THE ESTABLISHER OF THE CHURCH.
Having already shown not a little cause for believing that the adoption
of the cross as our symbol is due to the fact that we Christians helped
to secure the triumph of the ambitious ruler of the Gauls, and after
receiving numberless smaller favours from Constantine during the years
he was ruler of Rome but not as yet sole emperor eventually obtained
from him the establishment of Christianity as the State Religion of the
Roman Empire, adapting the victorious trophy of the Gauls and the
various crosses venerated by them and other Sun-God worshippers to our
faith as best we could, it is desirable that we should pause to trace
the career of the man we hail as the first Christian Emperor.
To do this properly we must commence by referring to Constantine's
father, Constantius Chlorus; and to the favour shown to Constantius
Chlorus by his patron the Emperor Diocletian.
Finding the supreme rule of the almost worldwide Roman Empire too much
for one man in ill-health to undertake successfully, Diocletian in the
year A.C. 286 made Maximian co-emperor. And in A.C. 292 Diocletian
followed this up by conferring the inferior position and title of
Caesar upon Galerius and Constantius Chlorus.
In A.C. 305 Diocletian relinquished power altogether, forcing Maximian
to abdicate with him; Galerius and Constantius Chlorus thus obtaining
the coveted title of Augustus, and sharing the supreme power.
Galerius now ranked first, however; for it was to the ruler of
Illyricum and not to that of Gaul that Diocletian gave the power of
appointing Caesars to govern Italy and the East.
Constantius Chlorus died in Britain A.C. 306, the year after Diocletian
abdicated; and Galerius, who had married a daughter of Diocletian,
naturally thought that under the circumstances he ought to become sole
emperor.
The legions of Gaul, however, proclaimed the son of Constantius Chlorus
as Augustus in his stead; and as Constantine thus became ruler of Gaul
and a power to be reckoned with, Galerius thought it best to give way
so far as to grant Constantine the inferior title of Caesar.
Soon afterwards Galerius conferred the title of Augustus upon Severus;
and a little while after that the Eternal City was lost to Galerius
through the revolt of his son-in-law Maxentius, the son of Maximian.
The Senate of Rome then asked Maximian to re-assume the purple, and he
and Maxentius shared the power between them, both taking the title of
Augustus.
Upon this Severus at the request of Galerius marched upon Rome. He was,
however, defeated and slain.
After being more or less expelled by his son Maxentius, Maximian in the
year A.C. 308 marched to Gaul and married his daughter Fausta to
Constantine; at the same time conferring upon him the title of
Augustus. About this time Galerius made his friend Licinius an Augustus
in the place of Severus; whereupon Maximin, the Governor of Syria and
Egypt, demanded and was granted that title also.
There were thus in the year A.C. 308 some half-a-dozen Roman Emperors
instead of one; there being Constantine and Maximian in the west,
Maxentius at Rome, and Galerius, Licinius, and Maximin elsewhere; not
to mention Diocletian, who was content to remain in retirement.
This decided break-up of the Roman Empire was Constantine's
opportunity; and he was favourably placed, for he had a warlike and
faithful people under him.
Moreover by reversing so far as lay in his power as ruler of Gaul the
traditional policy of Rome towards Christianity, and setting himself
forward as a champion of a non-national religion which had been
persecuted because it was non-national, Constantine was secure of the
enthusiastic backing of all the Christians to be found in the dominions
of his various rivals.
In A.C. 310 Constantine either executed his father-in-law the Emperor
Maximian, or caused him to commit suicide; and the first of his five
rivals was disposed of.
In A.C. 311 the Emperor Galerius died from disease, and Constantine's
most formidable competitor, and one who undoubtedly had a better claim
than himself to the position of sole emperor, thus opportunely made way
for the ruler of Gaul.
In A.C. 312 Constantine marched at the head of the Gauls against the
Emperor Maxentius, defeated him near the Milvian Bridge outside Rome,
and entered the Eternal City in triumph. Maxentius is said to have been
drowned in the Tiber; and the Senate decreed that Constantine should
rank as the first of the three remaining Augusti.
In A.C. 313 the Emperor Maximin fought the Emperor Licinius; but his
forces were defeated, and he soon afterwards died.
Some ten years or so later Constantine went to war with his only
remaining rival, Licinius, defeated him, and became sole emperor, A.C.
324.
That despite his great qualities as a ruler the character of
Constantine was not perfect, can be easily seen from the fact that, not
content with executing the Emperor Licinius after accepting his
submission, he murdered the young Licinius; a boy certainly not over
twelve years of age, and according to some authorities two or three
years younger than that. He also put his own son Crispus to death, and
other relations as well.
We are told that Constantine was so tortured by the memory of these and
other crimes that he applied to the priests of the Gods of Rome for
absolution, but that they bravely said that there was no absolution for
such sins, whereupon this worshipper of the Sun-God turned to his
friends the Christians and they gave him what he desired.[44]
This statement seems somewhat improbable, however, as one would imagine
that the Pagan priests, when called upon by one who was Pontifex
Maximus and therefore their spiritual superior as well as the supreme
emperor, would not have scrupled to invent some purifying rite--if they
had none such--warranted to blot out the stain of every crime and
thoroughly appease offended heaven.
However this may have been, these terrible crimes of Constantine, all
committed many years after his alleged conversion to our faith, show
how badly advised we are to so needlessly go out of our way to claim as
a Christian one who refused to enter the Christian Church till he was
dying and possibly no longer master of himself.
It is said that this refusal of his to be baptised till he was weak and
dying and surrounded by Church officials who would perhaps have spread
the report that he had been baptised even if they had not then at last
been able to induce him to take the decisive step, was due, not to want
of belief, but to excess of belief; Constantine's idea being that the
longer he put off the rite in question, the more crimes would it wash
out. Or, in other words, that delay would enable him to sin with
impunity a little longer.
This may possibly have been the case, but it should at the same time be
borne in mind that whether Constantine called him Apollo or Christ, it
seems probable that it was the Sun-God to whom he referred. For
everything tends to show that this astute emperor, who so naturally
wished to establish and mould a religion which all his subjects of
whatever race or nationality might be reasonably expected to become in
time willing to accept, acted during his reign as supreme ruler of the
Roman World, if not from first to last, as if the Christ were but
another conception of the Sun-God he was brought up to worship as
Apollo and all countries venerated under some name or other.
This point is not only demonstrated by the fact that upon his coins
Constantine repeatedly declared that the Sun-God was his invincible
guide and protector and the giver even of the victory foreshadowed by
the alleged vision of the cross or Monogram of Christ above the
meridian sun, but is also clearly shown by certain incidents connected
with the founding towards the end of his life of the new metropolis
which in less than a century equalled Rome in all save antiquity.
New Rome, or, as we now call it, Constantinople, the city of
Constantine, was built on the site of, and often called by the name of,
Byzantium. It was not designed till A.C. 324, and was not dedicated
till A.C. 330, or, as some think, an even later date: Constantine dying
in the year A.C. 337.
We are told that Constantinople was dedicated to the Virgin Mother of
God.[45] This should remind us of the fact that long before our era,
and right down to the time when Constantine selected Byzantium as the
site of a new capital, that place was considered dedicated to the
Virgin Queen of Heaven.
Now in the central place of honour in his new metropolis, one would
naturally expect Constantine to erect something or other to the honour
of the God to whom he attributed his victories.
Whose, then, was the statue Constantine towards the end of his life,
and about twenty years after his alleged conversion to our faith,
erected in the centre of the Forum of New Rome?
It was a statue of the Sun-God Apollo; or, as some explain it, a statue
of himself adorned with the attributes of the Sun-God.
In fact, taking the career of Constantine as a whole, there is nothing
inconsistent with the supposition that he was a Christian only in so
far as, out of policy or conviction, he acted as if he considered the
Christ to be one of many conceptions of the Sun-God. For although, as
has been mentioned and will be shown in a later chapter, Constantine,
upon the many varieties of coins he issued, repeatedly acclaimed the
Sun-God as his companion and the author of his triumphs, he never once,
except in so far as he may have considered the God we Christians
worship to be the Sun-God, so attributed his victories to the Christ.