veils Constantino's passage from Paganism to Christianity." ' Cicero says, pro Raberio, c. 5 : " Xomen ipsum crucis absit non modo a cor- pora civium Romanorum, sed etiam a cogitatione, oculis, auribus." With other ancient heathens, however, the Egyptians, the Buddhists, and even the aborigines of § 2. coNSTAjn'mE the gkeat, 29 minion, and was invested in the emperor's view, according to the spirit of tlie cliurcli of his day, with a magic virtue.' It now took the place of the eagle and other field-badges, under which the heathen Romans had conquered the world. It was stamped on the imperial coin, and on the standards, helmets, and shields of the soldiers. Above all military representations of the cross the original imperial labarum shone in the richest decorations of gold and gems ; was intrusted to the truest and ' bravest fifty of the body guard; filled the Christians with the spirit of victory, and spread fear and terror among their ene- mies ; until, under the weak successors of Theodosius II., it fell out of use, and was lodged as a venerable relic in the imperial palace at Constantinople. Before this victory at Eome (which occuiTed October 27, 312), either in the spring or summer of 312, Constantino, in conjunction with his eastern colleague, Licinius, had published an edict of religious toleration, now not extant, but probably a step beyond the edict of the still anti-Christian Galerius in 311, which was likewise subscribed by Constantino and Li- cinius, as co-regents. Soon after, in January, 313, the two emperors issued from Milan a new edict (the third) on religion, still extant both in Latin and Greek, in which, in the spirit of religious eclecticism, they granted full freedom to all existing forms of worship, with special reference to the Christian. This religion the edict not only recognized in its existing limits, but Mexico, the cross seems to have been in use as a reugious symbol. Socrates relates (H. E. V. 1*7) that at the destruction of the temple of Serapis, among the hieroglyphic inscriptions forms of crosses were found, which pagans and Christians alike referred to their respective reUgions. Some of the heathen converts conversant with hiero- glyphic characters interpreted the form of the cross to mean the Life to come. Ac- cording to Prescott (Conquest of Mexico, iii. 338-340) the Spaniards found the cross ^ . among the objects of worship in the idol temples of Anahlac. l^^ ' Even church teachers long before Constantine, Justin, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, in downright opposition to this pagan antipathy, had found the sign of the cross everywhere on the face of nature and of human life ; in the military banners and trophies of victory, in the ship with swelling sails and extended oars, in the plow, in the fljTing bird, in man swimming or praying, in the features of the face and the form of the body with outstretched arms. Hence the daily use of the sign of the cross by