warm baths at Helenopolis. Feeling his death approaching, he confessed his sins in the church of the martyrs (of the martyr Lucianus?), and now first received imposition of hands as a catechumen. Then he moved back to the villa Ancyrona, a suburb of Nicomedia (Eutrop. x. 8; Vict. Caes. 41), and desired Baptism of the bishops whom he there assembled (V. C. iv. 61). He had wished once, he said, to be baptized in Jordan, but God had decided otherwise. He felt that now the blessing he had so long hoped for was offered him. "Let there be no doubt about it," he added, "I have determined once for all, if the Disposer of life and death sees fit to raise me up again to fellowship with His people, to impose upon myself rules of life such as He would approve" (V. C. iv. 62, see Heinichen's note). Baptism was administered to him by the Arian predate Eusebius of Nicomedia (Hieron. Chron. ann. 2353). From that moment he laid aside the purple robe, and wore only the white garment of a neophyte. He died on Whitsunday 337, in the 31st year of his reign, dating from July 25, 306.
III. Religious Policy.—The great change which makes the reign of Constantine an epoch in church history is the union between church and state, and the introduction of the personal interference of the emperor. The proximate cause of his great influence was the reaction of feeling which took place, when the civil governor, from being a persecutor or an instrument of persecution, became a promoter of Christianity. Something, no doubt, was owing to the teaching of Christian moralists as to submission to the powers that be, and to the general tendency towards a system of official subordination, of which the political constitution of Constantine is the great example. His success in establishing that constitution, without any serious opposition, seems to shew the temper of men's minds at the time, and the absence of individual prominence or independence of thought amongst either followers or opponents. This was true as well of the church as of the state. The great men who have left their mark on church organization and policy had either passed away, like St. Cyprian, or had not yet attained their full powers. The two seeming exceptions are Hosius bp. of Cordova and St. Athanasius. The first had great influence over the emperor, but probably lacked genius, and is but obscurely known to us. Athanasius, though he might have sympathized with some of the wide conceptions of Constantine, never came sufficiently into contact with him to overcome the prejudices raised against him by the courtiers; and the emperor could not really comprehend the importance of the points for which Athanasius was contending. The period, too, of Athanassiu's greatest activity was in the succeeding reign.
Constantine, therefore, was left very much to make his own way, and to be guided by his own principles or impulses. With regard to his religious policy we have an expression of his own, in his letter to Alexander and Arius, which may help us in our judgment of its merits (Eus. V. C. ii. 65). Two principles, he said, had guided his actions; the first to unify the belief of all nations with regard to the Divinity into one consistent form, the second to set in order the body of the world which was labouring as it were under a grievous sickness. Such, no doubt, were the real desires of Constantine, but he was too impulsive, too rude in intellect, too credulous of his own strength, to carry them out with patience, wisdom, and justice. We shall arrange the details of this policy under three heads:
(1) Acts of Toleration.—During the first period of his reign it is probable that Constantine as well as Constantius Chlorus prevented any violent persecution. His first public act of toleration, of which we have any certain record, was to join together with Licinius in the edict issued by Galerius in 311 (given in de M. P. 34 and more diffusely by Eus. H. E. viii. 17). The edict acknowledged that persecution had failed, and gave permission to Christians to worship their own God and rebuild their places of meeting, provided they did nothing contrary to good order (contra disciplinam, misrendered ἐπιστήμη in Eus.). The death of Galerius followed almost directly, and in the spring or summer of 312 Constantine and Licinius promulgated another edict perhaps not very different from that of Galerius. The text of it is lost. It allowed liberty of worship, but specified certain hard conditions; amongst others that no converts should be made from heathenism; that no sect outside "the body of Christians, the Catholic Church," should be tolerated; that confiscated property should not be restored, except, perhaps, the sites of churches. This edict, issued before the conflict with Maxentius, contrasts strikingly with the much more liberal edict of Milan issued in the spring of 313, which gave free toleration to every religious body. The purport of this edict may be summed up thus: "We have sometime perceived that liberty of worship must not be denied to Christians and to all other men, but whereas in our former edict divers conditions were added, which perhaps have been the cause of the defection of many from that observance, we Constantine and Licinius, Augusti, meeting in Milan, decree that both Christians and all other men soever should have free liberty to choose that form of worship which they consider most suitable to themselves in order that the Divinity may be able to give us and our subjects His accustomed goodwill and favour. We abolish all those conditions entirely. Further for the body of the Christians in particular, all places of meeting which belonged to them, and have since been bought by or granted to others, are to be restored; and an indemnity may be claimed by the buyers or grantees from our treasury; and the same we decree concerning the other corporate property of the Christians. The execution of the law is committed to the civil magistrates, and it is everywhere to be made public." The change of feeling here evinced was more strongly marked in other documents that followed, which more peculiarly expressed the mind of Constantine. The first in order is a letter to Anulinus, proconsul of Africa, giving directions for the execution of the edict, in which the term "Catholic Church" is substituted for that of "body of Christians" (Eus. H. E. x. 5, 15). Then follows
