the early Christians. Comp. vol. i. § 100. 30 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590. also — what neither the first nor perhaps the second edict had done — allowed every heathen subject to adopt it M^th impu- nity.' At the same time the church buildings and propei-ty confiscated in the Diocletian persecution were ordered to be restored, and private property-owners to be indemnified from the imperial treasury. Ill this notable edict, however, we should look in vain for the modern Protestant and Anglo-American theory of religious liberty as one of the universal and inalienable rights of man. Sundry voices, it is true, in the Christian church itself, at that time and even before, declared firmly against all compulsion in religion." But the spirit of the Roman empire was too absolntistic to abandon the prerogative of a supervision of public worship. The Constantinian toleration was a temporary measure of state policy, which, as indeed the edict expressly states the motive, promised the greatest security to the public peace and the protection of all divine and heavenly powers, for emperor and empire. It was, as the result teaches, but the necessary transition step to a new order of things. It opened the door to the elevation of Christianity, and spe- ' " Haec ordinanda esse credidimus .... ut daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potestatem sequendi religionem, quam quisque voluisset . . . ut nulli omnino facultatem obnegandam putaremus, qui vel observationi Christianorum, vel ei religion! mentem suam dederet, quam ipse sibi aptissimam esse sentiret . . . ut, amotis omni- bus omnino conditionibus [by which are meant, no doubt, the restrictions of tolera- tion in the two former edicts], nunc libere ac simpliciter unusquisque eorum qui eandem observandae religioni^ Christianorum gerunt voluntatem, citra ullam in- quictudinom et molestiam sui id ipsum observare contendant." Lact., De mort. persec. c. 48 (ii. p. 282, ed. Fritzsche). Eusebius gives the edict in a stiff and obscure Greek translation, with some variations, H. E. x. 5. Comp. Niceph. H. E. vii. 41. Also a special essay on the three edicts of toleration, by Theod. Keim in the Tiibinger Theolog. Jahrbiicher for 1852. "Here come in the remarkable passages of Tertullian, cited in vol. i. § 51. Lactantius likewise, in the beginning of the fourth century, says, Instit. div. 1. v. c. 19 (i. p. 267 sq. ed. Lips.): "Non est opus vi et injuria, quia religio cogi uon potest ; verbis potius, quam verberibus res agenda est, ut sit voluntas. . . . Defen- denda religio est, non occidendo, sed moriendo ; non saevitia, sed patientia ; non Rcelere, sed fide. . . . Nam si sanguine, si tormentis, si malo religionem defendeii' velis, jam non defendetur ilia, sed poUuetur atque violabitur. Nihil est enim t;uii voluntarium, quam religio, in qua si animus sacrificantis aversus est, jam sublatu, jam nulla est." Comp. c. 20. § 2. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT, 31 cifically of Catholic hierarchical Christianity, with its cxelu- siveness towards heretical and schismatic sects, to be