believe he copied immediately from the dictation of St. John. "His history, as delivered by authors of the fourth and following centuries, particularly by Nyssen, it is to be feared, has in it somewhat of fiction; but," adds Dr. Lardner (yes, they are the very words of Lardner himself)— "there can be no reasonable doubt made but he was very successful in making converts to Christianity in the country of Pontus, about the middle of the third century; and that beside his natural and acquired abilities, he was favoured with extraordinary gifts of the spirit, and wrought miracles of surprising power. The plain and express testimonies of Basil and others, at no great distance of time and place from Gregory, must be reckoned sufficient grounds of credit with regard to these things. The extraordinary gifts of the spirit had not then entirely ceased; but Gregory was favoured with such gifts greatly beyond the common measure of other Christians or bishops at that season. Yet, as St. Jerom intimates, it is likely that he was more famous for his signs and wonders than his writings.' With respect to Gregory's appointing anniversary festivals and solemnities in honour of the martyrs of his diocese, (as I have already given the important passage from Mosheim, in the chapter of Admissions,+) Dr. Lardner contends against it, that he is "unwilling to take this particular upon the credit of Nyssen; because this childish method of making converts appears unworthy of so wise and good a man as Gregory. Nor is it likely that those festivals should be instituted by one who had the gift of miracles, and therefore a much better way of bringing men to religion and virtue." See all these passages, purporting to be from Dr. Lardner's immortal work on the Credibility of the Gospel History, in his first volume, under the article St. Gregory of Neocæsarea. I have selected this Life of Pope Gregory the Wonder-worker, not so much to show the picture as the painter; and to set before my readers a demonstration of the important and consequential fact, that the ablest and most rational advocate of Christianity, is, in its vindication, driven on the necessity of using a sort of language which, on any other theme than that, he His writings are not to be disparaged, since they afford the clearest evidence of the genuineness of his miracles, by proving that he was no conjuror. + See DIEGESIS, p. 48. would have been ashamed of. We see the most eminent of all writers on the Christian evidences, driven to the God-help-us of subscribing to a belief in the most ridiculous and contemptible miracles, rather than he will accept, even from his own authorities, the clear and natural solution of the difficulty-even that he who was ordained a Christian bishop, while yet he continued a Pagan, should have owed his success in converting others to the same slide-the-butcher system which had been so successfully practiced on himself; that is, letting them continue Pagans all the while, only calling them Christians. From the short notice which Socrates has of this Father, it should seem that the Holy Ghost was somewhat premature in his gifts to Gregory, since he got possession of the power of working miracles before he became a convert to the Christian faith: "being yet a layman, he wrought many miracles, he cured the sick, chased away devils by his epistles, and converted the Gentiles and Ethnics unto the faith, not only with words, but by deeds of far greater force."* ST. CYPRIAN, A.D. 248. Bishop of Carthage. Thascius Cæcilius Cyprianus was an African, who was converted from Paganism to Christianity, in the year 246, and suffered martyrdom in the year 258. So that the greatest part of his life was spent in heathenism. Cyprian had a good estate, which he sold and gave to the poor immediately upon his conversion. His advancement to the highest offices of the church was strikingly rapid; he was made presbyter the year after his conversion, and bishop of Carthage, the year after that. And let it not seem invidious to state, what may be a characteristic truth, in the words of Dr. Lardner himself, "The estate which Cyprian had sold for the benefit of the poor, was by some favourable providence restored to him again." He was bishop of a most flourishing church, the metropolis of a province, and neither in fame nor fortune a loser by his conversion. There can be no just grounds to disparage the renown of his martyrdom: which though unquestionably dis * Socrates Scholast. lib. 4, c. 22. graceful to the government under which it happened, was not attended with any of those aggravating circumstances of childish cruelty, which throw an air of suspicion over almost all the other narratives of martyrdom, that have come down to us. Cyprian had rendered himself obnoxious to the government under which he had long enjoyed his episcopal dignity in peace and safety:* and it is impossible not to see from the intolerant turbulence of his character, his restless ambition, and his inordinate claims of more than human authority; that more than human patience would have been required on the part of any government on earth, to have brooked the eternal clashings of the civil administration with his assumed superior authority over the minds of the subjects of the empire. He had been twice banished, and subsequently recalled, and reinstated in his possessions and dignities, but again and again persisting in holding councils and assemblies, and enacting decrees, in defiance and actual solicitation of martyrdom, he was judicially sentenced to be beheaded, upon which, he exclaimed, God be thanked, and suffered accordingly, on the 14th of September, in the year 258. As his own historians tell the tale, his execution was attended with no additional circumstance of cruelty, anger, or indignation, but occurred amidst the sympathy of his Christian friends, and the admiration and regret even of those whom a sense of public duty had enforced to condemn him. "It is needless," says St. Jerom," to give a catalogue of his works, they are brighter than the sun." St. Austin calls him a blessed martyr, and there can be no doubt that he has as good a claim, as any other tyrant who ever expiated his tyranny in the same way, to that title. "The constitution of every particular church in those times was a welltempered monarchy. The bishop was the monarch, and the presbytery was his senate."-Principles of the Cyprianic age, by John Sage, a Scottish bishop, 1695, p. 32. "Cyprian carried his spiritual authority to such a pitch, as to claim the right of putting his rebellious and unruly deacon to death."—Ibid. p. 33. Surely here was cause enough to induce any government, to call such a traitor to some sort of reckoning! CHAPTER XLIII. THE FATHERS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. CONSTANTINE, A.D. 306. THE character with whom, next to Origen, it most concerns the Christian inquirer to be acquainted, is the emperor Constantine the Great, under whose reign and auspices, Christianity became the established religion, and but for whom, as far as human probabilities can be calculated, it never would have come down to us. CONSTANTINE, called the Great, son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, surnamed Chlorus, and Helena, was born on the 27th of February, in the year of Christ 272, or as some think, in 273, or as others, in 274, was converted to the Christian religion on the night of the 26th of October, A.D. 312, became sole emperor both of the East and West, about the year 324, reigned about thirtyone years from the death of his father, Constantius; and died on Whitsunday, May 22d, 348,* Felicianus and Tatian being consuls, the second year of the two hundred and seventy-eighth Olympiad, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.† The bearings on the evidences of the Christian religion demand from us-that we should inform ourselves of the character of this great hero of the cause, 1. As drawn by Christian historians and divines, 2. As appearing in the incontrovertible evidence of admitted facts, 3. The ostensible motives of his conversion, 4. The evidences of the Christian religion as they appeared to him. I. "I do, by no means," says Dr. Lardner, "think that Constantine was a man of cruel disposition.-(p. 342.) Though there may have been some transactions in his. reign which cannot be easily justified, and others that must be condemned: yet we are not to consider Constantine as a cruel prince or a bad man."‡ * Lardner's Credibility, vol. ii. p. 327. + Socrates Scholasticus, lib. i. c. 26. See my 14th letter from Oakham, published in the 1st. and 2d. volumes of the Lion. "Constantine was remarkably tall, of a comely and majestic presence, and great bodily strength.* It may be concluded, from the whole tenor of his life, that he was a person of no mean capacity. Indeed, his mind was equal to his fortune, great as it was, his chastity,† together with his valour, justice, and prudence, is commended by a heathen panegyrist; his many acts of bounty to the poor, and his just edicts, are arguments of a merciful disposition and a love of justice. He was, moreover, a sincere believer of the Christian religion, of which he, first of all the Roman emperors, made an open profession. "In a word, the conversion of Constantine to Christianity was a favour of divine providence, and of great advantage to the Christians, and his reign may be reckoned a blessing to the Roman empire on the whole." Thus far, Dr. Lardner.t I find no directly drawn character of Constantine in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, except that he tells us, in general terms, that "Constantine the emperor, fixing his whole mind upon such things as set forth the glory of God, behaved himself in all things as becometh a Christian, erecting churches from the ground, and adorning them with goodly and gorgeous consecrated ornaments: moreover, shutting up the temples of the Heathens, and publishing unto the world (in way of derision) the gay images glittering within them."S In his decrees and letters as preserved by this historian, Constantine entitles himself "the puissant, the mighty, and noble emperor," and in the synodical epistle of the Council of Nice, he is called "the most virtuous emperor, the most godly emperor, Constantine." || The mouldering pages of the historian Evagrius, who had been one of the emperor's lieutenants, are enlivened with a truly evangelical invective against the Ethnic Zosimus, in which no better names than, “ wicked spirit! thou fiend of hell! O thou lewd varlet!" &c. are found, for his having dared to defame the godly and noble emperor, Constantine.¶ But Eusebius-who would never lie nor falsify, except to promote the glory of God,-the conscientious "Whether Helena was the lawful wife of Constantius Chlorus, or only his concubine, is a disputable point."-Lardner, vol. ii p. 322. + What has that to do with it? Vol. ii. p. 345. |