Outward triumph of the Church.
The conversion of the Emperor Constantine to the Faith worked a great change in the condition of the Christian Church. Even so early as the year 312, when the appearance to him of the luminous Cross in the sky was followed by victory over his enemies, Constantine began to issue edicts of toleration in favour of the Christians; and from the time of his sole supremacy, A.D. 324, Christianity and not Paganism became the acknowledged religion of the Roman empire.
Section 1. The altered Outward Circumstances of the Church.
Consequent change in discipline and ritual.
Such a change in the outward circumstances of the Church could not but produce a corresponding alteration in its discipline and mode of worship. The Kingdom of God on earth became a great power visible to the eyes of men, no longer hid like the leaven, but overshadowing the earth like the mustard-tree; and the power and influence of Imperial Rome were employed in spreading the Faith instead of seeking to exterminate it. Christians were not now forced to shun the notice of their fellow-men; banished Priests and Bishops came back to their flocks; heathen temples were converted into Churches, and new Churches were built with great splendour. The vast resources of Roman wealth and refinement were employed to render the Worship of Almighty God costly and magnificent, and the ritual of the Church was probably more fully developed and brought more into harmony with the prophetic vision of St. John than circumstances had ever before allowed.
The first Christian city.
In Constantinople, built by the Emperor Constantine on the ruins of Byzantium, we have the first instance of a city which, from the time of its foundation, was entirely Christian.
Endowment of the Church.
The Church was now no longer dependent on the alms of private Christians; the revenues which had formerly been devoted by the state to the maintenance of the heathen temples and their ministers, were transferred to the support of Christian Churches and their Clergy, and to the relief of the poor. Christian schools were also founded and endowed by the emperors; and learning, as well as wealth, was thus brought in contact with the Faith.
Church honoured by the world.