to acknowledge and serve the God of the persecuted Christians.  The miracle rests on the authority of a single bishop, as sacredly attested by the emperor, in whom he saw no fault; but the fact of the conversion remains as one of the most signal triumphs of Christianity, and the conversion itself was the most noted and important in its results since that of Saul of Tarsus.  It may have been from conviction, and it may have been from policy.  It may have been merely that he saw, in the vigorous vitality of the Christian principle of devotion to a single Person, a healthier force for the unification of his great empire than in the disintegrating vices of Paganism.  But, whatever his motive, his action stirred up the enthusiasm of a body of men which gave the victory of the Milvian Bridge.  All that was vital in the Empire was found among the Christians,—­already a powerful and rising party, that persecution could not put down.  Constantine became the head and leader of this party, whose watchword ever since has been “Conquer,” until all powers and principalities and institutions are brought under the influence of the gospel.  So far as we know, no one has ever doubted the sincerity of Constantine.  Whatever were his faults, especially that of gluttony, which he was never able to overcome, he was ever afterwards strict and fervent in his devotions.  He employed his evenings in the study of the Scriptures, as Marcus Aurelius meditated on the verities of a spiritual life after the fatigues and dangers of the day.  He was not so good a man as was the pious Antoninus, who would, had he been converted to Christianity, have given to it a purer and loftier legislation.  It may be doubted whether Aurelius would have made popes of bishops, or would have invested metaphysical distinctions in theology with so great an authority.  But the magnificent patronage which Constantine gave to the clergy was followed by greater and more enlightened sovereigns than he,—­by Theodosius, by Charlemagne, and by Alfred; while the dogmas which were defended by Athanasius with such transcendent ability at the council where the emperor presided in person, formed an anchor to the faith in the long and dreary period when barbarism filled Europe with desolation and fear.

Constantine, as a Roman emperor, exercised the supreme right of legislation,—­the highest prerogative of men in power.  So that his acts as legislator naturally claim our first notice.  His edicts were laws which could not be gainsaid or resisted.  They were like the laws of the Medes and Persians, except that they could be repealed or modified.