Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/449

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 4{}1 the common people was purchased at an easy rate, if it CHAP. be true, that in one year twelve thousand men were baptized at Rome, besides a pi'oportionable number of women and chikh'en ; and that a white garment, with twenty pieces of gokl, had been promised by the em- peror 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 in- fancy, the spirit, or at least the doctrine, of Christi- anity. War and commerce had spx-ead the knowledge of the gospel beyond the confines of the Roman pro- vinces ; and the barbarians, who had disdained an 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 s. The Goths and Germans, who enlisted under the standard of Rome, revered the cross which glit- tered at the head of the legions, and their fierce coun- trymen received at the same time the lessons of faith and of humanity. The kings of Iberia and Armenia worshipped the God of their protector ; and their sub- jects, who have invariably preserved the name of chris- tians, soon formed a sacred and perpetual connection with their Roman brethren. The christians of Persia were suspected, in time of war, of preferring their reli- improve their temporal condition by changing their religion. I am ignorant by what guides the abbe Raynal was deceived ; as the total absence of quotations is the unpardonable blemish of his entertaining history. f See Acta Sancti Silvestri, and Hist. Eccles. Nicephor. Callist. 1. vii. c. 34. ap. Baronium Annal. Eccles. A. D. 324. N°. 67. 74. Such evidence is contemptible enough ; but tliese circumstances are in themselves so pro- bable, that the learned Dr. Howell (History of the World, vol. iii. p. 14.) has not scrupled to adopt them. S The conversion of the barbarians under the reign of Constantine is ce- lebrated by the ecclesiastical historians. See Sozomen, 1. ii. c. 6, and The- odoret, 1. i. c. 23, 24. But Bufinus, the Latin translator of Eusebius, de- serves to be considered as an original authority. His information was curiously collected from one of the companions of the apostle of ^^-'.tliiopia, and from Bacurius, an Iberian prince, who was count of tiie domestics. Father Mamachi lias given an ample compilation on the progress of Christi- anity, in the first and second volumes of his great but imperfect work.