Paul writes in his epistle to Timothy when he says, "This know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come; for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God: having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof-from such turn away," 2 Tim. iii. 1-5. Now that the holy apostle, in this appalling catalogue, has his eye upon the leaders in religion, under whatever name they may be classed, may be inferred from his describing them immediately afterwards as "creeping into houses and leading captive silly women laden with their sins"-" men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith"-" evil men and seducers, waxing worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." It was probably this that led Luther to say, "Religion was never so much in