[Footnote E: Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xx.]
The Character of Constantine. Turing from the consideration of the equivocal conduct of the emperor to his character, we have a subject about which there is less disagreement among authorities; for even Christian apologists are compelled to admit the wickedness of this first Christian emperor. "Relying with presumptuous confidence," says Neander, "on the great things which God had done throug him, for the advancement of the Christian Church, he found it easy to excuse or extenuate to his conscience, many a wrong deed, into which he had suffered himself to be betrayed by ambition, the love of rule, the arbitrary exercise of power, or the jealousy of despotism."[A]
[Footnote A: Neander Ch. Hist., vol. ii, p. 24.]
"It is indeed true that, Constantine's life was not such as the precepts of Christianity required," Dr. Mosheim remarks, but softens the statement against the emperor by saying that "it is but too notorious that many persons who look upon the Christian religion as indubitably true, and of divine origin, yet do not conform their lives to all its holy precepts."[A]
[Footnote A: Mosheim's Institutes, vol. i, p. 214.]
Dr. Lardner, after drawing a most favorable outline of Constantine's person and character, and citing the flattery of contemporary panegyrists as a description of the man, says: "Having observed these virtues of Constantine, and other things, which are to his advantage: a just respect to truth obligeth us to take notice of some other things, which seem to cast a reflection upon him."[A] And then in the most naive manner he adds: "Among these, one of the chief is putting to death so many of his relatives!" He enumerates the victims of the first Christian emperor as follows: "Maximian Herculius, his wife's father; Bassianus, husband of his sister, Anastasia; Crispus, his own son; Fausta, his wife; Licinius, husband of his sister, Constantia; and Licinianus, or Licinius, the younger, his nephew, and son of the forementioned Licinius."[B] The last named victim was a mere lad when put to death, "not more than a little above eleven years of age, if so much," is Dr. Lardner's own description of him. Fausta was suffocated in a steam bath, though she had been his wife for twenty years and mother of three of his sons. It should be remembered that this is the list of victims admitted by a most learned and pious Christian writer, not a catalogue drawn up by pagan historians, whom we might suspect of malice against one who had deserted the shrines of the ancient gods for the faith of the Christians. But this rather formidable list of murdered victims admitted by Dr. Lardner shakes not his faith in the goodness of the first Christian emperor. Some of these "executions" he palliates, if not justifies, on the ground of political necessity; and others on the ground of domestic perfidy; though he almost stumbles in his efforts at excusing the taking off of Crispus, the emperor's own son; Fausta, his wife, and the lad Licinius. "These are the executions," he says, "which above all others cast a reflection upon the reign of Constantine; though there are also hints of the deaths of some others about the same time, with whom Constantine had till then lived in friendship."[C] After which the Doctor immediately adds—in the very face of all the facts he adduces, and after reciting the condemnation of both heathen and Christian writers of some of these murders—the following: "I do by no means think that Constantine was a man of a cruel disposition; and therefore I am unwilling to touch upon any other actions of a like nature: as his making some German princes taken captive, fight in the theatre; and sending the head of Maxentius to Africa, after it had been made a part of Constantine's triumphal entry at Rome." When one finds a sober Christian writer of the eighteenth century who can thus speak of Constantine; and further remembers that to this day a priest of the Greek Church seldom mentions the name of the "imperial saint," without adding the title, "Equal to the Apostles;" one is not surprised that while he lived and at his court a Christian bishop could be found who "congratulated him as constituted by God to rule over all, in the present world, and destined to reign with the son of God in the world to come."[D] Or that Eusebius, who is spoken of as one of the best bishops of the imperial court, "did not scruple for a moment to ascribe to the purest motives of a true servant of God, all those transactions into which the emperor, without evincing the slightest regard to truth or to humanity, had suffered himself to be drawn by an ambition which could not abide a rival, in the struggle with Licinius; when he represents the emperor, in a war which, beyond a doubt, had been undertaken from motives of a purely selfish policy, as marshaling the order of the battle, and giving out the words of command by divine inspiration bestowed in answer to his prayer."[E]
[Footnote A: Lardner, vol. iv, p. 39.]
[Footnote B: Lardner, vol. iv, p. 39.]
[Footnote C: Lardner, vol. iv, p. 44.]
[Footnote D: Neander Ch. His., vol. ii, p. 25.]