er the Great toward his son Alexis, and of
Soliman the Great toward his son Mustapha. Later authors assert, though
gratuitously, that the emperor, like David, bitterly repented of this
sin. He has been frequently charged besides, though it would seem
altogether unjustly, with the death of his second wife Fausta (326?),
who, after twenty years of happy wedlock, is said to have been convicted
of slandering her stepson Crispus, and of adultery with a slave or one
of the imperial guards, and then to have been suffocated in the vapor of
an overheated bath. But the accounts of the cause and manner of her
death are so late and discordant as to make Constantine's part in it at
least very doubtful.

At all events Christianity did not produce in Constantine a thorough
moral transformation. He was concerned more to advance the outward
social position of the Christian religion, than to further its inward
mission. He was praised and censured in turn by the Christians and
pagans, the orthodox and the Arians, as they successively experienced
his favor or dislike. He bears some resemblance to Peter the Great, both
in his public acts and his private character, by combining great virtues
and merits with monstrous crimes, and he probably died with the same
consolation as Peter, whose last words were: 'I trust that in respect of
the good I have striven to do my people (the church), God will pardon my
sins.' It is quite characteristic of his piety that he turned the sacred
nails of the Saviour's cross, which Helena brought from Jerusalem, the
one into the bit of his war horse, the other into an ornament of his
helmet. Not a decided, pure, and consistent character, he stands on the
line of transition between two ages and two religions; and his life
bears plain marks of both. When at last on his deathbed he submitted to
baptism, with the remark, 'Now let us cast away all _duplicity_,' he
honestly admitted the conflict of two antagonistic principles which
swayed his private character and public life.

From these general remarks we turn to the leading features of
Constantine's life and reign, so far as they bear upon the history of
the church. We shall consider in order his youth and training, the
vision of the cross, the edict of toleration, his legislation in favor
of Christianity, his baptism and death.

Constantine, son of the co-emperor Constantius Chlorus, who reigned over
Gaul, Spain, and Britain till his death in 306, was born probabl