e pagan deities.

As Constantine the Great and his sons and successors took much pains to
enlarge the Christian Church, it is not strange that many nations,
before barbarous and uncivilized, became subject to Christ. Many
circumstances make it probable that the light of Christianity cast some
of its rays into both Armenias, the Greater and the Less, soon after the
establishment of the Christian Church. But the Armenian Church first
received due organization and firm establishment in this century; in
the beginning of which Gregory, the son of Anax, commonly called "the
Illuminator," because he dispelled the mists of superstition which
beclouded the minds of the Athenians, first persuaded some private
individuals, and afterward Tiridates, the king of the Armenians, as well
as his nobles, to embrace and observe the Christian religion. He was
therefore ordained the first bishop of Armenia, by Leontius, bishop of
Cappadocia, and gradually diffused the principles of Christianity
throughout that country.

In the European provinces of the Roman Empire there still remained a
vast number of idolaters; and though the Christian bishops endeavored to
convert them to Christ, the business went on but slowly. In Gaul, the
great Martin, bishop of Tours, was not unsuccessful in this work; but
travelling through the provinces of Gaul, he everywhere persuaded many
to renounce their idols and embrace Christ, and he destroyed their
temples and threw down their statues. He therefore merited the title
"Apostle of the Gauls."

It is very evident that the victories of Constantine the Great, and both
the fear of punishment and the desire of pleasing the Roman emperors,
were cogent reasons, in the view of whole nations as well as of
individuals, for embracing the Christian religion. Yet no person well
informed in the history of this period will ascribe the extension of
Christianity wholly to these causes. For it is manifest that the
untiring zeal of the bishops and other holy men, the pure and devout
lives which many of the Christians exhibited, the translations of the
sacred volume, and the excellence of the Christian religion were as
efficient motives with many persons as the arguments from worldly
advantage and disadvantage were with some others.

Although the Christian Church within the Roman Empire was involved in no
severe calamities from the times of Constantine the Great onward, except
during the commotion of Licinius and the short rei