most dangerous temptation. Hence the vows of poverty and chastity which
early entered monastic life,--a life favorable to ascetic virtues. These
were indeed perverted. Everything good is perverted in this world.
Self-expiations, flagellations, sheepskin cloaks, root dinners,
repulsive austerities, followed. But these grew out of the noble desire
to keep unspotted from the world. And unless this desire had been
encouraged by the leaders of the Church, the Christian would soon have
been contaminated with the vices of Paganism, especially such as were
fashionable,--as is deplorably the case in our modern times, when it is
so difficult to draw the line between those who do not and those who do
openly profess the Christian faith. It is quite probable that
Christianity would not have triumphed over Paganism, had not
Christianity made so strong a protest against those vices and fashions
which were peculiar to an Epicurean age and an Epicurean philosophy.

It was at this period, when Christianity was a great spiritual power,
that Constantine arose. He was born at Naissus, in Dacia, A.D. 274, his
father being a soldier of fortune, and his mother the daughter of an
innkeeper. He was eighteen when his father, Constantius, was promoted by
the Emperor Diocletian to the dignity of Caesar,--a sort of
lieutenant-emperor,--and early distinguished himself in the Egyptian and
Persian wars. He was thirty-one when he joined his father in Britain,
whom he succeeded, soon after, in the imperial dignity. Like Theodosius,
he was tall, and majestic in manners; gracious, affable, and accessible,
like Julius; prudent, cautious, reticent, like Fabius; insensible to the
allurements of pleasure, and incredibly active and bold, like Hannibal,
Charlemagne, and Napoleon; a politic man, disposed to ally himself with
the rising party. The first few years of his reign, which began in A.D.
306, were devoted to the establishment of his power in Britain, where
the flower of the Western army was concentrated,--foreseeing a desperate