and avenge his wrongs, by shedding the blood of his enemies! Or, if we do not credit this account, what must we think of Constantine? and also of Christianity so far as it can be traced to, and made to depend on his influence? That candor and charity, however, which I ever wish to maintain, will oblige me in this, as in all other cases of a similar nature, to take the middle course. I shall therefore suppose that there was some natural appearance, perhaps a parhelion, the cause of which Constantine did not fully understand, and, from the appearance in the sky around it, his fancy, aided by superstition, painted to his imagination the supposed cross, as also the Greek words, which being pointed out to the soldiers they might easily imagine the same, or, if they did not, would not like to oppose the opinion of their general. Thus circumstanced, whether he really believed it to be any thing supernatural or not, Constantine was disposed to make the most of it he could, by turning it to the best possible account.[2]" [Footnote 2: "Upon the whole," says Dr. Priestly, (vol. 2, p. 96) "it appears to me most probable, that Constantine and his friends saw a natural parhelion, and that all the other circumstances were either imagined, or invented; and that the story has lost nothing in passing through the hands of Eusebius." Constantine also states (which I forgot to mention above) that "Christ appeared to him in a dream, the night following, with the very same sign which he had seen in the heavens, ordering him to make a military standard like it, and assuring him that it would be his security in battles." "By this note it will be perceived that I have compared what I have written with the part of the history from whence it was taken, and that I find nothing in it materially erroneous."] "It appears, however, after all, that Constantine was a man of great moderation, and on the whole, a very good man: yet, that he was not wholly clear from superstition is very evident from the following circumstance. Notwithstanding his extraordinary, and what was supposed by all, miraculous conversion, together with his great pretensions; and all that he had done for christianity, yet he neglected his own _baptism_ till he found he was very nigh his end; when he dressed himself in white, and the bed on which he lay, also all in white, in which dress he was baptised and partook of the _sacrament_! and thus he continued in _white_ till he died. This was undoubtedly from a mistaken notion, that there was something really purifying in those outward ceremonies, and also from the doctrine of the Navatians, a certain sect, whose opinions it was supposed he favoured, though not very openly, i.e. if a person committed sin after having been thus purified he could not die in union with the church.