250

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.

XX.

the motive or the effect of the divine favour, thesuccess of their arms was destined to achievethe deliverance or the triumph of the church.If the judges of Israel were occasional and tem-porary magistrates, the kings of Judah derivedfrom the royal unction of their great ancestor anhereditary and indefeasible right, which couldnot be forfeited by their own vices, nor recalledby the caprice of their subjects. The same ex-traordinary providence, which was no longerconfined to the Jewish people, might elect Con-stantine and his family as the protectors of theChristian world; and the devout Lactantius an-nounces, in a prophetic tone, the future gloriesof his long and universal reign.* Galerius andMaximin, Maxentius and Licinius , were therivals who shared with the favourite of heaventhe provinces of the empire. The tragic deathsof Galerius and Maximin soon gratified the re-sentment, and fulfilled the sanguine expecta-tions, of the Christians. The success of Con-stantine against Maxentius and Licinius remov-ed the two formidable competitors who stillopposed the triumph of the second David, andhis cause might seem to claim the peculiar in-terposition of Providence. The character ofthe Roman tyrant disgraced the purple andhuman nature; and though the Christians mightenjoy his precarious favour, they were exposed,with the rest of his subjects, to the effects ofhis wanton and capricious cruelty. The con-

x Lactant. Divin. Institut. 1. 1. Eusebius , in the course of his hit*tory, his life, and his oration, repeatedly inculcates the divine right afConstantine to the empire.