troops, and perhaps the emperor
himself, had sharpened their swords while it satisfied their conscience.
They marched to battle with the full assurance, that the same God, who
had formerly opened a passage to the Israelites through the waters of
Jordan, and had thrown down the walls of Jericho at the sound of the
trumpets of Joshua, would display his visible majesty and power in
the victory of Constantine. The evidence of ecclesiastical history
is prepared to affirm, that their expectations were justified by the
conspicuous miracle to which the conversion of the first Christian
emperor has been almost unanimously ascribed. The real or imaginary
cause of so important an event, deserves and demands the attention of
posterity; and I shall endeavor to form a just estimate of the famous
vision of Constantine, by a distinct consideration of the standard,
the dream, and the celestial sign; by separating the historical, the
natural, and the marvellous parts of this extraordinary story, which, in
the composition of a specious argument, have been artfully confounded in
one splendid and brittle mass.

I. An instrument of the tortures which were inflicted only on slaves and
strangers, became on object of horror in the eyes of a Roman citizen;
and the ideas of guilt, of pain, and of ignominy, were closely united
with the idea of the cross. The piety, rather than the humanity, of
Constantine soon abolished in his dominions the punishment which the
Savior of mankind had condescended to suffer; but the emperor had
already learned to despise the prejudices of his education, and of
his people, before he could erect in the midst of Rome his own statue,
bearing a cross in its right hand; with an inscription which referred
the victory of his arms, and the deliverance of Rome, to the virtue
of that salutary sign, the true symbol of force and courage. The same
symbol sanctified the arms of the soldiers of Constantine; the cross
glittered on their helmet, was engraved on their shields, was interwoven
into their banners; and the consecrated emblems which adorned the person
of the emperor himself, were distinguished only by richer materials and
more exquisite workmanship. But the principal standard which displayed
the triumph of the cross was styled the Labarum, an obscure, though
celebrated name, which has been vainly derived from almost all the
languages of the world. It is described as a long pike intersected by
a transversal beam. The silken