From these vague and indefinite expressions of
piety, three suppositions may be deduced, of a different, but not of an
incompatible nature. The mind of Constantine might fluctuate between the
Pagan and the Christian religions. According to the loose and complying
notions of Polytheism, he might acknowledge the God of the Christians as
one of the many deities who compose the hierarchy of heaven. Or
perhaps he might embrace the philosophic and pleasing idea, that,
notwithstanding the variety of names, of rites, and of opinions, all the
sects, and all the nations of mankind, are united in the worship of the
common Father and Creator of the universe.

But the counsels of princes are more frequently influenced by views of
temporal advantage, than by considerations of abstract and speculative
truth. The partial and increasing favor of Constantine may naturally be
referred to the esteem which he entertained for the moral character of
the Christians; and to a persuasion, that the propagation of the gospel
would inculcate the practice of private and public virtue. Whatever
latitude an absolute monarch may assume in his own conduct, whatever
indulgence he may claim for his own passions, it is undoubtedly his
interest that all his subjects should respect the natural and civil
obligations of society. But the operation of the wisest laws is
imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always
restrain vice. Their power is insufficient to prohibit all that they
condemn, nor can they always punish the actions which they prohibit.
The legislators of antiquity had summoned to their aid the powers of
education and of opinion. But every principle which had once maintained
the vigor and purity of Rome and Sparta, was long since extinguished
in a declining and despotic empire. Philosophy still exercised her
temperate sway over the human mind, but the cause of virtue derived very
feeble support from the influence of the Pagan superstition. Under these
discouraging circumstances, a prudent magistrate might observe with
pleasure the progress of a religion which diffused among the people a
pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics, adapted to every duty
and every condition of life; recommended as the will and reason of
the supreme Deity, and enforced by the sanction of eternal rewards or
punishments. The experience of Greek and Roman history could not inform
the world how far the system of national manners might be re