The History of Christianity - John S. C. Abbott (bookstand for reading .txt) 📗

The Devotion of Constantine to Christianity.—​Constantius and the Barbarians.—​Conspiracy of Magnentius.—​The Decisive Battle.—​Decay of Rome.—​Fearful Retribution.—​Noble Sentiments of the Bishop of Alexandria.—​Death of Constantius.—​Gallus and Julian.—​Julian enthroned.—​His Apostasy.—​His Warfare against Christianity.—​Unavailing Attempt to rebuild Jerusalem.—​Persecution.—​His Expedition to the East, and Painful Death.

HE Christian Emperor Constantine, during his reign, issued many earnest appeals to his subjects, entreating them to abandon paganism, and embrace Christianity. Heliopolis, in Phœnicia, was a heathen city, which had surrendered itself to the most degrading and abominable rites of idolatry. There was not a single known Christian in the city.

The emperor sent workmen to the place, and, at his own expense, erected a very beautiful church edifice. He then selected several clergymen of marked ability, and commissioned them to preach the gospel there. At the same time he placed in the hands of the pastors a large sum of money for the relief of the poor, saying,—

“I hope that the conversion of the souls of the pagans may be promoted by doing good to their bodies.”

The most convincing evidence which the community in general can have of the reality of the Christian religion is to be found in the lives of its professors. When we compare the Christian Constantine with most of the pagan emperors who had gone before him, all must be impressed with the greatness of the change.

The palace is a dangerous place for the education and the training of children. Constantine had three sons, who bore severally the names of Constantine, Constantius, and Constans: they were all dissipated. Upon the death of their father, the empire was divided between them. The eldest son, Constantine, who was twenty-one years of age, had assigned to him Spain, Gaul (now France), and all the territory west of the Alps. Constantius, who was but twenty years old, took Asia and Egypt. Constans, who had attained but seventeen years, received, as his share, Italy and Africa.183

Constantine the father, with his vigorous arm, had held the barbarians in check. God had apparently heard his prayers, and had given him the victory over his enemies. His death was the signal for a general war. Constantius, in the East, was soon struggling against an inundation of Tartar tribes. The usual scenes of blood and misery ensued, as the hostile armies, now in surging waves of victory, now in the refluent billows of defeat, swept the doomed land.

While Constantius was thus engaged struggling against the barbarians on the plains of Asia, Constantine was plotting an expedition against his brother Constans, who was a mere boy, proud, conceited, and incompetent. But the race is not always to the swift. Constantine, with a large army, crossed the Julian Alps, and invaded Italy to wrest that kingdom from his brother. But Constans, whom Constantine had despised, had able generals. They lured Constantine into an ambush, routed his army, killed him, and annexed all his realms to the Western empire.

Soon after this, a sturdy general, Magnentius, formed a conspiracy in the army, killed young Constans, and was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers. All the Western and Central realms acknowledged him.

Constantius, from the East, put his veteran army in motion, and advanced from the plains of Mesopotamia to make war upon Magnentius and to avenge his brother’s death. The whole then known world was thrown into commotion by this strife, which was to decide who should be master of this world. War and woe held high carnival. There were famine, pestilence, and death, smouldering towns, blood-stained fields covered with the slain, and despairing shrieks of widows and orphans.

The hostile armies met in vast numbers on the River Drave, not far from its entrance into the Danube. It was one of those battles which was to decide the fate of the world. Constantius, aware of the military ability of his antagonist, wisely, but not heroically, retired to the tower of a church where he could overlook the field. He left the conduct of the day to one of his veteran generals.

A fiercer battle than that which ensued was perhaps never fought. Roman and barbarian legions were intermingled, blending in the fight. The air was darkened with stones, arrows, and javelins. Clouds of horsemen, glittering in their polished armor, swept the field like moving statues of steel, trampling the dead and wounded beneath iron hoofs. Night terminated the conflict.

The army of Magnentius, overpowered by numbers, was almost annihilated. Fifty-four thousand were left dead upon the field. They sold their lives dearly. A still greater number of the troops of Constantius lay drenched in blood by their side. Over a hundred and twenty thousand perished in this one battle. Thus did Rome, in civil strife, devour her own children. Thus was the way opened for the irruption and triumph of the barbarians.

In the darkness of night, Magnentius, throwing aside his imperial mantle, mounted a fleet horse, and, accompanied by a few friends, attempted to escape through the Julian Alps. He reached the city of Aquileia, at the head of the Adriatic Sea, not far from the present city of Trieste. Here, amidst the pathless defiles of the mountains, he rallied his surviving troops around him, and made another stand.

But city after city abandoned his cause, and raised the banner of the victorious Constantius. He then fled to Gaul. Constantius vigorously pursued him. At length, hedged in on every side, the wretched Magnentius, in despair, terminated his life by falling upon his own sword. He thus obtained an easier death than he could have hoped for from his foe.

Thus was the whole Roman world again brought under the sway of a single sovereign. Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, reigned without a rival, from the western shores of Britain to the River Tigris, and from the unexplored realms of Central Germany to the interior of Africa. But over these wide realms there was nowhere happiness or peace. The benevolence of God seemed to be thwarted by the wickedness of mankind.

The Goths, in merciless bands, were sweeping over Gaul, leaving the path behind them crimsoned with blood, and blackened with smouldering ruins. Germanic tribes, pitiless as wolves, were flocking across the Danube, darkening the air with the smoke of burning villages, and rending the skies with the shrieks of their victims. From the vast plains of Tartary, bands of shaggy monsters, fierce as the beasts which roamed their wilds, came rushing across the eastern frontier into the war-scathed empire. There was peace nowhere. Every day brought its battles and its woes.

The ancient city of Rome, no longer the capital of the empire, was now crumbling to decay. Constantius, from curiosity, visited it. He found the population still immense, and was received by the inhabitants with great enthusiasm. The imperial palace which he occupied had entertained no royal guest for thirty-two years. After spending a month in the city, admiring the monuments of genius and art which were spread over the seven hills, he was suddenly recalled to meet an appalling irruption of the barbarians from the Danube. They were ravaging that wide and beautiful valley with every conceivable atrocity, and had already captured many thousand Romans,—men, women, and children,—whom they were carrying as slaves into their inaccessible wilds. Among these prisoners were men of the highest rank, and ladies of refinement and beauty.

Constantius placed himself at the head of a veteran army, and pursued the barbarians with such vigor as to compel them to drop many of their captives and much of their plunder, and to retreat in confusion to their forest-glades. He then turned his legions towards the east, and hurried along by forced marches towards the River Euphrates. Here a barbarian chieftain, called Sapor, was ravaging Mesopotamia with an army of a hundred thousand savage men from the wilds of Tartary.

The Roman emperor was prosecuting with great vigor this arduous campaign, when he heard the tidings of a revolt in Gaul, and that the army there had proclaimed its general as emperor. Burning with rage, he commenced a rapid march with his legions towards the west, when he was seized with violent sickness which arrested his steps. While languishing on a bed of pain, with the sceptre of imperial power crumbling in his hands, and death staring him in the face, the sins of his life rose appallingly before him. It soon became manifest that his earthly career was drawing to a close.

Constantius had been politically in favor of Christianity as the religion of the State. He regarded the pagan party as his political enemy. Destitute himself of the spirit of Christianity, he commenced the unrelenting persecution of his pagan adversaries, confiscating their property, and sending them to the rack, the dungeon, and the stake.

It is remarkable all through history, how, under the government of God, there seems to be developed a system of retribution. We ever meet that principle in the biography of individuals, and in the vicissitudes of nations. The