A. D. possibly murdered by, those who spread that report. His son Numerian was shortly afterwards murdered by his father-in-law Aper, the prætorian prefect. The traitor expiated his crime by death. Carinus was slain by a man whose conjugal honour he had insulted. Change in the Form of Government. 284. After the death of Carus and his sons, the reins of empire fell into the firm hands of Diocletian, by birth a Dalmatian, a wise and able prince. The enemies of the empire pressed now with redoubled force on the frontiers and Diocletian saw that the vigilance and activity of one mind could not suffice to attend to the multifarious concerns of the state. The events of the last reigns had also taught him the danger of committing the command of the legions to officers who might so readily become competitors for the throne. He therefore resolved to share the imperial dignity with his friend and comrade in arms, Maximianus Herculius, to whom, as being of a rugged active character, he committed the West, while himself took charge of the East. Each bore the title of Augustus, and each appointed a successor under that of Cæsar. The Cæsars were younger and more active men, and the more exposed parts of the empire were committed to them. Diocletian administered Asia; his Cæsar, Galerius, rough and soldierly, governed Thrace and the countries on the Danube. Maximian retained Italy, Spain, Africa, and the islands; his Cæsar, Constantius Chlorus, a worthy descendant of the late emperor Claudius, governed Gaul and Britain. Rome ceased to be an imperial residence: that of Maximian was mostly at Milan; Diocletian resided chiefly at Nicomedia. A farther innovation made by this emperor was the introduction of the oriental splendour of attire and adoration of the emperors. He and his colleague with great solemnity assumed, on the same day, the diadem and other insignia of eastern royalty. Perhaps nothing better could have been devised for maintaining the empire than this partition of power. The experienced monarchs could give attention to internal affairs, while the younger and more active emperors elect, away from the corruption of capitals, might keep up the discipline and military virtues of the legions. Accordingly we find that the Goths were held in check, the Allemanni defeated, Britain, where Carausius had in the late reign raised a rebellion, reduced to obedience, and the Persians forced to a peace advantageous and honourable to the empire. But it was not to be expected that four princes could reign together in unanimity, or that Cæsars would patiently wait till death made way for them to the higher rank. It was not long, therefore, before contention and war broke out among them. While Diocletian ruled, he kept his colleagues in bounds, exerting over them the influence of a superior mind. But after a reign of twenty years, feeling the infirmities of age approach, he resolved to abandon the cares of empire, and retire to pass the evening of his life in seclusion in his native province. He signified his intention to Maximian, who reluctantly assented to a joint abdication. The Cæsars were raised to the rank of Augusti: Constantius was assigned Severus for his Cæsar; Galerius conferred that dignity on his nephew Daza. A. D. Constantius did not long enjoy the dignity he adorned. 306. Galerius soon became odious to the Romans; and Maximian took advantage of this circumstance to make his son Maxentius master of Italy. Severus was forced to yield. In the mean time, Constantine, the son of Constantius, had completely won the hearts of the British and Gallic legions, by his military and civil virtues, and he soon forced Galerius and Maxentius to acknowledge him as joint-emperor. The debauchery and cruelty of Maxentius were now grown intolerable to the Romans. The nobles fled from the city; the labours of agriculture were neglected; his own father was forced to fly from him and take refuge with Constantine, who had married his daughter. But the restless and depraved old man could not abstain from machinations against his son-in-law and protector; and Constantine, not to be himself the victim, compelled him to end his unquiet life by voluntary death, the mode of which was left to his own choice. Invited by the 312. Roman nobles, Constantine marched against Maxentius. A battle took place in the neighbourhood of Rome: Maxentius fell, and the whole West obeyed Constantine. A. D. 311. 313. Galerius was now dead, and his nephew, Maximianus Daza, whom he had raised to the rank of a Cæsar, had followed him. Constantine associated with himself Licinius, a man who by military merit had risen to the dignity of a Cæsar. They named their sons, Crispus and Licinius, to be their Cæsars. The old emperor Diocletian died, as was said by his own hand, about this time. Constantine now openly professed himself a Christian. He put an end to the persecution which had raged against that sect for the last ten years with all the violence of the expiring storm. His conversion, perhaps, was sincere possibly he saw that the Christians were become the most powerful body in the empire, and that the wisest policy was to give way to what could not be resisted without imminent danger. He issued two edicts; one assigning them the temples of the gods, in places where they had not suitable churches; the other, giving them the preference in all appointments to civil and military offices; and thus, in less than three centuries from its origin, Christianity became, in effect, the established religion of the empire. Constantine, however, deferred his baptism till a little before his death. Unanimity did not long subsist between the emperors. Wars broke out, and Licinius was eventually deprived of his dignity and life by his victorious colleague, who now 324. reigned alone. Seeing that the North-east, where the powerful nation of the Goths was settled, was the quarter from which most danger was to be apprehended, and also the growing strength of Persia, Constantine deemed Rome too remote a residence for the sovereign, and he A. D. fixed on Byzantium, which he enlarged and named from 330. himself, as the seat of imperial power. This measure has been blamed, as leaving Italy exposed to the irruptions of the barbarians; but continuance at Rome, or any other plan to ward off the inevitable evil, would have been equally exposed to censure. The virtue and energy which had gained the empire were gone; the tribes of the North had added skill and discipline to their numbers, strength, and courage. Corruption of Christianity. The Christian religion, as given to man by its divine Author, was perfect in truth and simplicity; but it was sent forth into a world in which error abounded, and the stream had hardly left the fountain when it became defiled with mundane impurities. Earnestly and repeatedly does the zealous Paul inveigh against those who mingled what he called the " beggarly elements" and the "fables" of Judaism with the spiritual precepts of the Gospel; and strongly does he warn to avoid "profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of knowledge, falsely so called." But the evil was not to be checked, and Oriental and Grecian philosophy rapidly mingled with Gospel simplicity. The heat of eastern climates inspires indolence and the love of contemplation. The human mind becomes absorbed in rapturous visions of light and expanse, and men learn to regard the soul, the commencement of whose existence they cannot conceive, as having descended from the realms of supernal light into the body, its present darksome dungeon, whence it was to reascend to its former blissful abode. Hence the body being a prison, and matter evil, the object of the soul was to emancipate itself from their influence. This was to be best effected, it was thought, by mortification of the flesh and senses; and hence the voluntary mutilations, the corporeal tortures, rigid abstinence, and all that system of self-torment which distinguishes the yogee, the fakeer, and the monk. Others, but fewer in number, drew a contrary conclusion, and maintained that the acts of its impure companion were indifferent to the pure soul; and they freely indulged in the practice of the grossest sensuality. This eastern doctrine, mixed with the Persian one of the two principles, entered, under the name of Gnosis, or knowledge, into Christianity, even in the days of the apostles; and it was, perhaps, already not unknown to the Essenes. All the heresies of which we read in the early days of the church were founded, more or less, on the Gnosis; and one of the favourite doctrines of these sects was, that this world and its creator were evil, and that Jesus was a being produced by wisdom, who took the appearance of a body, in which he was apparently erucified by the agents of the creator of the world. With this knowledge of the East the philosophy of the West combined to debase the truth of the Gospel. This philosophy was the New Platonism, which had fixed its chief seat at Alexandria, in Egypt, a country ever fertile of error and corruption. Its followers undertook the defence of the old religion; they allegorised all its indecent and extravagant legends, and set it in opposition to the new faith. Some of these philosophers became Christians, and retained their love of mystery and word-straining artifices: some Christians were educated in their schools. The Jews of Egypt had, as the works of Philo show, long since been familiar with the allegorising system, which was now unsparingly applied to the simple precepts and narrations of the Old Testament: and the sober Christian of the present day would stare with amazement at the numerous and marvellous senses they were made to bear in the writings of the learned Origen. By this system any words could be made to bear any sense; and what a field for corruption this gave, is too evident to need proof. Yet, as evil has always its attendant good, this very corruption of Christianity may have aided its diffusion, by procuring it a more ready acceptance among the educated classes of |