nd sublime
character. He affirms, with the most perfect confidence, that in the
night which preceded the last battle against Maxentius, Constantine was
admonished in a dream * to inscribe the shields of his soldiers with the
celestial sign of God, the sacred monogram of the name of Christ; that
he executed the commands of Heaven, and that his valor and obedience
were rewarded by the decisive victory of the Milvian Bridge. Some
considerations might perhaps incline a sceptical mind to suspect the
judgment or the veracity of the rhetorician, whose pen, either from
zeal or interest, was devoted to the cause of the prevailing faction.
He appears to have published his deaths of the persecutors at Nicomedia
about three years after the Roman victory; but the interval of a
thousand miles, and a thousand days, will allow an ample latitude for
the invention of declaimers, the credulity of party, and the tacit
approbation of the emperor himself who might listen without indignation
to a marvellous tale, which exalted his fame, and promoted his designs.
In favor of Licinius, who still dissembled his animosity to the
Christians, the same author has provided a similar vision, of a form of
prayer, which was communicated by an angel, and repeated by the whole
army before they engaged the legions of the tyrant Maximin. The frequent
repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue,
the reason of mankind; but if the dream of Constantine is separately
considered, it may be naturally explained either by the policy or the
enthusiasm of the emperor. Whilst his anxiety for the approaching day,
which must decide the fate of the empire, was suspended by a short and
interrupted slumber, the venerable form of Christ, and the well-known
symbol of his religion, might forcibly offer themselves to the active
fancy of a prince who reverenced the name, and had perhaps secretly
implored the power, of the God of the Christians. As readily might a
consummate statesman indulge himself in the use of one of those military
stratagems, one of those pious frauds, which Philip and Sertorius had
employed with such art and effect. The praeternatural origin of dreams
was universally admitted by the nations of antiquity, and a considerable
part of the Gallic army was already prepared to place their confidence
in the salutary sign of the Christian religion. The secret vision of
Constantine could be disproved only by the event; and the intrepid
hero who