truth. The partial and increasing favor of Constantine may naturally be
referred to the esteem which he entertained for the moral character of
the Christians; and to a persuasion, that the propagation of the gospel
would inculcate the practice of private and public virtue. Whatever
latitude an absolute monarch may assume in his own conduct, whatever
indulgence he may claim for his own passions, it is undoubtedly his
interest that all his subjects should respect the natural and civil
obligations of society. But the operation of the wisest laws is
imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always
restrain vice. Their power is insufficient to prohibit all that they
condemn, nor can they always punish the actions which they prohibit.
The legislators of antiquity had summoned to their aid the powers of
education and of opinion. But every principle which had once maintained
the vigor and purity of Rome and Sparta, was long since extinguished
in a declining and despotic empire. Philosophy still exercised her
temperate sway over the human mind, but the cause of virtue derived very
feeble support from the influence of the Pagan superstition. Under these
discouraging circumstances, a prudent magistrate might observe with
pleasure the progress of a religion which diffused among the people a
pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics, adapted to every duty
and every condition of life; recommended as the will and reason of
the supreme Deity, and enforced by the sanction of eternal rewards or
punishments. The experience of Greek and Roman history could not inform
the world how far the system of national manners might be reformed and
improved by the precepts of a divine revelation; and Constantine might
listen with some confidence to the flattering, and indeed reasonable,
assurances of Lactantius. The eloquent apologist seemed firmly to
expect, and almost ventured to promise, that the establishment of
Christianity would restore the innocence and felicity of the primitive
age; that the worship of the true God would extinguish war and
dissension among those who mutually considered themselves as the
children of a common parent; that every impure desire, every angry or
selfish passion, would be restrained by the knowledge of the gospel; and
that the magistrates might sheath the sword of justice among a people
who would be universally actuated by the sentiments of truth and piety,
of equity and moderation, of har