“Lactantius also: ‘Let us celebrate the triumph of God with gladness; let us commemorate his victory with praise; let us make mention in our prayers day and night of the peace which, after ten years of persecution, he has conferred on his people.’ ”—_Ex. of Apoc._, pp. 343-4. Multitudes actually supposed the long-predicted kingdom of God was now being established. Says Mr. Elliott: “Can we wonder, then, at the exultation that was felt at this time by many, perhaps by most, that bore the Christian name: or at their high-raised expectations as to the future happy destiny of the Roman, now that it had been changed into the Christian, nation? It seemed to them as if it had become God’s covenanted people, like Israel of old: and the expectation was not unnatural,—an expectation strengthened by the remarkable tranquillity which, throughout the extent of the now reünited empire, followed almost immediately on Constantine’s establishment of Christianity,—that not only the temporal blessings of the ancient Jewish covenant would thenceforth in no small measure attach to them, but even those prophesied of as appertaining to the latter day. Hence on the medals of that era the emblem of the phœnix, all radiant with the rising sunbeams, to represent the empire as now risen into new life and hope, and its legend which spoke of the happy restoration of the times. Hence, in forgetfulness of all former prognostications of Antichrist and fearful coming evils, the reference by some of the most eminent of their bishops to the latter-day blessedness, as even then about fulfilling. The state of things was such, Eusebius tells us, that it looked like ‘the very image of the kingdom of Christ.’ The city built by the emperor at Jerusalem, beside the new and magnificent Church of the Holy Sepulchre,—the sacred capital, as it were, to the new empire,—might be, perhaps, he suggested, the New Jerusalem, the theme of so many prophecies. Yet again, on occasion of the opening of the new church at Tyre, he expressed in the following glowing language, not his own feelings only, but those, we may be sure, of not a few of the congregated Christian ministers and people that heard him: ‘What so many of the Lord’s saints and confessors before our time desired to see, and saw not, and to hear, and heard not, that behold now before our eyes! It was of us the prophet spake when he told how the wildernesses and solitary places should be glad, and the desert rejoice and blossom as the lily. Whereas the church was widowed and desolate, her children have now to exclaim to her, Make room, enlarge thy borders! the place is too strait for us. The promise is fulfilling to her, In righteousness shalt thou be established: all thy children shall be taught of God: and great shall be the peace of thy children.’ ”—_Horæ Apoc._, v. i., pp. 230-1.