One of the first things he did after his conversion was to issue an edict of toleration, which secured the Christians from any further persecution,—­an act of immeasurable benefit to humanity, yet what any man would naturally have done in his circumstances.  If he could have inaugurated the reign of toleration for all religious opinions, he would have been a still greater benefactor.  But it was something to free a persecuted body of believers who had been obliged to hide or suffer for two hundred years.  By the edict of Milan, A.D. 313, he secured the revenues as well as the privileges of the Church, and restored to the Christians the lands and houses of which they had been stripped by the persecution of Diocletian.  Eight years later he allowed persons to bequeath property to Christian institutions and churches.  He assigned in every city an allowance of corn in behalf of charities to the poor.  He confirmed the clergy in the right of being tried in their own courts and by their peers, when accused of crime,—­a great privilege in the fourth century, but a great abuse in the fourteenth.  The arbitration of bishops had the force of positive law, and judges were instructed to execute the episcopal decrees.  He transferred to the churches the privilege of sanctuary granted to those fleeing from justice in the Mosaic legislation.  He ordained that Sunday should be set apart for religious observances in all the towns and cities of the Empire.  He abolished crucifixion as a punishment.  He prohibited gladiatorial games.  He discouraged slavery, infanticide, and easy divorces.  He allowed the people to choose their own ministers, nor did he interfere in the election of bishops.  He exempted the clergy from all services to the State, from all personal taxes, and all municipal duties.  He seems to have stood in awe of bishops, and to have treated them with great veneration and respect, giving to them lands and privileges, enriching their churches with ornaments, and securing to the clergy an ample support.  So prosperous was the Church under his beneficence, that the average individual income of the eighteen hundred bishops of the Empire has been estimated by Gibbon at three thousand dollars a year, when money was much more valuable than it is in our times.

In addition to his munificent patronage of the clergy, Constantine was himself deeply interested in all theological affairs and discussions.  He convened and presided over the celebrated Council of Nicaea, or Nice, as it is usually called, composed of three hundred and eighteen bishops, and of two thousand and forty-eight ecclesiastics of lesser note, listening to their debates and following their suggestions.  The Christian world never saw a more imposing spectacle than this great council, which was convened to settle the creed of the Church.  It met in a spacious basilica, where the emperor, arrayed in his purple and silk robes, with a diadem of precious jewels on his head, and a voice of gentleness and softness, and an air of supreme majesty, exhorted the assembled theologians to unity and concord.