had conquered so many States, and cast himself into the arms of the Christians who had found the money to which he owed his crown.[1] He thus betrayed the Empire as soon as he obtained it, and, in transplanting to the Bosphorus the great tree that had sheltered Europe, Africa, and Asia Minor, he did fatal injury to its roots.
Your next misfortune was this ecclesiastical maxim, quoted in a celebrated French poem, "Le Lutrin," and very gravely true: "Ruin the world, if need be; it is the spirit of the Church." The Church fought the ancient religion of the Empire, and tore its own entrails in the struggle, dividing, with equal fury and imprudence, on a hundred incomprehensible questions of which none had ever heard before. The Christian sects, hounding each other with fire and sword for metaphysical chimæras and sophisms of the school, united to seize the spoils of the priesthood founded by Numa. They did not rest until they had destroyed the altar of Victory at Rome.
St. Ambrose, passing from the bar to the bishopric of Milan without being a deacon, and your Damasus, whom a schism made bishop of Rome, profited by
this fatal success. They secured the destruction of
- ↑ The indictment is too severe. The later years of Constantine were marked by silly extravagance, but not debauch. The execution of his father-in-law was justified. His (partial) acceptance of Christianity was earlier than Voltaire supposes, and there is no serious ground for suggesting large payments of money. But it is now beyond question that he put his brother-in-law (Licinius) to death treacherously, had his wife, son, and nephew murdered, and greatly degenerated in later life.—J. M.
