taken upon himself even a^ single obHgation of a catechumen ! When, after a life of almost uninterrupted health, he felt the approach of death, he was received into the number of catechumens by laying on of hands, and then formally ad- mitted by baptism into the full communion of the church in the year 337, the sixty-fifth year of his age, by the Arian (or properly Semi- Arian) bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, whom Tie had shortly before recalled from exile together with Arius.' His dying testimony then was, as to form, in favor of heretical rather than orthodox Christianity, but merely from accident, not from intention. lie meant the Christian as against the heathen religion, and whatever of Arianism may have polluted his baptism, was for the Greek church fully wiped out by the orthodox canonization. After the solemn ceremony he promised to live thenceforth worthily of a disciple of Jesus ; refused to wear again the imperial mantle of cunningly woven silk, richly ornamented with gold ; retained the white bap- tismal robe ; and died a few days after, on Pentecost, May 22, ' Hence Jerome says, Constantine was baptized into Arianism. And Dr. New- man, the ex-Tractarian, remarks, that in conferring his benefaction on the church he burdened it with the bequest of an heresy, which outlived his age by many cen- turies, and still exists in its effects in the divisions of the East (The Arians of the 4th Century, 1854, p. 138). But Eusebius (not the church historian) was probably the nearest bishop, and acted here not as a party leader. Constantine, too, in spite of the influence which the Arians had over him in his later years, considered himself constantly a true adherent of the Nicene faith, and he is reported by Theodoret (H. E. I. 32) to have ordered the recall of Athanasius from exile on his deathbed, in spite of the opposition of the Arian Eusebius. He was in these matters frequently misled by misrepresentations, and cared more for peace than for truth. The deeper significance of the dogmatic controversy was entirely beyond his sphere. Gibbon is right in this matter: "The credulous monarch, unskilled in the stratagems of theo- logical warfare, might be deceived by the modest and specious professions of the heretics, whose sentiments he never perfectly understood ; and while he protected Arius, and persecuted Athanasius, he still considered the council of Nice as the bul- wark of the Christian faith, and the peculiar glory of his own reign." Ch. xxi. 4 k § 3. THE SONS OF CONSTANTINE. 37 337, trusting in the mcrcv of God, and leaving a long, a fortu- nate, and a brilliant reign, such as none but Augustus, of all his predecessors, had enjoyed. " So passed away the first Christian Emperor, the first Defender of the Faith, the first Imperial patron of the Papal see, and of the whole Eastern Church, the first founder of the Holy Places, Pagan and Christian, orthodox