Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/443

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 425 ing moments of persuasion, and dexterously apply the C H A P. arguments which were the best adapted to his character ' and understanding. Wiiatever advantages might be derived from the acquisition of an imperial proselyte, he was distinguished by the splendour of his purple, rather than by the superiority of wisdom or virtue, from the many thousands of his subjects who had em- braced the doctrines of Christianity. Nor can it be deemed incredible, that the mind of an unlettered sol- dier should have yielded to the weight of evidence, which, in a more enlightened age, has satisfied or sub- dued the reason of a Grotius, a Pascal, or a Locke. In the midst of the incessant labours of his great office, this soldier employed, or affected to employ, the hours of the night in the diligent study of the scriptures, and the composition of theological discourses; which he afterwards pronounced in the presence of a numerous and applauding audience. In a very long discourse, which is still extant, the royal preacher expatiates on the various proofs of religion ; but he dwells with pe- culiar complacency on the sibylline verses", and the fourth eclogue of Virgil". Forty years before the birth The founli of Christ, the Mantuan bard, as if inspired by the yj"?"^ °^ celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated, with all the pomp of oriental metaphor, the return of the virgin, the fall of the serpent, the approaching birth of a god- like child, the offspring of the great Jupiter, who should expiate the guilt of human kind, and govern the peaceful universe with the virtues of his father ; the rise and appearance of an heavenly race, a pri- mitive nation throughout the world ; and the gradual restoration of the innocence and felicity of the golden age. The poet was perhaps unconscious of the secret " See Constantin. Orat. ad Sanctos.c. 19, 20. He chiefly depends on a mysterious acrostic, composed in the sixth age after the deluge by the Ery- thraian sibyl, and translated by Cicero into Latin. The initial letters of the thirty-four Greek verses form this prophetic sentence : jesus christ, SON OF GOD, SAVIOUR OF TIIF. WORLD. ° In his paraphrase of Virgil, the emperor has frequently assisted and improved the literal sense of the Latin text. See Blondel, des Sibylles, 1. i. c. 14, 15, 16.