It can hardly be asserted that Christianity had much influence upon this change. By accelerating in some degree that withdrawal of the virtuous energies of the people from the sphere of government which had long been in process, it prevented the great improvement of morals, which it undoubtedly effected, from appearing perceptibly in public affairs. It taught a doctrine of passive obedience, which its disciples nobly observed in the worst periods of persecution. On the other hand, the Christians emphatically repudiated the ascription of Divine honours to the sovereign, and they asserted with heroic constancy their independent worship, in defiance of the law. After the time of Constantine, however, their zeal became far less pure, and sectarian interests wholly governed their principles. Much misapplied learning has been employed in endeavouring to extract from the Fathers a consistent doctrine concerning the relations of subjects to their sovereigns; but every impartial observer may discover that the principle upon which they acted was exceedingly simple. When a sovereign was sufficiently orthodox in his opinions, and sufficiently zealous in patronising the Church and in persecuting the heretics, he was extolled as an angel. When his policy was opposed to the Church, he was represented as a dæmon. The estimate which Gregory of Tours has given of the character of Clovis, though far more frank, is not a more striking instance of moral perversion than the fulsome and indeed blasphemous adulation which Eusebius poured upon Constantine—a sovereign whose character was at all times of the most mingled description, and who, shortly after his conversion, put to a violent death his son, his nephew, and his wife. If we were to estimate the attitude of ecclesiastics to sovereigns by the language of Eusebius, we should suppose that they ascribed to them a direct Divine inspiration, and exalted the Imperial dignity to an extent that was before unknown.(538) But when Julian mounted the throne, the whole aspect of the Church was changed. This great and virtuous, though misguided sovereign, whose private life was a model of purity, who carried to the throne the manners, tastes, and friendships of a philosophic life, and who proclaimed and, with very slight exceptions, acted with the largest and most generous toleration, was an enemy of the Church, and all the vocabulary of invective was in consequence habitually lavished upon him. Ecclesiastics and laymen combined in insulting him, and when, after a brief but glorious reign of less than two years, he met an honourable death on the battle-field, neither the disaster that had befallen the Roman arms, nor the present dangers of the army, nor the heroic courage which the fallen emperor had displayed, nor the majestic tranquillity of his end, nor the tears of his faithful friends, could shame the Christian community into the decency of silence. A peal of brutal merriment filled the land.