Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/436

 418 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, military trophies; and there is still extant a medal of ' ' ' the emperor Constantius, where the standard of" the labarum is accompanied with these memorable words, By this sign tiiou shalt conquer p. The dream IL In all occasions of danger or distress, it was the tine.°"^ ^"' practice of the primitive christians to fortify their minds- and bodies by the sign of the cross, which they used in all their ecclesiastical rites, in all the daily occurrences of life, as an infallible preservative against every species of spiritual or temporal evil''. The authority of the church might alone have had sufficient weight to jus- tify the devotion of Constantine, who in the same pru- dent and gradual progress acknowledged the truth, and assumed the symbol, of Christianity. But the tes- timony of a contemporary writer, who in a formal trea- tise has avenged the cause of religion, bestows on the piety of the emperor a more awful and sublime cha- racter. He affirms with the most perfect confidence, that in the night which preceded the last battle against Maxentius, Constantine was admonished in a dream to inscribe the shields of his soldiers with the celestial sign of God, the sacred monogram of the name of Christ ; that he executed the commands of heaven, and that his valour and obedience were rewarded by the decisive vic- tory of the Milvian bridge. Some considerations might perhaps incline a sceptical mind to suspect the judge- ment or the veracity of the rhetorician, whose pen, either from zeal or interest, was devoted to the cause of the prevailing faction ^ He appears to have pub- P The abbe du Voisin, p. 103, etc. alleges several of these medals, and quotes a particular dissertation of a Jesuit, the pere de Grainville, on this subject. 1 TertuUian de Corona, c. 3 ; Athanasius, torn. i. p. 101. 'i'he learned Jesuit Petavius (Dogmata Theolog. 1. xv. c. 9, 10.) has collected many similar passages on the virtues of the cross, which in the last age em- barrassed our protestant disputants. ' Caecilius de M. P. c. 44. It is certain, that this historical declamation was composed and published v?hile Licinius, sovereign of the east, still preserved the friendship of Constantine, and of the christians. Every reader of taste must perceive, that the style is of a very different and inferior cha- racter to that of Lactantius ; and such indeed is the judgement of Le Clerc and Lardner, Bibliotheque Ancienne et Moderne, torn. iii. p. 438 ; Credi- bility of the Gospel, etc. part ii. vol. vii. p. 94. Three arguments from the