his Empire, had been no inconsiderable city for nearly one thousand
years, being founded only ninety-seven years after Rome itself. Yet,
notwithstanding its magnificent site,--equally favorable for commerce
and dominion,--its advantages were not appreciated until the genius of
Constantine selected it as the one place in his vast dominions which
combined a central position and capacities for defence against invaders.
It was also a healthy locality, being exposed to no malarial poisons,
like the "Eternal City." It was delightfully situated, on the confines
of Europe and Asia, between the Euxine and the Mediterranean, on a
narrow peninsula washed by the Sea of Marmora and the beautiful harbor
called the Golden Horn, inaccessible from Asia except by water, while it
could be made impregnable on the west. The narrow waters of the
Hellespont and the Bosporus, the natural gates of the city, could be
easily defended against hostile fleets both from the Euxine and the
Mediterranean, leaving the Propontis (the deep, well-harbored body of
water lying between the two straits, in modern times called the Sea of
Marmora) with an inexhaustible supply of fish, and its shores lined with
vineyards and gardens. Doubtless this city is more favored by nature for
commerce, for safety, and for dominion, than any other spot on the face
of the earth; and we cannot wonder that Russia should cast greedy eyes
upon it as one of the centres of its rapidly increasing Empire. This
beautiful site soon rivalled the old capital of the Empire in riches and
population, for Constantine promised great privileges to those who would
settle in it; and he ransacked and despoiled the cities of Italy,
Greece, and Asia Minor of what was most precious in Art to make his new
capital attractive, and to ornament his new palaces, churches, and
theatres. In this Grecian city he surrounded himself with Asiatic pomp
and ceremonies. He assumed the titles of Eastern monarchs. His palace
was served and guarded with a legion of functionaries that made access
to his person difficult. He created a new nobility, and made infinite
gradations of rank, perpetuated by the feudal monarchs of Europe. He
gave pompous names to his officers, both civil and military, using
expressions still in vogue in European courts, like "Your Excellency,"
"Your Highness," and "Your Majesty,"--names which the emperors who had
reigned at Rome had uniformly disdained. He cut himself loose from all
the traditions of the past, especially all relics of republicanism. He
divided the civil government of the Empire into thirteen great dioceses,
and these he subdivided into one hundred and sixteen provinces. He
separated the civil from the military functions of governors. He
installed eunuchs in his palace, to wait upon his person and perform
menial offices. He made his chamberlain one of the highest officers of
State. He guarded his person by bodies of cavalry and infantry. He
clothed himself in imposing robes; elaborately arranged his hair; wore a
costly diadem; ornamented his person with gems and pearls, with collars
and bracelets. He lived, in short, more like a Heliogabalus than a
Trajan or an Aurelian. All traces of popular liberty were effaced. All
dignities and honors and offices emanated from him. The Caesars had been
absolute monarchs, but disguised their power. Constantine made an
ostentatious display of his. Moreover he increased the burden of
taxation throughout the Empire. The last fourteen years of his reign
was a period of apparent prosperity, but the internal strength of the
Empire and the character of the emperor sadly degenerated. He became
effeminate, and committed crimes which sullied his fame. He executed his
oldest son on mere suspicion of crime, and on a charge of infidelity
even put to death the wife with whom he had lived for twenty years, and
who was the mother of future emperors.
But if he had great faults he had also great virtues. No emperor since
Augustus had a more enlightened mind, and no one ever reigned at Rome
who, in one important respect, did so much for the cause of
civilization. Constantine is most lauded as the friend and promoter of
Christianity. It is by his service to the Church that he has won the
name of the first Christian emperor. His efforts in behalf of the Church
throw into the shade all the glory he won as a general and as a
statesman. The real interest of his reign centres in his Christian
legislation, and in those theological controversies in which he
interfered. With Constantine began the enthronement of Christianity, and
for one thousand years what is most vital in European history is
connected with Christian institutions and doctrines.
It was when he was marching against Maxentius that his conversion to
Christianity took place, A.D. 312, when he was thirty-eight, in the
sixth year of his reign. Up to this period he was a zealous Pagan, and
made magnificent offerings to the gods of his ancestors, and erected
splendid temples, especially in honor of Apollo. The turn of his mind
was religious, or, as we are taught by modern science to say,
superstitious. He believed in omens, dreams, visions, and supernatural
influences.
Now it was in a very critical period of his campaign against his Pagan
rival, on the eve of an important battle, as he was approaching Rome for
the first time, filled with awe of its greatness and its recollections,
that he saw--or fancied he saw--a little after noon, just above the sun
which he worshipped, a bright Cross, with this inscription, [Greek: En
touto nika]--"In this conquer;" and in the following night, when sleep
had overtaken him, he dreamed that Christ appeared to him, and enjoined
him to make a banner in the shape of the celestial sign which he had
seen. Such is the legend, unhesitatingly received for centuries, yet
which modern critics are not disposed to accept as a miracle, although
attested by Eusebius, and confirmed by the emperor himself on oath.
Whether some supernatural sign really appeared or not, or whether some
natural phenomenon appeared in the heavens in the form of an illuminated
Cross, it is not worth while to discuss. We know this, however, that if
the greatest religious revolution of antiquity was worthy to be
announced by special signs and wonders, it was when a Roman emperor of
extraordinary force of character declared his intention to acknowledge
and serve the God of the persecuted Christians. The miracle rests on the
authority of a single bishop, as sacredly attested by the emperor, in
whom he saw no fault; but the fact of the conversion remains as one of
the most signal triumphs of Christianity, and the conversion itself was
the most noted and important in its results since that of Saul of
Tarsus. It may have been from conviction, and it may have been from
policy. It may have been merely that he saw, in the vigorous vitality of
the Christian principle of devotion to a single Person, a healthier
force for the unification of his great empire than in the disintegrating
vices of Paganism. But, whatever his motive, his action stirred up the
enthusiasm of a body of men which gave the victory of the Milvian
Bridge. All that was vital in the Empire was found among the
Christians,--already a powerful and rising party, that persecution could
not put down. Constantine became the head and leader of this party,
whose watchword ever since has been "Conquer," until all powers and
principalities and institutions are brought under the influence of the
gospel. So far as we know, no one has ever doubted the sincerity of
Constantine. Whatever were his faults, especially that of gluttony,
which he was never able to overcome, he was ever afterwards strict and
fervent in his devotions. He employed his evenings in the study of the
Scriptures, as Marcus Aurelius meditated on the verities of a spiritual
life after the fatigues and dangers of the day. He was not so good a man
as was the pious Antoninus, who would, had _he_ been converted to
Christianity, have given to it a purer and loftier legislation. It may
be doubted whether Aurelius would have made popes of bishops, or would
have invested metaphysical distinctions in theology with so great an
authority. But the magnificent patronage which Constantine gave to the
clergy was followed by greater and more enlightened sovereigns than
he,--by Theodosius, by Charlemagne, and by Alfred; while the dogmas
which were defended by Athanasius with such transcendent ability at the
council where the emperor presided in person, formed an anchor to the
faith in the long and dreary period when barbarism filled Europe with
desolation and fear.
Constantine, as a Roman emperor, exercised the supreme right of
legislation,--the highest prerogative of men in power. So that his acts
as legislator naturally claim our first notice. His edicts were laws
which could not be gainsaid or resisted. They were like the laws of the
Medes and Persians, except that they could be repealed or modified.
One of the first things he did after his conversion was to issue an
edict of toleration, which secured the Christians from any further
persecution,--an act of immeasurable benefit to humanity, yet what any
man would naturally have done in his circumstances. If he could have
inaugurated the reign of toleration for all religious opinions, he would
have been a still greater benefactor. But it was something to free a
persecuted body of believers who had been obliged to hide or suffer for
two hundred years. By the edict of Milan, A.D. 313, he secured the
revenues as well as the privileges of the Church, and restored to the
Christians the lands and houses of which they had been stripped by the
persecution of Diocletian. Eight years later he allowed persons to
bequeath property to Christian institutions and churches. He assigned in
every city an allowance of corn in behalf of charities to the poor. He
confirmed the clergy in the right of being tried in their own courts and
by their peers, when accused of crime,--a great privilege in the fourth
century, but a great abuse in the fourteenth. The arbitration of bishops
had the force of positive law, and judges were instructed to execute the
episcopal decrees. He transferred to the churches the privilege of
sanctuary granted to those fleeing from justice in the Mosaic
legislation. He ordained that Sunday should be set apart for religious
observances in all the towns and cities of the Empire. He abolished
crucifixion as a punishment. He prohibited gladiatorial games. He
discouraged slavery, infanticide, and easy divorces. He allowed the
people to choose their own ministers, nor did he interfere in the
election of bishops. He exempted the clergy from all services to the
State, from all personal taxes, and all municipal duties. He seems to
have stood in awe of bishops, and to have treated them with great
veneration and respect, giving to them lands and privileges, enriching
their churches with ornaments, and securing to the clergy an ample
support. So prosperous was the Church under his beneficence, that the
average individual income of the eighteen hundred bishops of the Empire
has been estimated by Gibbon at three thousand dollars a year, when
money was much more valuable than it is in our times.
In addition to his munificent patronage of the clergy, Constantine was
himself deeply interested in all theological affairs and discussions. He
convened and presided over the celebrated Council of Nicaea, or Nice, as
it is usually called, composed of three hundred and eighteen bishops,
and of two thousand and forty-eight ecclesiastics of lesser note,
listening to their debates and following their suggestions. The
Christian world never saw a more imposing spectacle than this great
council, which was convened to settle the creed of the Church. It met in
a spacious basilica, where the emperor, arrayed in his purple and silk
robes, with a diadem of precious jewels on his head, and a voice of
gentleness and softness, and an air of supreme majesty, exhorted the
assembled theologians to unity and concord.
The vital question discussed by this magnificent and august assembly
was metaphysical as well as religious; yet it was the question of the
age, on which everybody talked, in public and in private, and which was
deemed of far greater importance than any war or any affair of State.
The interest in this subject seems strange to many, in an age when
positive science and material interests have so largely crowded out
theological discussions. But the doctrine of the Trinity was as vital
and important in the eyes of the divines of the fourth century as that
of Justification by Faith was to the Germans when they assembled in the
great hall of the Electoral palace of Leipsic to hear Luther and Dr. Eck
advocate their separate sides.
In the time of Constantine everything pertaining to Christianity and the
affairs of the Church became invested with supreme importance. All other
subjects and interests were secondary, certainly among the Christians
themselves. As redemption is the central point of Christianity, public
preaching and teaching had been directed chiefly, at first, to the
passion, death, and resurrection of the Saviour of the world. Then came
discussions and controversies, naturally, about the person of Christ and
his relation to the Godhead. Among the early followers of our Lord there
had been no pride of reason and a very simple creed. Least of all did
they seek to explain the mysteries of their faith by metaphysical
reasoning. Their doctrines were not brought to the test of philosophy.
It was enough for these simple and usually unimportant and unlettered
people to accept generally accredited facts. It was enough that Christ
had suffered and died for them, in his boundless love, and that their
souls would be saved in consequence. And as to doctrines, all they
sought to know was what our Lord and his apostles said. Hence there was
among them no system of theology, as we understand it, beyond the
Apostles' Creed. But in the early part of the second century Justin
Martyr, a converted philosopher, devoted much labor to a metaphysical
development of the doctrine drawn from the expressions of the Apostle
John in reference to the Logos, or Word, as identical with the Son.
In the third century the whole Church was agitated by the questions
which grew out of the relations between the Father and the Son. From the
person of Christ--so dear to the Church--the discussion naturally passed
to the Trinity. Then arose the great Alexandrian school of theology,
which attempted to explain and harmonize the revealed truths of the
Bible by Grecian dialectics. Hence interminable disputes among divines
and scholars, as to whether the Father and the Logos were one; whether
the Son was created or uncreated; whether or not he was subordinate to
the Father; whether the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were distinct, or
one in essence. Origen, Clement, and Dionysius were the most famous of
the doctors who discussed these points. All classes of Christians were
soon attracted by them. They formed the favorite subjects of
conversation, as well as of public teaching. Zeal in discussion created
acrimony and partisan animosity. Things were lost sight of, and words
alone prevailed. Sects and parties arose. The sublime efforts of such
men as Justin and Clement to soar to a knowledge of God were perverted
to vain disputations in reference to the relations between the three
persons of the Godhead.
Alexandria was the centre of these theological agitations, being then,
perhaps, the most intellectual city in the Empire. It was filled with
Greek philosophers and scholars and artists, and had the largest library
in the world. It had the most famous school of theology, the learned and
acute professors of which claimed to make theology a science. Philosophy
became wedded to theology, and brought the aid of reason to explain the
subjects of faith.
Among the noted theologians of this Christian capital was a presbyter
who preached in the principal church. His name was Arius, and he was the
most popular preacher of the city. He was a tall, spare man, handsome,
eloquent, with a musical voice and earnest manner. He was the idol of
fashionable women and cultivated men. He was also a poet, like Abélard,
and popularized his speculations on the Trinity. He was as reproachless
in morals as Dr. Channing or Theodore Parker; ascetic in habits and
dress; bold, acute, and plausible; but he shocked the orthodox party by
such sayings as these: "God was not always Father; once he was not
Father; afterwards he became Father." He affirmed, in substance, that
the Son was created by the Father, and hence was inferior in power and
dignity. He did not deny the Trinity, any more than Abélard did in after
times; but his doctrines, pushed out to their logical sequence, were a
virtual denial of the divinity of Christ. If he were created, he was a
creature, and, of course, not God. A created being cannot be the Supreme
Creator. He may be commissioned as a divine and inspired teacher, but he
cannot be God himself. Now his bishop, Alexander, maintained that the
Son (Logos, or Word) is eternally of the same essence as the Father,
uncreated, and therefore equal with the Father. Seeing the foundation of
the faith, as generally accepted, undermined, he caused Arius to be
deposed by a synod of bishops. But the daring presbyter was not
silenced, and obtained powerful and numerous adherents. Men of
influence--like Eusebius the historian--tried to compromise the
difficulties for the sake of unity; and some looked on the discussion as
a war of words, which did not affect salvation. In time the bitterness
of the dispute became a scandal. It was deemed disgraceful for
Christians to persecute each other for dogmas which could not be settled
except by authority, and in the discussion of which metaphysics so
strongly entered. Alexander thought otherwise. He regarded the
speculations of Arius as heretical, as derogating from the supreme
allegiance which was due to Christ. He thought that the very foundations
of Christianity were being undermined.
No one was more disturbed by these theological controversies than the
Emperor himself. He was a soldier, and not a metaphysician; and, as
Emperor, he was Pontifex Maximus,--head of the Church. He hated these
contentions between good and learned men. He felt that they compromised
the interests of the Church universal, of which he was the protector.
Therefore he despatched Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, in Spain,--in whom he
had great confidence, who was in fact his ecclesiastical adviser,--to
both Alexander and Arius, to bring about a reconciliation. As well
reconcile Luther with Dr. Eck, or Pascal with the Jesuits! The divisions
widened. The party animosities increased. The Church was rent in twain.
Metaphysical divinity destroyed Christian union and charity. So
Constantine summoned the first general council in Church history to
settle the disputed points, and restore harmony and unity. It convened
at Nicaea, or Nice, in Asia Minor, not far from Constantinople.
Arius, as the author of all the troubles, was of course present at the
council. As a presbyter he could speak, but not vote. He was sixty years
of age, and in the height of his power and fame, and he was able
in debate.
But there was one man in the assembly on whom all eyes were soon riveted
as the greatest theologian and logician that had arisen in the Church
since the apostolic age. He was archdeacon to the bishop of Alexandria,
--a lean, attenuated man, small in stature, with fiery eye, haughty air,
and impetuous eloquence. His name was Athanasius,--neither Greek nor
Roman, but a Coptic African. He was bitterly opposed to Arius and his
doctrines. No one could withstand his fervor and his logic. He was like
Bernard at the council of Soissons. He was not a cold, dry,
unimpassioned impersonation of mere intellect, like Thomas Aquinas or
Calvin, but more like St. Augustine,--another African, warm, religious,
profound, with human passions, but lofty soul. He also had that
intellectual pride and dogmatism which afterward marked Bossuet. For two
months he appealed to the assembly, and presented the consequences of
the new heresy. With his slight figure, his commanding intellectual
force, his conservative tendencies, his clearness of statement, his
logical exactness and fascinating persuasiveness, he was to churchmen
what Alexander Hamilton was to statesmen. He gave a constitution to the
Church, and became a theological authority scarcely less than Augustine
in the next generation, or Lainez at the Council of Trent.
And the result of the deliberations of that famous council led by
Athanasius,--although both Hosius and Eusebius of Caesarea had more
prelatic authority and dignity than he,--was the Nicene Creed. Who can
estimate the influence of those formulated doctrines? They have been
accepted for fifteen hundred years as the standard of the orthodox
faith, in both Catholic and Protestant churches,--not universally
accepted, for Arianism still has its advocates, under new names, and
probably will have so long as the received doctrines of Christianity are
subjected to the test of reason. Outward unity was, however, restored to
the Church, both by prelatic and imperial authority, although learned
and intellectual men continued to speculate and to doubt. The human mind
cannot be chained. But it was a great thing to establish a creed which
the Christian world could accept in the rude and ignorant ages which
succeeded the destruction of the old civilization. That creed was the
anchor of religious faith in the Middle Ages. It is still retained in
the liturgies of Christendom.
It is not my province to criticise the Nicene Creed, which is virtually
the old Apostles' Creed, with the addition of the Trinity, as defined by
Athanasius. The subject is too complicated and metaphysical. It is
allied with questions concerning which men have always differed and ever
will differ. Although the Alexandrian divines invoked the aid of reason,
it is a matter which reason cannot settle. It is a matter to be
received, if received at all, as a mystery which is insoluble. It
belongs to the realm of faith and authority. And the realms of faith and
reason are eternally distinct. As metaphysics cannot solve material
phenomena, so reason cannot explain subjects which do not appeal to
consciousness. Bacon was a great benefactor when he separated the world
of physical Nature from the world of Mind; and Pascal was equally a
profound philosopher when he showed that faith could not take cognizance
of science, nor science of faith. The blending of distinct realms has
ever been attended with scepticism. "Canst thou by searching find out
God?" What He has revealed for our acceptance should not be confounded
with truths to be settled by inquiry. It is a legitimate yet underrated
department of Christian inquiry to establish the authenticity and
meaning of texts of Scripture from which deductions are made. If the
premises are wrong, confusion and error are the result. We must be sure
of the premises on which theological dogmas are based. If as much time
and genius and learning had been expended in unravelling the meaning of
Scripture declarations as have been spent in theological deductions and
metaphysical distinctions, we should have had a more universally
accepted faith. Happily, in our day, the aspirations and ambitions of
exact scholarship are more and more directed to the elucidation of the
sacred Scriptures of Christianity. Exegesis and philosophy alike appeal
to the intellect; but the one can be so aided by learning that the truth
can be reached, while the other pushes the inquirer into an unfathomable
sea of difficulties. All moral truths are so bounded and involved with
other moral truths that they seem to qualify the meaning of each other.
Almost any assumed truth in religion, when pushed to its utmost logical
sequence, appears to involve absurdities. The "divine justice" of
theologians ends, by severe logical sequences, in apparent injustice,
and "divine mercy" in the sweeping away of all retribution.
It may not unreasonably be asked, Has not theology attempted too much?
Has it solved the truths for the solution of which it borrowed the aid
of reason, and has it not often made a religion which is based on
deductions and metaphysical distinctions as imperative as a religion
based on simple declarations? Has it not appealed to the head, when it
should have appealed to the heart and conscience; and thus has not
religion often been cold and dry and polemical, when it should have been
warm, fervent, and simple? Such seem to have been some of the effects of
the Trinitarian controversy between Athanasius and Arius, and their
respective followers even to our own times. A belief in the unity of
God, as distinguished from polytheism, has been made no more imperative
than a belief in the supposed relations between the Father and the Son.
The real mission of Christ, to save souls, with all the glorious peace
which salvation procures, has often been lost sight of in the covenant
supposed to have been made between the Father and the Son. Nothing could
exceed the acrimony of the Nicene Fathers in their opposition to those
who could not accept their deductions. And the more subtile the
distinctions the more violent were the disputes; until at last religious
persecution marked the conduct of Christians towards each other,--as
fierce almost as the persecutions they had suffered from the Pagans. And
so furious was the strife between those theological disputants,
estimable in other respects as were their characters, that even the
Emperor Constantine at last lost all patience and banished Athanasius
himself to a Gaulish city, after he had promoted him to the great See of
Alexandria as a reward for his services to the Church at the Council of
Nice. To Constantine the great episcopal theologian was simply
"turbulent," "haughty," "intractable."