6] Lactantius, who has adorned the precepts of
the gospel with the eloquence of Cicero, [57] and Eusebius, who has
consecrated the learning and philosophy of the Greeks to the service of
religion, [58] were both received into the friendship and familiarity of
their sovereign; and those able masters of controversy could patiently
watch the soft and yielding moments of persuasion, and dexterously
apply the arguments which were the best adapted to his character and
understanding. Whatever advantages might be derived from the acquisition
of an Imperial proselyte, he was distinguished by the splendor of his
purple, rather than by the superiority of wisdom, or virtue, from
the many thousands of his subjects who had embraced the doctrines of
Christianity. Nor can it be deemed incredible, that the mind of an
unlettered soldier should have yielded to the weight of evidence, which,
in a more enlightened age, has satisfied or subdued the reason of a
Grotius, a Pascal, or a Locke. In the midst of the incessant labors
of his great office, this soldier employed, or affected to employ, the
hours of the night in the diligent study of the Scriptures, and the
composition of theological discourses; which he afterwards pronounced
in the presence of a numerous and applauding audience. In a very long
discourse, which is still extant, the royal preacher expatiates on
the various proofs still extant, the royal preacher expatiates on the
various proofs of religion; but he dwells with peculiar complacency on
the Sibylline verses, [59] and the fourth eclogue of Virgil. [60] Forty
years before the birth of Christ, the Mantuan bard, as if inspired
by the celestial muse of Isaiah, had celebrated, with all the pomp of
oriental metaphor, the return of the Virgin, the fall of the serpent,
the approaching birth of a godlike child, the offspring of the great
Jupiter, who should expiate the guilt of human kind, and govern
the peaceful universe with the virtues of his father; the rise and
appearance of a heavenly race, primitive nation throughout the world;
and the gradual restoration of the innocence and felicity of the golden
age. The poet was perhaps unconscious of the secret sense and object of
these sublime predictions, which have been so unworthily applied to the
infant son of a consul, or a triumvir; [61] but if a more splendid, and
indeed specious interpretation of the fourth eclogue contributed to
the conversion of the first Christian emperor, Virgi