of the Christian religion, than to further its inward mission. He was praised and cen- sured in turn by the Christians and Pagans, the Orthodox and the Arians, as they successively experienced his favor or dis- like. He bears some resemblance to Peter the Great both in his public acts and his private character, by combining great virtues and merits with monstrous crimes, and he prob- ably died with the same consolation as Peter, whose last words were : "I trust that in respect of the good I have striven to do my people (the church), God will pardon my sins." It is quite characteristic of his piety that he turned the sacred nails of the ' Zosimus, certainly in heathen prejudice and slanderous extravagance, ascribes to Constantine under the instigation of his mother Helena, who was furious at the loss of her favorite grandson, the death of two women, the innocent Fausta and an adulteress, the supposed mother of his three successors ; Philostorgius, on the con- trary, declares Fausta guilty (H. E. ii. 4 ; only fragmentary). Then again, older witnesses indirectly contradict this whole view ; two orations, namely, of the next following reign, which imply, that Fausta survived the death of her son, the younger Constantine, who outlived his father by three years. Comp. Julian, Orat. i., and Monod. in Const. Jun. c. 4, ad Calcem Eutrop., cited by Gibbon, ch. xviii., notes 25 and 26. Evagrius denies both the murder of Crispus and of Fausta, though only on account of the silence of Eusebius, whose extreme partiality for his imperial friend seriously impairs the value of his narrative. Gibbon and still more decidedly Niebuhr (Vortrage iiber Rom. Geschichte, iii. 302) are inclined to acquit Constantine of all guilt in the death of Fausta. The latest biographer, Burckhardt (1. c. p. 375), charges him with it rather hastily, without even mentioning the critical difficulties in the way. So also Stanley (1. c. p. 300). VOL. II. — 2 18 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. Saviour's cross which Helena brought from Jerusalem, the one into the bit of his war-horse, the other into an ornament of his helmet. Not a decided, pure, and consistent character, he stands on the line of transition between two ages and two reli- gions ; and his life bears plain marks of both. When at last on his death bed he submitted to baptism, with the remark, "Now let us cast away all duplicity,^'' he honestly admitted the conflict of two antagonistic principles which swayed his private character and public life.^ From these general remarks we turn to the leading features of Constantine's life and reign, so far as they bear upon the history of the church. We shall consider in order his youth and training, the vision of the Cross, the edict of toleration, his legislation in favor of Christianity, his baptism and death. Constantino, son of the co-emperor Constantius Chlorus, who reigned over Gaul, Spain, and Britain till his death in