OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. • 347

afterwards banished into distant provinces by chap.the first of the Christian emperors, who, in thelast moments of his life, received the rites ofbaptism from the arian bishop of Nicomedia.

The ecclesiastical government of Constantine cannot be justified from the reproach of levityand weakness. But the credulous monarch,unskilled in the stratagems of theological war-fare, might be deceived by the modest and spe-cious professions of the heretics, whose senti-ments he never perfectly understood; and whilehe protected Arius, and persecuted Athanasius ,he still considered the council of Nice as thebulwark of the Christian faith, and the peculiarglory of his own reign. p

The sons of Constantius must have been ad- Constan .milted from their childhood into the rank of cate- ti,,s f*-chumens, but they imitated, in the delay of their Arians .baptism, the example of their father. Like him, 3 6I “' 337they presumed to pronounce their judgment onmysteries into which they had never been regu-larly initiated ; q and the fate of the trinitariancontroversy depended, in a great measure, onthe sentiments of Constantius , who inheritedthe provinces of the East, and acquired the pos-session of the whole empire. The arian pres-

p The change in the sentiments, or at least in the conduct, of Con-stantine, may be traced in Eusebius (in Vit. Constant. 1. iii,c. 23,I.iv #c. 41), Socrates (1. i, c. 23-39), Sozomen (1. ii, c. 16 31), Theodoret (1.i, c. 14-34), and Philostorgius (1. ii, c. 1-17). But the first of thesewriters w as too near the scene of action, and the others were too re-mote from it. It is singular enough, that the important task of conti-nuing the history of the church, should have been left for two laymenat:d a heretic.

** Quia etiam turn catechumcmis sacramentum fidci merito videreturpotnisse ncscirc. Snip. Sever. Hist Sacra. 1. ii, p. 410