THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE.
The Arian Controversy.――Sanguinary Conflict between Paganism and
Christianity.――Founding of Constantinople.――The Council of Nice.
――Its Decision.――Duplicity of some of the Arians.――The Nicene
Creed.――Tragic Scene in the life of Constantine.――His Penitence
and true Conversion.――His Baptism, and Reception into the Church.
――Charles V.――The Emperor Napoleon I.
THE Arian controversy, which subsequently so distracted the Church,
commenced about this time,――A. D. 318. Arias, a pastor of Alexandria,
introduced the doctrine, that the Son was not equal to the Father; that
he was created by him, and that there consequently was a time when the
Son did not exist.
This denial of the divinity of Christ, and consequently of the
doctrine of the Trinity, involved, as it was deemed, the necessary
denial of the stone which was regarded as the fundamental doctrine of
Christianity,――the corner-stone upon which the whole edifice of the
salvation of sinners was reared. The controversy greatly agitated the
Church for ages, and has not fully subsided even to the present day.
As Constantine had embraced the cause of the Christians, and Licinius
that of the pagan party, it is not strange that the two emperors
should soon find themselves arrayed in arms against each other. On
the 13th of July, 324, the two armies of the rival emperors met near
Adrianople.[181] Licinius had a hundred and fifty thousand infantry and
fifteen thousand cavalry: Constantine had a hundred and twenty thousand
infantry and ten thousand cavalry. It was clearly understood on both
sides that it was a battle between the two religions, as in olden time
between God and Baal.
Constantine took with him as chaplains several Christian bishops. The
banner of the cross, like the ancient ark of the covenant, was very
conspicuously borne before the troops. Constantine set apart the day
before the battle for a season of fasting and prayer with his whole
army.
Licinius gathered around him the magicians of Egypt and the idolatrous
priests. The most imposing sacrifices were offered to the pagan gods.
He assembled all his officers in a grove filled with idols, and thus
addressed them:――
“Behold, my friends, the gods of our fathers, whom we honor as we have
been taught to do by them! Our adversary has abandoned them for I know
not what strange God, whose infamous standard profanes his army. This
battle will decide which of us is in error.
“Should the strange God of Constantine, whom we deride, give him
the victory, notwithstanding our superiority in numbers, we shall be
compelled to recognize him. If, on the contrary, our gods should give
us the victory,――of which there can be no doubt,――we will utterly
exterminate those wretches who have rejected them.”
Eusebius records this speech, saying that he received it from the lips
of those who heard it.[182]
The battle raged fiercely from dawn till dark. In the night Licinius
fled, leaving twenty thousand of his soldiers dead upon the field, and
abandoning his camp and all his magazines. Gathering recruits as he
retreated, he made another stand on the plains of Thrace. Constantine,
who had vigorously pursued, again attacked him, and nearly annihilated
his army. From a force of a hundred and thirty thousand men, scarcely
three thousand escaped. Licinius fled to the mountains of Macedonia,
and sued for peace. Constantine, out of regard to his sister Constantia,
treated his brother-in-law generously. He, however, wrested from him
nearly all his domains in Europe, leaving him sovereign only in Asia
and Egypt.
Eight years of comparative tranquillity passed away, when the two
emperors again found themselves in arms against each other. Licinius,
though an infirm old man, displayed on the occasion amazing energy.
He assembled on the fields of Thrace a hundred and fifty thousand
infantry and fifteen thousand horse. The Bosphorus and the Hellespont
were crowded with his fleet of three hundred and fifty galleys, with
three banks of oars. Constantine met them with a hundred and twenty
thousand horse and foot and two hundred transports. There was another
of those awful scenes of blood and woe called a battle. How faintly can
imagination picture the scene!――two hundred and eighty-five thousand
men hurling themselves against each other in the most desperate
hand-to-hand fight; the cry of onset, the clangor of weapons, the
shrieks of death. In a few hours, thirty thousand of the troops of
Licinius were dead in their blood. The monarch himself, with the
disordered remainder of his troops, fled wildly to Byzantium.
There was a long and cruel siege. Constantine was victorious: the
world was again under one monarch, and he a nominal Christian. This
extraordinary man issued a decree to his subjects, especially to those
of his newly-conquered Eastern empire, assuring them of his conviction
that the God of the Christians, the true and Almighty God, had given
him the victory over the powers of paganism, in order that the worship
of the true God might he universally diffused. He also issued the
following prayer:――
“I invoke thy blessing, O Supreme God! Be gracious to all thy
citizens of the Eastern provinces; bestow on them salvation through me,
thy servant. And well may I ask this of the Lord of the universe, Holy
God; for by the guidance of thy hand have I undertaken and accomplished
salutary things. Thy banner, the cross, everywhere precedes my armies:
whenever I advance against the enemy, I follow the cross, the symbol of
thy power. Hence I consecrate to thee my soul imbued with love and fear.
Sincerely I love thy name; and I venerate thy power, which thou hast
revealed to me by so many proofs, and by which thou hast confirmed my
faith.”
This would be deemed extraordinary language to appear in the
proclamation of any, even of the most Christian monarch of the present
day. How much more remarkable must it have seemed coming from a Roman
emperor just emerging from paganism, and addressed to the whole Roman
world!
It was the wish of Constantine that Christianity might be the
recognized religion of the empire, and that all his subjects might be
united in the worship of the one true God. Still he favored perfect
toleration. Yet Christianity was every way encouraged. Distinguished
Christians were placed in the highest offices of state. Chaplains were
appointed in the army. Though no compulsion was exercised, all the
soldiers were invited and encouraged to attend public worship.
The city of Rome for a long time had ceased to be the only capital; and
Constantine chose, with great sagacity, Byzantium, at the mouth of the
Bosphorus, as the new capital, giving it the name of Constantinople,
after himself. This imperial city enjoyed a very salubrious clime, and
occupied a position, for the accumulation of wealth and the exercise
of power, unsurpassed by that of any other spot upon the globe. It
was situated upon an eminence which commanded an extensive view of the
shores of Europe and Asia, with the beautiful Straits of the Bosphorus
flowing down from the Black Sea on the north, emptying into the Sea of
Marmora, and thence descending through the Dardanelles, or Hellespont,
to the Mediterranean on the south. These were avenues of approach
through which no foe could penetrate. The city was favored with a
harbor, called the Golden Horn, spacious and secure. The site of
Constantinople seems to have been designed by Nature for the metropolis
of universal European dominion.
The wealth, energy, and artistic genius of the whole Roman empire were
immediately called into requisition to enlarge and beautify the new
metropolis. The boundaries of the city were marked out fourteen miles
in circumference. Almost incredible sums of money were expended in
rearing the city walls, and in works of public utility and beauty. The
forests which then frowned unbroken along the shores of the Euxine Sea
afforded an inexhaustible supply of timber. A quarry of white marble,
easily accessible, upon a neighboring island, furnished any desired
amount of that important building-material.
The imperial palace soon rose in splendor which Rome had never
surpassed. With its courts, gardens, porticoes, and baths, it covered
several acres. The ancient cities of the empire, including Rome itself,
were despoiled of their noble families, who were persuaded to remove to
the new metropolis to add lustre to its society. Magnificent mansions
were reared for them. The revenues of wide domains were assigned for
the support of their dignity. Thus the splendors of decaying Rome upon
the Tiber were eclipsed by the rising towers of Constantinople upon the
Bosphorus.
Few men have been more warmly applauded, or more bitterly condemned,
than Constantine. Fifteen centuries have passed away since his death,
and still he is the subject of the most venomous denunciation and the
most impassioned praise. He was in person tall, graceful, majestic,
with features of the finest mould. Intellectually he was also highly
endowed. None of the ordinary vices of the times stained his character.
Conscious of his superior abilities, and sustained by the popular voice,
he pursued a career to which we find no parallels in history.
The Arian controversy was now greatly agitating the Church. The
emperor, having in vain endeavored to quiet it by a letter, decided to
call an ecumenical council; that is, a general council of bishops from
all parts of the world. It was a measure then without an example.
The city of Nice, one of the principal cities of ♦Bithynia, was
selected for the assembly. Three hundred and eighteen bishops met,
besides a large number of subordinate ecclesiastics. The emperor
defrayed the necessary expenses of the members of the council. The
session was opened on the 19th of June, in the year of our Lord 325.
The meeting was held in the large saloon of the palace, with benches
arranged on either side for the bishops. The members of the council
first entered, and silently took their seats: they were followed by a
small group of the distinguished friends of the emperor. Then, upon a
given signal, all rose, and the emperor himself came in. He was robed
in imperial purple, and his gorgeous attire glistened with embroidery
of gems and gold. A golden throne was prepared for him at the end of
the hall, where he took his seat to preside over the deliberations.
One of the most prominent of the bishops, Eustache of Antioch, then
rose, and, in the name of the council, thanked the emperor for all the
favors he had conferred upon Christianity. The emperor briefly replied,
expressing the joy he felt in presiding over such an assembly, and his
hope that they might come to a perfectly harmonious result. He spoke in
Latin, his native language. An interpreter repeated his words in Greek
for the benefit of those who were most familiar with that language.
The council continued in session until the 25th of August,――sixty-seven
days. The principal, the almost exclusive attention of the council was
directed to the new doctrine of Arius,――that Christ, the Son, was not
equal to the Father, but was created by him, and was subordinate to him.
The decision of the council, called the Nicene Creed, rebuked, in the
most emphatic terms, the Arian doctrine as heresy. Its language upon
this point was as follows:――
“We believe in one only God, Father all-powerful, Creator of all
things visible and invisible; and in one only Lord Jesus Christ, the
only Son, engendered of the Father (that is to say, of the substance of
the Father), God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten
and not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom every thing
has been made in heaven and on earth; who for us men, and for our
salvation, has descended from the skies, has become incarnate and made
man, has suffered, rose on the third day, ascended to the skies, and
will come to judge the living and the dead.”
Thus words were heaped upon words, to express, beyond all possibility
of doubt, the sense of the council of the entire equality of the Son
with the Father. The Arians seemed disposed to accept the same language
used by the Trinitarians, while they affixed a different signification
to the words.
“The bishops,” writes the Abbé Fleury, “seeing the dissimulation of the
Arians, and their bad faith, were constrained, that they might express
their meaning more unequivocally, to include in a single word the sense
of the Scriptures, and to say that the Son is _consubstantial_ with the
Father, making use of the Greek word _homoousios_, which this dispute
has since rendered so celebrated. They thus declared that the Son was
not only _like_ the Father, but the _same_,――_identical with him_.”
All the bishops but two signed this creed. After some conference, those
two signed also.
“It is said,” writes Eusebius,――“and it is Philistorge, an Arian
author, who says it,――that these two, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and
Theognis of Nice, used fraud in their subscriptions, which they made
together. They inserted the letter _i_ in the word _homoousios_,
so that it read _homoiousios_; which signifies _similar to_, not
_identically the same_.”
The doctrine of Arius was thus condemned, as contrary to the teachings
of the Scriptures, by this numerous council of pastors from all parts
of the then known world. Several other subjects of minor importance
were discussed, and decided upon. The Holy Spirit was declared to be
also, like the Son, equal with the Father, and identically the same.
The emperor wrote a letter, which was published with the decrees of
council, urging that they should be accepted in all the churches. “The
results,” said he, “of these sacred deliberations of the bishops, must
be in accordance with the will of God.” In the most severe terms he
condemned the doctrine of Arius, commanding that his writings, wherever
found, should be burned. It was a dark age. Toleration was but little
known. The emperor even went to the unwarrantable length of saying,――
“Whoever shall conceal any thing which Arius has written, instead of
delivering it up to be burned, shall be put to death immediately upon
being taken.”
Conversions from paganism were becoming frequent and numerous. Under
the fostering care of the emperor, churches rose all over the land.
A tragic event in the life of this extraordinary man deserves record.
His second wife was a beautiful woman named Fausta, much younger than
himself. She was about the age of the emperor’s very handsome son
Crispus. Fausta fell in love with the young man. Virtuously he repelled
her advances. It is written,――
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Fausta rushed to Constantine, and accused Crispus of atrocious crime.
The imperial father, in the frenzy of his rage, ordered his innocent
son to be led instantly to execution. His headless body was hardly in
the tomb ere the truth of his wife’s guilt and his son’s innocence was
made known to the unhappy emperor beyond all possibility of doubt. In
the delirium of his anguish, he ordered Fausta to be drowned in her
bath.
Henceforward, for Constantine, life was but a dismal day. He never
recovered from the gloom of these events; and it is said that he was
never known to smile again. For forty days he fasted, weeping and
groaning, and denying himself all comforts. He erected a golden statue
to Crispus, with this simple, pathetic inscription:――
“TO MY SON, WHOM I UNJUSTLY CONDEMNED.”
The conversion of Constantine to Christianity was at first intellectual
only, not the regeneration of the heart. He was a nominal Christian,
believing in Christ. Still there is no evidence that he had been born
again of the Holy Spirit, or that he had accepted Christ as his
personal, atoning Saviour. The cares and sorrows of life tend to lead
every thoughtful mind to Jesus. Constantine had become a world-weary,
heart-broken old man, sixty-four years of age. Rapidly-increasing
infirmities admonished him that he must soon appear before the
judgment-seat of Christ,――before that Saviour whose authority his
intellect had been constrained to recognize, but to whom, as yet, he
had not fully surrendered his heart.
Deeply depressed in spirits, and sinking beneath his maladies, he
retired to some warm springs in Asia. Death was slowly but steadily
approaching. Constantine repaired to the church, and with tears and
prayers, and deep searchings of soul, sought preparation to meet God.
Having obtained, as he thought, assurance that his sins were forgiven,
he assembled all the bishops of the neighboring churches in his palace,
near the city of Nicomedia, and, with as much publicity as could
be exercised without ostentation, confessed his Saviour before men,
received the rite of baptism, and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
Eusebius, the renowned Bishop of Nicomedia, performed the rite of
baptism, and administered the sacred elements. It is to the pen of this
illustrious bishop that we are indebted for most of the incidents in
relation to the religious history of Constantine. From this time until
his death, which occurred soon after, he seemed to live as a sincere
and devout follower of the Redeemer. Eusebius says, “Constantine, on
receiving baptism, determined to govern himself henceforth, in the
minutest particulars, by God’s worthy laws of life.”
The emperor died at Nicomedia on the 21st of May, in the year 337. He
was sixty-four years of age, and had reigned thirty-one years. This was
the longest reign of any Roman emperor since the days of Augustus Cæsar.
His funeral was attended with all the marks of homage which love and
gratitude and imperial power could confer.
How singular and how touching are these triumphs of Christianity! The
poor benighted slave in his cheerless hut, bleeding and dying beneath
the lash, finds in the religion of Jesus that peace and joy to which
the monarch in his palace is often a stranger. The martyr in the
dungeon, wan and wasted with material misery, with pallid lips sings
hallelujahs to Him who hath redeemed him to God by his blood.
The imperial Constantine, robed in the purple of nearly universal
empire, in the gorgeous palace of Nicomedia, surrounded with all the
pomp and splendor of an Oriental monarch, finds his heart yearn for
those consolations which the religion of Jesus alone can give. He bows
his head to the water of baptism; he partakes of the sacred bread and
wine of the Lord’s Supper, solemnly, devoutly, tearfully; and finally,
when sinking away in death, he breathes the prayer, “Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit.”
A few centuries rolled away, and there was another monarch, the
Emperor Charles V., whose sceptre ruled almost the whole known
world. Weary of life, and oppressed with the sense of sin, he sought a
religious retreat in the solitary Vale of Estremadura. In the cloisters
of the Convent of St. Justus the abdicated emperor wept over his sins,
and sought forgiveness through the atoning Saviour. He announced to
the whole world his penitence, and his trust in Jesus. The regal mind,
which had proudly stood untottering beneath the cares of universal
empire, bowed in humble submission to the religion of Jesus, which
alone can meet the yearnings of the humble and contrite soul.
A few centuries pass, and another emperor arises who attracts the gaze
of the world. Neither Constantine nor Charles V. wielded a sceptre,
which, in the elements of grandeur and power, surpassed that of
Napoleon I. Look at the dethroned monarch, as, through the long agony
of St. Helena, he sinks into the grave. He, before whose imperial will
all Europe had bowed, was dying upon his miserable pallet at Longwood.
That eagle eye was dimmed with tears, as, bolstered up in his bed, with
penitence for sin, and avowed trust in the atoning Saviour, he received
the emblems of that body which was broken, and that blood which was
shed, for our sins: then, a peaceful penitent, surrendering himself to
the arms of that Saviour who has said, “Whoso cometh unto me I will in
no wise cast out,” he fell asleep; we trust,
“Asleep in Jesus!――blessed sleep!
From which none ever wake to weep.”
How signal are these triumphs of Christianity!――triumphs which fill
so many pages of history and biography. How beautiful is this religion
of Jesus in its adaptation to every conceivable condition and want
of life! The Emperor Constantine, master of the world, with almost
limitless power in his hand and boundless wealth in his lap, needs this
religion just as much as the humblest slave or the feeblest child in
his realms.
There is no royal road to heaven. Constantine, like all others,
could only find peace by penitence for sin, the public acknowledgment
of his faith in an atoning Saviour, and the prayerful consecration of
himself to God. You and I, my readers, can find salvation only where
Constantine found it. There is but one door through which we can enter
the heavenly kingdom: that door is Christ.