Peter, the representative of the Church, and Rome his chair. At first, many of the Roman clergy boldly opposed this en croachment; but, as Dean Milman shows, their resistance was short, and subsided into a trembling deference to their bishop's imperious assertion of hierarchical despotism; and henceforth rebellion to Episcopal authority becomes as great a crime as erroneous opinion; schism as hateful as heresy.' During the forty years which followed the Decian persecution, the Roman Emperors were generally so often absent, or reigned so short a time, that the Roman Church and its bishops were seldom molested, and their influence was greatly increased over the foreign Churches, who looked to them for the earliest intelligence of every revolution in the Empire, and of every edict which might affect them. They were in the van; the first to foresee danger, the first to suffer. On their prudence or rashness, on their resolution or weakness, on their influence or mediation, might in some degree depend the common safety. And this high distinction was of such high danger and difficulty, as to fix upon them the eyes of all Christendom. The terrible ten years' persecution, begun by the Emperor Diocletian, aimed at extirpating Christianity, by destroying every existing copy of the Holy Scriptures; for it was at length understood, that it was labour in vain to cut off the bishops and clergy and people, so long as the Bible was left, to be the source from which true Christianity and the life of the Church was ever freshly springing, and supplying preachers continually in the place of the martyred. Some Bibles were yielded up for fear of torture and immediately consigned to the flames. But the vast majority of Christians preferred their Bibles to their lives; they branded those 192-307.1 THE TRUE TRAITORS. 251 who surrendered them as Traditores (traitors); and when summoned before the magistrates and asked, 'Have you in your house any sacred writings ?'-the noble answer was ever ready, 'Such have I, but they are in my heart.' So this persecution was over-ruled to the promotion of the Gospel, by the impetus it gave to multiplying copies of the Sacred Volume, and to the more careful separation of the inspired books from the spurious forgeries which already abounded. Throughout the whole Diocletian persecution, darkness settles again thick over the bishops of Rome. The apostasy of Marcellinus is but a late and discarded fable, adopted as favouring the Papal supremacy. It is also said that bishop Marcellus was reduced to the service of a groom. If this be true, his successor had, as we shall see, full revenge, when kings and emperors submitted to the same menial office, and held the stirrup for popes to mount their horses. (See Gibbon, i. 234-329; ii. 1-109. Milman, A. C. ii. 263, 281; iii. 383. L. C. i. 28-55. Neander, 262, 284, 294, 382, 435, 457; ii. 487-512. Gieseler, E. H. i. 185-300. Mosheim, E. H. i. 207–277. Bunsen, Christianity and Mankind, i. 225–491, v. 364. Clemens Alex. Stromat. 1. iii. 446-449; 1. iv. 333; 1. vii. 741. Pæd. iii. 250. Maitland, Church in the Catacombs, passim. Blondel, Les Sybilles, p. 193. Perret, Catac. de Rome, passim. Sozomen, H. E. vii. 19. Hieron. Ezek. c. xl.) CHAPTER VII. 'Ah Constantine; to how much ill gave birth, -MILTON. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. TROUBLES Scarcely paralleled in the history of Rome quickly followed the abdication of Diocletian; for the long absence of the Emperors had filled the Romans with discontent and indignation. It was in vain that, a few months afterwards, his successors dedicated under his name those magnificent baths whose ruins still supply the ground as well as the materials for so many churches and convents, as a report was insensibly circulated, that the vast sums expended in erecting those elegant recesses of ease and luxury would soon be required at their hands. These suspicions were quickly realized by the rigorous inquisition set on foot by the Emperor Galerius into the property of all his subjects, for the purpose of a general taxation, both on their lands and on their persons. The privileges which had for the last five hundred years exempted the Romans from the weight of personal taxes, and cast it on the provinces, were contemptuously violated. The officers of the revenue already began to number the Roman people, and to settle the proportion of the new taxes; taking a very minute survey of their real estate, and wherever there was 307-312.] CONSTANTINE'S ESCAPE. 253 the slightest suspicion of concealment, very freely employing torture to extort a sincere declaration of their personal wealth. The rising fury of the people was encouraged by the connivance of the Senate, and the support of the Prætorian guards, who apprehended their own approaching dissolution, and declared their readiness to draw their swords in the service of their oppressed country. MAXENTIUS, son of the Emperor Maximian, and son-in-law of Galerius, whose vices and incapacity had prevented his promotion to the rank of Cæsar, seized the opportunity to revenge his own humiliation, raised the standard of revolt in Rome, and persuaded his father to revoke his abdication and re-assume the purple. According to the advice, or rather the orders, of his colleague, the Emperor Severus immediately hastened to Rome, confident that he could easily suppress the tumult of an unwarlike populace, commanded by a feeble voluptuary. But he found on his arrival the gates of the city shut against him, the walls filled with soldiers, an experienced general, of ancient dignity and great fame in arms, at the head of the rebels, and his own troops without spirit or affection. A large body of his Moorish troops, said to have been levied by Maximian in his African campaign, deserted to the enemy, allured by the promise of a vast largess, and naturally attached to the interest of their old leader. So Severus retreated to Ravenna, leaving Maximian and Maxentius the declared Emperors of Rome; and, finally decoyed into the hands of Maximian, he was put to death. A still heavier blow to Galerius was the escape of Constantine. This famous prince was of Imperial birth by his father Constantius, but his mother Helena was the daughter of an inn-keeper, and his obscure birth-place, Naissus near the banks of the Danube, denied him the advantages of a liberal education. His father, as we saw, purchased his promotion to the rank of Cæsar, and the splendour of an Imperial alliance, by the divorce of his wife Helena and the repudiation of his son Constantine; who was thus, in his eighteenth year, consigned to poverty and disgrace. However, his fine figure, intelligence, dexterity in military exercises, pleasing address, and apparent indifference to the pursuit of ambition, and to the allurements of pleasure, won the favour of Diocletian, who gave him a command in his army; and in the Persian and Egyptian wars his military skill and valour raised him to the rank of a tribune of the first order. Diocletian's abdication left him to the mercy of Galerius, whose jealousy was soon awakened by the clamours of the soldiery for his promotion to the rank of Cæsar, and by the repeated letters of Constantius, requesting the presence of his now celebrated son. An absolute monarch is seldom at a loss how to execute a sure and secret revenge; and strange stories are told of Constantine's single combat with a gigantic Sarmatian; and also with a monstrous lion, to which Galerius had cruelly exposed him, by flattering appeals to his courage. From this constant peril of his life, Constantine extricated himself by his famous flight. Leaving the palace of Nicomedia at midnight, and, during the first stages, maiming the post-horses which might be employed in the pursuit, he fled with astonishing speed across Bythinia, Thrace, Dacia, Pannonia, Italy, and Gaul; and amidst the joyful acclamations of the troops, he reached Boulogne, at the very moment of his father's embarkation for Britain. When Constantius was dying at York, after his victory over the Caledonians, he named Constantine his successor; and so enthusiastic was the army in supporting his claims, that Galerius reluctantly elevated him to the rank of Cæsar. His six years' subsequent reign was remarkable for toleration towards the Christians; but his deification of his father; his medals representing |