OK THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

245

proofs which they have received of the divine chap.favour; and they trust that the same Providence ......I..

will for ever continue to protect the prosperityof the prince and people. From these vagueand indefinite expressions of piety, three suppo-sitions may be deduced, of a different, but notof an incompatible, nature. The mind of Con-stantine might fluctuate between the pagan andthe Christian religions. According to the looseand complying notions of polytheism, he mightacknowledge the god of the Christians as one ofthe many deities who composed the hierarchyof heaven. Or perhaps he might embrace thephilosophic and pleasing idea, that, notwith-standing the variety of names, of rites, and ofopinions, all the sects and all the nations ofmankind are united in the worship of the com-mon Father and Creator of the universe . 11

But the councils of princes are more fre-Usenndquently influenced by views of temporal ad- ufechris-vantage, than by considerations of abstract andspeculative truth. The partial and increasingfavour of Constantine may naturally be referredto the esteem which he entertained for the mo-ral character of the Christians ; and to a persua-sion, that the propagation of the gospel wouldinculcate the practice of private and public vir-tue. Whatever latitude an absolute monarch

* A panegyric of Constantine , pronounced seven or eight monthsafter the edict of Milan (sec Gothofied. Chronolog. Legum, p. 7, andTillemont, Hist, des Empereurs , tom. iv, p. 246), uses the followingremarkable expression: Sunnne rerum sator, eujus tot nominasunt*

“ quot linguas gentium esse voluisti; quem enim te ipse dici velis, scireft non possumus.” Panegyr. Vet. ix, 26. In explaining Constantine 'sprogress in the faith, Mosheim (p. 971, &c.) is ingenious, subtle, prolix*