v. Sozomen, l. i. c. 2.
Theophan. Chronograph. p. 11. Theophanes lived towards the end of the
eighth century, almost five hundred years after Constantine. The modern
Greeks were not inclined to display in the field the standard of
the empire and of Christianity; and though they depended on every
superstitious hope of defence, the promise of victory would have
appeared too bold a fiction.]

[Footnote 38: The Abbe du Voisin, p. 103, &c., alleges several of these
medals, and quotes a particular dissertation of a Jesuit the Pere de
Grainville, on this subject.]

II. In all occasions of danger and distress, it was the practice of the
primitive Christians to fortify their minds and bodies by the sign of
the cross, which they used, in all their ecclesiastical rites, in all
the daily occurrences of life, as an infallible preservative against
every species of spiritual or temporal evil. [39] The authority of the
church might alone have had sufficient weight to justify the devotion of
Constantine, who in the same prudent and gradual progress acknowledged
the truth, and assumed the symbol, of Christianity. But the testimony of
a contemporary writer, who in a formal treatise has avenged the cause of
religion, bestows on the piety of the emperor a more awful and sublime
character. He affirms, with the most perfect confidence, that in the
night which preceded the last battle against Maxentius, Constantine was
admonished in a dream [39a] to inscribe the shields of his soldiers with
the celestial sign of God, the sacred monogram of the name of Christ;
that he executed the commands of Heaven, and that his valor and
obedience were rewarded by the decisive victory of the Milvian Bridge.
Some considerations might perhaps incline a sceptical mind to suspect
the judgment or the veracity of the rhetorician, whose pen, either from
zeal or interest, was devoted to the cause of the prevailing faction.
[40] He appears to have published his deaths of the persecutors at
Nicomedia about three years after the Roman victory; but the interval of
a thousand miles, and a thousand days, will allow an ample latitude
for the invention of declaimers, the credulity of party, and the tacit
approbation of the emperor himself who might listen without indignation
to a marvellous tale, which exalted his fame, and promoted his designs.
In favor of Licinius, who still dissembled his animosity to the
Christians, the same author has provided a similar vision, of a fo