o seduce pure
souls into profligacy; but those who employ this art in order to find
remedies against diseases, or who, in the country, make use of it in order
to prevent the snow, the wind, and the hail from destroying the crops,
must not be prosecuted. Neither the welfare nor the reputation of any one
are endangered by acts whose object is to insure to men the benefits of
the _divinity_ and the fruits of their labour."--_Codex Theodosianus_, lib.
ix., f. 16, _apud_ Beugnot.

This was, undoubtedly, a very large concession to the superstitions of
Paganism made by a Christian monarch, and from which he was, perhaps,
himself not entirely free. It is well known that Constantine, after his
public declaration of Christianity, introduced the _labarum_,(33) as a
sign of the dominion of the new faith; but it was generally placed on his
coins in the hands of the winged statue of the Pagan goddess of Victory.
Besides these coins of Constantine, there are many others of the same
monarch, having inscriptions in honour of Jupiter, Mars, and other Pagan
divinities. The Pagan aristocracy of Rome seem to have been resolved to
ignore the fact that the head of the empire had become a Christian, and to
consider him, in spite of himself, as one of their own. Thus, after his
death, the senate placed him, according to the usual custom, among the
gods; and a calendar has been preserved where the festivals in honour of
this strange divinity are indicated. The name of _Divus_ is given to him
on several coins; and, what is very odd, this Pagan god is represented on
the above-mentioned medals holding in his hand the Christian sign of the
_labarum_.

We thus see that Constantine, instead of persecuting the adherents of the
national Paganism, was following a policy of compromise between the two
characters united in his person, that of a Christian and of a Roman
emperor. This did not, however, prevent him from heaping favours of every
kind upon the Christian church,--favours which proved to her much more
injurious than all the persecutions of the former emperors. And, indeed,
the Christians, who had nobly stood the test of adversity, were not proof
against the more dangerous trial of a sudden and unexpected prosperity.

The first favour granted by Constantine to the Christians, and which he
did even before his public confession of their faith, was the extension to
their clergy of the exemption from various municipal charges enjoyed by
the Pagan pri