physical system towards a moral object, is a miracle only different in degree from an interference with it for such an object. For this is to impose on it a constraint beyond and above itself, i. e. a supernatural constraint; and if it is subordinate to moral laws, why should it not sometimes give way to them? In short, does the case ever stand thus, if it may be reverently said, that the Almighty would address man, did not nature stand in the way? Does He fetter Himself with its laws, who even in the days of His flesh did but submit to them, in order in the event to dispense with them? Such explanations then either imply that the inviolability of creation is more sacred than a Purpose of the Creator, or they tamper with historical evidence for an insufficient end. To mutilate the evidence is to incur all the difficulty of denying it, with none of the gain. So this question may be passed over.

In the next place the à priori aspect of the reported miracle, if it is so to be called, is in its favour. The approaching conversion of the Roman empire, in the person of its head, was as great an event as any in Christian history. Constantine's submission of his power to the Church has been a pattern for all Christian monarchs since, and the commencement of her state establishment to this day; and on the other hand the fortunes of the Roman Empire are in prophecy apparently connected with her in a very intimate manner, which we are not yet able fully to comprehend. If any event might be said to call for a miracle, it was this; whether to signalize it or to bring it about. Again, portents in the sky preceded the final destruction of Jerusalem, and are predicted in Scripture as forerunners of the last day. Moreover our Lord's prophecy of "the Sign of the Son of Man in heavenh" was anciently

understood of the Cross. And further, the sign of the Cross was at the time, and had been from the beginning, a received symbol and instrument of Christian devotion, and cannot be ascribed to a then rising superstition. Tertullian speaks of it as an ordinary rite for sanctifying all the ordinary events of the day; it was used in exorcisms; and what is still more to the point, it is regarded by St. Justin, Tertullian, and Minucius as visibly impressed upon natural forms and on the arts of social life, as well as introduced into the types of the Old Testament.

One should be inclined then to receive the wonderful event in question on very slight evidence, if that were good as far as it went; and now let us see what, and of what kind, is producible in its behalf. It is on the whole sufficient, yet not without its difficulties.

In the panegyrical oration delivered immediately upon the victory the speaker, who is a Pagan, asks, "What God, what "Divine Presence encouraged thee, that when nearly all thy "companions in arms and commanders not only had secret

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misgivings but had open fears of the omen, yet against the "counsels of men, against the warnings of the diviners, thou "didst by thyself perceive that the time of delivering the city was come." Now here an omen is mentioned of a public nature, which dismayed the heathen priests and soldiers; it is remarkable too that what it was is not mentioned. All this would be sufficiently accounted for, if it was the sign of the Cross which they had seen; a spectacle of all others of bad augury with the hierarchy of the pagan city . And in corroboration of this interpretation, Eusebius in his own account of the miracle, tells us that on sight of the

Cornel. à Lapid. in loc. Matt. and Maldonat. in loc.

i Baron. Ann. 312. 14.

Julian is said to have found a cross upon the entrails of a victim he was offering in sacrifice; the sight ppi

παρέσχε καὶ ἀγωνίαν. Naz. Orat, iv. 54. He upbraids the Christians with their worship of the wood of the Cross, and signing it upon their foreheads and sculpturing it upon their dwellings. Cyril. contr. Julian, p. 194.

apparition Constantine, who was still fluctuating between Christianity and Paganism, was at first much distressed from a doubt what it portended.

Next, about the year 314 or 315, that is, three years after the event, Constantine erected his triumphal arch at Rome which still remains, with an inscription testifying that he had gained the victory "instinctu divinitatis, mentis magni"tudine1."

Further, before 314, Lactantius or Cæcilius, as we determine the author, published his De Mortibus Persecutorum; in which he asserts, not in any rhetorical tone or in form of panegyric, but in the grave style of history, that Constantine, in consequence of a dream, caused the initial letter of the word Christ to be inscribed on the shields of his soldiers and that he thereby gained the victory. "Constantine," he says, "was "admonished in sleep to mark the heavenly sign of God on the shields, and so to engage the enemy. He did as "he was bidden, and marks the name of Christ on the

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shields, by the letter x drawn across them, with the top "circumflexed. Armed with this sign his troops take up arms. The enemy marches to meet them without their imperial Commander, and passes over the bridge," &c." Here is no mention of an apparition, but still the author speaks of "the heavenly sign."

On the first of March 321, Nazarius, a pagan orator of celebrity, pronounced, apparently at Rome, and not in Constantine's presence, a panegyrical oration upon the Emperor. In this he speaks of the assistance which the latter had received against Maxentius in the following terms :-" Thou "didst fight, O Emperor, by compulsion; but it was thy best

"claim upon victory, that thou didst not seek it.

...

Peace was

In short

" denied to him for whom victory was destined.. "it is the common talk of all the Gallic provinces, that hosts "were seen, who bore on them the character of divine messengers. And though heavenly things use not to come to "sight of man, in that the simple and uncompounded sub"stance of their subtle nature escapes his heavy and dim "perception, yet those, thy auxiliaries, bore to be seen and to "be heard, and when they had testified to thy high merit "they fled from the contagion of mortal eyes. And what "accounts are given of that vision, of the vigour of their "frames, the size of their limbs, the eagerness of their zeal! "Their flashing bosses shot an awful radiance, and their

heavenly arms burned with a fearful light; such did they "come, that they might be understood to be thine. And "thus they spoke, thus they were heard to say, 'We seek "Constantine; we go to aid Constantine.' Even divine "natures have their boastings, and heavenly natures are "touched by ambition. Warriors who had glided down "from heaven, warriors who were divinely sent, even they "did glory that they were marching with thee. Their "leader, I suppose, was thy father Constantius," &c.""

It is impossible to doubt from these contemporaneous witnesses, witnesses more exactly contemporaneous than are commonly producible, that some remarkable portent appeared, or was generally believed in, when Constantine was in anticipation of his engagement with Maxentius, and about the time he first professed Christianity. After all allowances for the rhetoric of Nazarius, his story surely must have had some foundation; by it he is virtually doing homage to a religion which he disowns, though he adroitly converts it to the service of Paganism, by recurring to the old heathen prodigies, such as the appearance of Castor and Pollux, and seeking to Ap. Baron. Ann. 312. 11.

0

authenticate them by the recent apparition. Even if the Cross appeared, he could not be expected to mention it; he could not have done more than he has done. The same may be said for the still earlier orator, who is obliged to allude to the Emperor's Christianity, while he is complimenting him on having rightly interpreted what his friends thought an omen of evil. Lactantius, though he adds nothing to the evidence of the apparition in the sky P, testifies to the general idea of some wonderful occurrence having attended the conversion of the Emperor. He testifies also to a fact which from its boldness requires accounting for, Constantine's marking the symbol of the Cross upon the arms of his soldiers. Nor is this the only indication of some extraordinary influence then exerted upon the Emperor's mind. Not to dwell on the words already quoted from his arch, which make no express mention of the Cross, we find him even going so far as to form a new military standard, and that is the Labarum, or Standard of the Cross. And on his entering Rome in triumph he forthwith erected a statue of himself with a Cross in his hand, and an inscription to the effect that "with that saving "sign" he had delivered the city from a tyrant. But the most remarkable evidence in point is a medal, extant in the last century, which bears the figure of the Labarum with the very words "In this sign thou shalt conquer 4." Thus his assaults upon Paganism and the supernatural explanation of them go together; one and the same auspicious omen is repeated, whether in ensigns, medals, or monuments. And indeed, if we may dare to judge of the course of Providence in this instance by its general laws, it is scarcely possible to think that