the relief of all classes. (7.) If these benefits softened the manners and elevated the morals of the masses, it cannot be denied that indirectly they favoured science and the domestic arts, if not as yet the fine arts and the cultivation of letters, which had fallen so low under the brutalized successors of the Antonines. (8.) The founding of a Christian city on the Bosporus, and the transfer of the capital, were marks of a lofty genius in Constantine, and this effort was not unfavourable to the development of Christian culture in other respects. If the movement failed to arrest the decline of the Roman Empire, as such, it may be doubted whether anything else contributed in the same degree to its perpetuity under its new forms and conditions. In the East, the direct line of the Cæsars perished not till after the middle of the fifteenth century; and in the West, at least the shadow of its name vanished only with the earlier years of our own. (9.) But, greatest of all, the immediate result of the conversion of the Empire was the development of catholic unity by the gathering of the Universal Episcopate at Nicæa for synodical action, and the opening of that great synodical period which defined the Faith and the Constitutions of Christendom. It laid the groundwork of all the free Constitutions that have been since developed; the spirit of the Gospel has been the seed of growth and progress wherever it has been disseminated in its purity. (10.) "There was a time," says Bishop Horne, "when a Christian could travel through the civilized world, with letters from his bishop, finding in every city a welcome and a

home among his fellow Christians." The stranger, whose very name was equivalent to that of enemy, thus became a guest, and humanity received a new charter from man, in the name of God. Such was the new bond of society, the "fellowship of nations," the brotherhood of the human family in the Fatherhood of God.

5. DISADVANTAGES.

Certain temporary disadvantages may indeed be cited by the pessimist, and worldly philosophers may dwell on the weakening of the Empire as a primary and fatal consequence. But, on the other hand, even this may be doubted; for the policy of Diocletian in partitioning the Empire among titular Cæsars had already diminished the grandeur of the Imperial crown, had divided the strength of the Empire, and introduced such intestine feuds as would probably have much sooner dismembered it and reduced it to fragmentary sovereignties, had not some elements of new life been infused by the bold and hazardous experiment. Far more grievous is the unquestionable evil which was so soon obvious in the court Christianity, in the worldly religion made fashionable by the revolution. The Church became political almost inevitably, and men whose "kingdom was wholly of this world” began to exercise authority in her sacred name. "Whence hath it tares?" "The Enemy had done this," as the Master had predicted; and the net to which he had likened His kingdom began to enclose "a multitude of fishes, both good and bad."

6. LASTING RESULTS.

The Church Militant here on earth must feel the Enemy, and at times his grip is terrible. Yet who can fail to see that, in these reprisals, he was revenging, as he could, a tremendous convulsion, that had rent into fragments the hold he had kept for like ages, "" a strong man armed." It was the fury of Satan, dispossessed by one destined to crush his head; he had been made to feel that the eleven Galilean fishermen were stronger than himself, in the might of that One. In spite of all he did then, and has been doing ever since, as the war goes on to its glorious conclusion, we must not fail to recognize the truth, that most substantial gains to the cause of Christ were the fruit of Constantine's mighty revolution. It greatly contributed to scatter far and wide the seeds of evangelization, of civilization, of human progress; and while it threw down the horrible despotism of heathenism from the throne of the world, it enthroned in its stead, as a law that cannot be broken, the love of Christ to the world of men. Under this law, it gathered people out of all nations into one spiritual kingdom, and substituted for a universal bondage of despair the catholic ties of faith, hope, and charity, and of a common destiny in life beyond the grave.

7. PRIMITIVE COUNCILS.

"He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the

face of the world." Such was the sagacious aphorism of Franklin, recognizing a truth not sufficiently affirmed by Christians: for those principles did change the face of the world. By departing

from them, Christian nations relapse into the former barbarism satirized by Juvenal and scourged by St. Paul. It is only where and so far as those principles are restored, that man is a man, and the brotherhood of humanity is maintained. Free governments find their original in the combinations of law and liberty which were first seen in the primitive synods. These were first developed in the East, like everything else that is Christian. They found their model and their warrant in the Council of Jerusalem, when the "apostles, presbyters, and brethren" came together to deliberate, and in its results which were published in the name of “the whole Church." But we find councils naturalized in Italy in the days of Hippolytus, when the suburbicarian bishops confronted and humbled the bishop who presided over them, in the free spirit of their Master's maxim, "All ye are brethren.” But unquestionably the grand expounder of the primitive synodical system is Cyprian, the martyr Bishop of Carthage, who would do nothing without the approval of his presbytery,— omni plebe adstante, the laity also having their place and their voice. Note also, that while, after Ignatius in the East, we find no one so strenuously maintaining the principle of episcopacy as Cyprian, it is not less true that he is equally energetic in asserting the rights of priests and deacons, and of the whole

1 See Note G'.

people, -the faithful in Christ, as he loved to call them. So then, even during the martyr ages, the synodical features of the Church's polity became a precedent. Early Christians believed in the presence of Christ, by His Vicar Spirit, wherever two or three were gathered in His name. They believed in His promise concerning the agreement of the disciples in anything to be prayed for. They considered the plural form, "Our Father," as embodying the great law of the communion of saints; that is, of all Christians in one spiritual family. Moreover, they understood that "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." It is surprising how instinctively, when they were no longer a persecuted flock, this spirit showed itself in the general demand for an Ecumenical Council.

8. A NURSING FATHER.

Here, it is true, a new idea was generated with a strange unanimity, illustrative, indeed, of the loyal and dutiful spirit of Christians under the tyranny of persecutors, but now taking a filial and loving form toward the Emperor, as "a nursing father" of the Church.2 With wonder, and gratitude to God, they not merely saw in Constantine the fulfilment of this promise, but they naturally classed him with those potentates whom God had raised up in divers ages to serve and to succour His people. If even Nero was "the minister of God to them for good," as St. Paul had taught, how much more was the believing Cæsar another Cyrus, to whom

1 See Note H'.

2 See Note I'.