l may deserve to be
ranked among the most successful missionaries of the gospel. [62]

[Footnote 54:

Lors Constantin dit ces propres paroles:
J'ai renverse le culte des idoles:
Sur les debris de leurs temples fumans
Au Dieu du Ciel j'ai prodigue l'encens.
Mais tous mes soins pour sa grandeur supreme
N'eurent jamais d'autre objet que moi-meme;

Les saints autels n'etoient a mes regards
Qu'un marchepie du trone des Cesars.
L'ambition, la fureur, les delices
Etoient mes Dieux, avoient mes sacrifices.
L'or des Chretiens, leur intrigues, leur sang
Ont cimente ma fortune et mon rang.

The poem which contains these lines may be read with pleasure, but
cannot be named with decency.]

[Footnote 55: This favorite was probably the great Osius, bishop of
Cordova, who preferred the pastoral care of the whole church to the
government of a particular diocese. His character is magnificently,
though concisely, expressed by Athanasius, (tom. i. p. 703.) See
Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. vii. p. 524-561. Osius was accused, perhaps
unjustly, of retiring from court with a very ample fortune.]

[Footnote 56: See Eusebius (in Vit. Constant. passim) and Zosimus, l.
ii. p. 104.]

[Footnote 57: The Christianity of Lactantius was of a moral rather
than of a mysterious cast. "Erat paene rudis (says the orthodox Bull)
disciplinae Christianae, et in rhetorica melius quam in theologia
versatus." Defensio Fidei Nicenae, sect. ii. c. 14.]

[Footnote 58: Fabricius, with his usual diligence, has collected a list
of between three and four hundred authors quoted in the Evangelical
Preparation of Eusebius. See Bibl. Graec. l. v. c. 4, tom. vi. p.
37-56.]

[Footnote 59: See Constantin. Orat. ad Sanctos, c. 19 20. He chiefly
depends on a mysterious acrostic, composed in the sixth age after the
Deluge, by the Erythraean Sibyl, and translated by Cicero into Latin.
The initial letters of the thirty-four Greek verses form this prophetic
sentence: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior of the World.]

[Footnote 60: In his paraphrase of Virgil, the emperor has frequently
assisted and improved the literal sense of the Latin ext. See Blondel
des Sibylles, l. i. c. 14, 15, 16.]

[Footnote 61: The different claims of an elder and younger son of
Pollio, of Julia, of Drusus, of Marcellus, are found to be incompatible
with chronology, history, and the good sense of Virgil.]

[Footnote 62: Se