the conduct of his predecessors. He contrasted the felicity of his father with that of the worshippers of idols; and he resolved to worship the God of his father. He called, therefore, says Eusebius, upon that God, and in offering that invocation, he believed that he saw the sign of the cross in heaven. This appearance, however, took place ten years after the Edict of Milan; and I only mention it to infer from the whole narrative of his conversion, that the same anxious train of reflections which eventually led Constantine openly to profess himself a Christian, was the probable cause of the singular extent of toleration which he allowed and enforced'.

66 was received as a

"The Edict of Milan," says our great historiographer, "general and fundamental law of the Roman world"." It constituted the real trophy of Christianity; for it was won by faith and patience. It decreed and established the most unlimited toleration. It did not, however, rescind the power of the Emperors to declare the Religion of the Ruler the Religion of the Empire. It left untouched the authority of the Sovereign to decide what faith and worship should be approved or condemned; and Constantine, towards the close of his reign, availed himself of this omission to determine by law which of two clashing creeds should be proposed by the Emperor to the approbation of his subjects; instead of leaving Christianity to fight its own way, as it had hitherto done, by moral persuasion and Scriptural reasoning. He ruined his own noble work of establishing unlimited toleration by enforcing the reception of undoubted truth, in the same manner, though not to the same extent, as his Heathen predecessors had enforced the Pagan error. He compelled by severity the acceptance of that Holy Truth, which he ought only to have commended by the continuance of the same toleration, aided by the weight of his station, the influence of his example, and the authority of his own Christian zeal; but not by the force of law, nor by any penal enactments.— One part of his example to be followed by his successors is, that of the toleration of opinion to the utmost degree compatible with the safety of the state. One part of his example to be avoided is the deviation from his own principles.

It is not necessary to translate the whole Edict. The summary of its enactments is thus given by Gibbon.-The salutary regulations which guard the future tranquillity of the faithful, are framed on the principles of enlarged and equal toleration; and such an equality must have been interpreted by a recent sect as an advantageous and honourable distinction. The two Emperors proclaim to the world that they have granted a free and absolute power to the Christians, and to all others, of following the religion which each individual thinks proper to prefer, to which he has addicted his mind, and which he may deem the best adapted to his own use. They carefully explain every ambiguous word, remove

The Edict in the original Latin is given in Lactantius, de Mortibus Persecutorum.— Lactantius, vol. ii. p. 286-293, Utrecht, 1793, edited by Paulus Bauldri. The student should peruse the learned notes of the various Commentators collected in this edition. The Greek translation of the Edict is given by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. lib. x. c. 5.

8

Gibbon, cap. xx. Milman's ed. 1838, vol. iii. p. 238.

every exception, and exact from the governors of the provinces, a strict obedience to the true and simple meaning of an Edict, which was designed to establish and secure, without any limitation, the claims of religious liberty. They condescend to assign two weighty reasons which have induced them to allow this universal toleration: the humane intention of consulting the peace and happiness of their people; and the pious hope, that by such a conduct, they shall appease and propitiate the Deity, whose seat is in heaven. They gratefully acknowledge the many signal proofs which they have received of the Divine favour, and they trust that the same Providence will for ever continue to protect the prosperity of the prince and people'.

Such was the Edict of Milan, which gave unlimited toleration, and therefore a complete triumph to Christianity. We will briefly compare the toleration thus granted by Constantine, as the result of the contest of primitive Christianity against Pagan error; with the toleration granted by the successors of Constantine in Europe, as the result of the contest of the same Christianity against Papal error. As Paganism is nothing but the corruption of the one true Religion in its early form; so Popery is nothing but the corruption of the one true Religion in its later form. In both cases the same Truth contended against the same wickedness in the world, and the same persecutions from the rulers of the world. It demanded the same toleration, and it will obtain the same success.

The whole chequered history of the civilized world and of the Christian Church, may be denominated the record of the results of the departure by Constantine from the principle of his own Edict of Milan. As he retained the power of his predecessors, to decide what Religion should be sanctioned by the state; so did his conduct soon, too soon, demonstrate his resolution to follow their example in declaring that the refusal to adopt, and to adhere to the opinion of the Sovereign, should be deemed a crime, punishable with confiscation, exile, and death. The decision of the Emperor was orthodoxy. Opposition to his conclusions was heresy. Heresy was an offence against God, and a crime against His representative. It could not, therefore, be punished too severely, and Christianity, the peaceful and holy religion of Jesus Christ, was disgraced at the moment of its proudest triumph; when its imperial convert wrested the sword of persecution from the conquered Pagan, and girded it on the victorious Christian; and when Constantine, departing from his own principles of toleration, not only condemned a doctrine or an opinion as erroneous, but committed the goods of its holder to confiscation, and his person to exile, torture, or death.-Papal Rome is at least innocent of the crime of originating persecution. The crime, the foul crime of Papal Rome, is its unrelenting adherence to the cruel policy of the Christian Emperors; and still persevering even in the present day, and to the present hour, to retain among its articles of Faith, the profession of attachment to the ancient canons', which avow the worst principles of persecution, and justify therefore the continuance of our ancient jealousy in spite of much seeming im

provement, and innumerable professions of change, on the part of many of its most zealous adherents. The crime of the persecution of Christian by Christian began by Constantine, when he passed the law which not only commanded that the books of Arius should be burnt, but that the possessors and concealers of such books, on refusing to burn them, shall be put to death'. It was continued by his immediate successors, who, whether Arian or Orthodox, banished or burnt their opponents with equal impartiality and cruelty. The foul stain pollutes every page of Ecclesiastical History. The Spanish Bishop Priscillian was burnt at Treves, by the usurper Maximus (385), sixty years after the Council of Nice, on the charge of heresy, by his brother Bishops, without any proof either of wickness or treason3. Very needless is the task to prove by references and quotations that the plague-spot of persecution, cruelty, and torture, and blood, and fire, deeply stains the records of every generation of Christians, from the days of Constantine till the dawning of the present era. The enactments of the successors of Constantine were embodied and enlarged in the Code of Theodosius, which not only punished known and avowed heresy, as a capital crime, but decreed the additional cruelty of searching for the supposed offender*. Leo the Great, who lived between Theodosius and Justinian, continued and increased the severity. The Code of Justinian was no less polluted with blood. The sceptre of the Emperors of the West fell into the hands of the Bishops of Rome; and their Church-I speak it to the honour of the Romish Prelates-knew more repose than its imperial protectors had granted. The increasing corruptions in the doctrines of the Church did not prevent the zeal of Christians, nor the extension of the knowledge of the Gospel. The controversies were less frequently concluded by the sword and the fire, though capital punishment still remained for heresy. The days came on when the opposition to an ever-increasing list of novelties, corruptions, and errors, became more powerful and more influential; and the severest penalty that man can inflict upon man, was applied in vain to enforce the decrees of Councils, and the Bulls of Popes. The very parliament of England became infected with the general contamination; and the wars of the two Houses of York and Lancaster became the silencer of the thunders of the Vatican, and of

3 Baronius, Ann. 385, § 24.

* Socrates, Scholast. i. 9. Every Roman might exercise the right of public accusation; but the office of Inquisitors of the Faith, a name so deservedly abhorred, was first instituted under the reign of Theodosius. -Milman's Gibbon, vol. v. cap. xxvii. p. 32.

"Aliquanti vero, qui ita se demersesubvenire, subditi legibus, secundum

* Epistola Leonis Papæ ad episcopos per Italiam. rant, ut nullum his auxiliantibus posset remedium Christianorum principum constituta, ne sanctum gregem sua contagione polluerent, per publicos judices perpetuo sunt exilio relegati. Aliter enim nobis commissos regere

non possumus nisi hos, qui sunt perditores et perditi, zelo fidei Dominica persequamur, et a sanis mentibus, ne pestis hæc latius divulgetur, severitate qua possumus abscindamus."Labb. Concil. iii. 1295.

• Manichæis [Manichæi?] etiam de civitatibus pellendis [pellendi ?] et ultimo supplicio tradendis [tradendi?] quoniam his nihil relinquendum loci est, in quo ipsis etiam elementis fiat injuria.-Codicis lib. i. de hæret. et Man. lib. viii. edit. fol. Lugd. 1553, p. 62.

the decrees for burning heretics. In vain the vacillating Henry assumed the united power of the Pagan Emperor and the Papal Bishop; and declaring his own opinion to be orthodoxy, and the opposition to that will to be heresy, burnt alike, for that heresy, the Papist and the Lutheran. In vain the fires of Mary were kindled in Smithfield and Oxford; or the fires of Alva in the Low Countries; or the fires of Francis, in Paris. The patience which established the Edict of Milan, has compelled the recurrence by all the Sovereigns of Europe, either in a greater or less degree, to the theory of toleration embodied in that decree by Constantine; and though England alone, after the lapse of fifteen centuries from the era of the first imperial convert, has combined the most unlimited toleration which the public safety can admit, with the principle, that the State and the Sovereign must remain the guardians of the Religion of the People; yet all the Sovereigns of Europe, without one exception, have departed from the example of Constantine, Theodosius, Justinian, and the Popes, to this extent at least; that they no longer venture to decree the ancient severe and cruel penalties upon such of their subjects as withhold assent to their religious opinions. Europe has returned, after fifteen centuries of vexation, to the same point at which Europe had arrived after three centuries of persecution by its Roman Emperors. None, no, not one of the European Sovereigns would now publish an Edict, decreeing even the banishment from their capitals of every schismatic or heretic, who might be discovered by the inquisitors of heretical pravity. "There's the smell of the blood still" in many of their countries; but the darkness of Papalism, like the darkness of Paganism, is passing away; and the time is at hand when the light will shine brighter and brighter, and the toleration of enquiry will be again. united with the authority of Christian laws, in States and Churches. The whole catalogue of the independent States of Europe proves the truth of the prospect, and confirms the hopes of the believer in the promises of prophecy, and in the greater happiness and progress of mankind.

Russia allows the co-existence within its ample territories, of the Papist, the Protestant, and the Greek. The will of the autocrat is not the creed of the people. Austria protects alike the Protestant-Lutheran of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and Moravia. France professes to extend to all its subjects equal ecclesiastical privileges, and equal political rights. Holland, Denmark, Sweden, inflict no punishment upon the objectors to the faith of their rulers. Prussia sighs and longs for a better union among its people; and though insulted by the refusal of the priests of its Papal subjects to sanction the toleration which is granted by the public law; still yields the most enlarged permission to those priests to convert its Protestant population to its own conclusions. Sardinia may exult that its ancient treaties with England prevent its monarch from becoming an exemption from this better list of sovereigns; when, if report speaks truth, the king would use other methods than those of moral persuasion to convert the Protestants of the valleys. Tuscany permits, though it vigilantly watches over, the effect of a more enlarged indulgence to its people than the laws of the Bishop of Rome would otherwise allow. Bavaria checks its jea

lousy of an anti-papal Christianity, and permits the toleration it abhors. The Minor States of Germany do not permit their patriotism to be destroyed by their differences. Spain itself uselessly contends against the beams, which would disperse the darkness of its religious and political chaos. Belgium, whatever be the cause-whether it "lets I dare not, wait upon, I would," or whether it desires to be an exception to the general list-Belgium, though it successfully rebelled against one Protestant sovereign to receive another, does not persecute the Protestant people. Naples and Rome themselves grant to the heretics who visit their shores, the privilege of worshipping the God of Christianity according to their own belief; and though their sovereigns withhold the general toleration from the people, even to them the influence of the common European freedom will extend the knowledge of a purer faith;-while England, so imbued with the love of truth, that it invites the exercise of the enquiring spirit of its people to the real value of the religion which its rulers support and establish-so imbued with attachment to freedom, that it combines with the existence of that establishment the toleration of its most inveterate opponents-and so conscious of its strength, that, contrary to the approbation of its best patriots, it even educates the children of those inveterate opponents ;-presents the best proof and pledge to the world, that the principles of the Edict of Milan, in spite of their obscuration by the errors of fifteen centuries, constitute the triumph of Christianity and the happiness of a nation. The example of Constantine, before he committed the great errors which the experience of fifteen centuries must condemn, has been unconsciously followed by England. And the time has come when we may hope that the powers of Europe may be persuaded to imitate the joint example of Constantine and England; and endeavour to promote the peace of the world and the union of Christians, upon the double basis of the most extended toleration to their subjects; and the well-defined authority of secular Princes, in matters of religion, over Churches, Priests, and People.

A parallel may be drawn between the circumstances of the Universal Church in the days of Constantine, and in the present day,

Secondly. In the abuses of toleration among Christians after this cessation of persecution.

Though sects and heresies were found in the Christian Church, from the very days of the Apostles till the Edicts of Gallienus (311) and of Milan (313), they were restrained by the influence of their brethren, or by the pressure of the dominant Paganism, from disturbing the general peace of the Empire.In the year 311, however, about the very time when Diocletian, two years before his death, was still planting his cabbages at Salona, and lamenting the inefficacy of persecution and cruelty to destroy Christianity-the schism of the Donatists in Africa began to endanger the public tranquillity. On the death of Maxentius (312), the provinces of Africa became a part of the empire of Constantine. Instead of acceding to the peaceful occupation of these rich and fertile territories, he found the Churches and the people so torn and agitated with controversies, that the interference of the imperial authority seemed to be essential to the prevention of open war between the contending parties. In the pre