formed and
improved by the precepts of a divine revelation; and Constantine might
listen with some confidence to the flattering, and indeed reasonable,
assurances of Lactantius. The eloquent apologist seemed firmly to
expect, and almost ventured to promise, that the establishment of
Christianity would restore the innocence and felicity of the primitive
age; that the worship of the true God would extinguish war and
dissension among those who mutually considered themselves as the
children of a common parent; that every impure desire, every angry or
selfish passion, would be restrained by the knowledge of the gospel; and
that the magistrates might sheath the sword of justice among a people
who would be universally actuated by the sentiments of truth and piety,
of equity and moderation, of harmony and universal love.

The passive and unresisting obedience, which bows under the yoke of
authority, or even of oppression, must have appeared, in the eyes of
an absolute monarch, the most conspicuous and useful of the evangelic
virtues. The primitive Christians derived the institution of civil
government, not from the consent of the people, but from the decrees
of Heaven. The reigning emperor, though he had usurped the sceptre
by treason and murder, immediately assumed the sacred character of
vicegerent of the Deity. To the Deity alone he was accountable for the
abuse of his power; and his subjects were indissolubly bound, by their
oath of fidelity, to a tyrant, who had violated every law of nature and
society. The humble Christians were sent into the world as sheep among
wolves; and since they were not permitted to employ force even in the
defence of their religion, they should be still more criminal if they
were tempted to shed the blood of their fellow-creatures in disputing
the vain privileges, or the sordid possessions, of this transitory life.
Faithful to the doctrine of the apostle, who in the reign of Nero had
preached the duty of unconditional submission, the Christians of the
three first centuries preserved their conscience pure and innocent
of the guilt of secret conspiracy, or open rebellion. While they
experienced the rigor of persecution, they were never provoked either to
meet their tyrants in the field, or indignantly to withdraw themselves
into some remote and sequestered corner of the globe. The Protestants
of France, of Germany, and of Britain, who asserted with such intrepid
courage their civil and religious fr