Constantine the Great has been the admiration of Christendom for his virtues.  The early Christian writers adorn his justice, benevolence and piety with the most exalted eulogy.  He was baptized, and admitted to the Christian church.  He abrogated Paganism, and made Christianity the religion of his empire; he attended the councils of the early fathers of the church, consulted with the bishops, and devoted himself with the most untiring zeal to the propagation of Christianity, and to the promotion of peace and love among its professors; he convened the Council of Nice, to settle disputes which had long distracted the church, appeared in the assembly with admirable modesty and temper, moderated the heats of the contending parties, implored them to exercise mutual forbearance, and exhorted them to love unfeigned, to forgive one another, as they hoped to be forgiven by Christ.  Who would not think it uncharitable to accuse such a man of barbarity in the exercise of power?—­and yet he drove Arius and his associates into banishment, for opinion’s sake, denounced death against all with whom his books should afterwards be found, and prohibited, on pain of death, the exercise, however peaceably, of the functions of any other religion than Christianity.  In a fit of jealousy and rage, he ordered his innocent son, Crispus, to execution, without granting him a hearing; and upon finding him innocent, killed his own wife, who had falsely accused him.

To the preceding maybe added Theodosius the Great, the last Roman emperor before the division of the empire.  He was a member of the Christian church, and in his zeal against paganism, and what he deemed heresy, surpassed all who were before him.  The Christian writers of his time speak of him as a most illustrious model of justice, generosity, magnanimity, benevolence, and every virtue.  And yet Theodosius denounced capital punishments against those who held ‘heretical’ opinions, and commanded inter-marriage between cousins to be punished by burning the parties alive.  On hearing that the people of Antioch had demolished the statues set up in that city, in honor of himself, and had threatened the governor, he flew into a transport of fury, ordered the city to be laid in ashes, and all the inhabitants to be slaughtered; and upon hearing of a resistance to his authority in Thessalonica, in which one of his lieutenants was killed, he instantly ordered a general massacre of the inhabitants; and in obedience to his command, seven thousand men, women and children were butchered in the space of three hours.