much fainter impression on the heart than on the understanding of
Constantine himself. He pursued the great object of his ambition through
the dark and bloody paths of war and policy; and, after the victory,
he abandoned himself, without moderation, to the abuse of his fortune.
Instead of asserting his just superiority above the imperfect heroism
and profane philosophy of Trajan and the Antonines, the mature age of
Constantine forfeited the reputation which he had acquired in his youth.
As he gradually advanced in the knowledge of truth, he proportionally
declined in the practice of virtue; and the same year of his reign in
which he convened the council of Nice, was polluted by the execution,
or rather murder, of his eldest son. This date is alone sufficient
to refute the ignorant and malicious suggestions of Zosimus, [69] who
affirms, that, after the death of Crispus, the remorse of his father
accepted from the ministers of christianity the expiation which he had
vainly solicited from the Pagan pontiffs. At the time of the death
of Crispus, the emperor could no longer hesitate in the choice of a
religion; he could no longer be ignorant that the church was possessed
of an infallible remedy, though he chose to defer the application of it
till the approach of death had removed the temptation and danger of
a relapse. The bishops whom he summoned, in his last illness, to the
palace of Nicomedia, were edified by the fervor with which he requested
and received the sacrament of baptism, by the solemn protestation that
the remainder of his life should be worthy of a disciple of Christ,
and by his humble refusal to wear the Imperial purple after he had been
clothed in the white garment of a Neophyte. The example and reputation
of Constantine seemed to countenance the delay of baptism. [70] Future
tyrants were encouraged to believe, that the innocent blood which they
might shed in a long reign would instantly be washed away in the waters
of regeneration; and the abuse of religion dangerously undermined the
foundations of moral virtue.

[Footnote 67: The theory and practice of antiquity, with regard to the
sacrament of baptism, have been copiously explained by Dom Chardon,
Hist. des Sacremens, tom. i. p. 3-405; Dom Martenne de Ritibus Ecclesiae
Antiquis, tom. i.; and by Bingham, in the tenth and eleventh books of
his Christian Antiquities. One circumstance may be observed, in which
the modern churches have materially departed from