On one occasion he spent a whole night in the church praying. Strange to say, this zealous theological disputant, this foremost champion of the truth, had not hitherto been baptised. He was not even a catechumen. But now, when he felt himself sinking, he eagerly pressed that baptism might not be delayed. This wish was granted, and the rite was administered. This done, he devoutly expressed his thanksgivings for the mercy vouchsafed to him, and his readiness to go at once on his last heavenward journey. He refused again to assume the Imperial purple, and, so arrayed still in the white robe of his baptism, he was laid on his couch to await the end. On the 22nd of May, 337--it was Whit Sunday, the appropriate festival of the newly baptised--about noon, the great Emperor breathed his last. He was succeeded by his three sons--Constantine, Constantius, and Constans. The three princes were scarcely seated on the throne, when the Imperial family became again the scene of a horrible tragedy as shocking as that which had left so dark a stain on their father's life. The soldiers rose up and massacred not less than nine princes of the blood--the brothers and nephews of the deceased Emperor. Nearly a century later an untrustworthy historian gives currency to a story that Constantine himself had directed these massacres, having discovered that he had been poisoned by his brothers. For this shameful libel on them and on him there is absolutely no foundation. All the circumstances are against it, and it may safely be dismissed as a foul calumny. More specious is the view that the new Emperor Constantius, then a young man of twenty-one, was implicated in the massacre; but it was done, if not by his direct orders, at least with his tacit connivance. But, however this may be, the incident has a very direct bearing on the subject of these lectures. In this carnage, besides the three Emperors themselves, two children alone escaped. The other members of the Imperial family perished to a man. The survivors were the two sons of one of Constantine's brothers, Julius Constantius; Gallus, a boy of twelve or thirteen; and Julian, a child of six or seven, of whom we shall hear much hereafter. Their father and their eldest brother were amongst the slain.