It is also clear that, like the Victory and the Golden Apple it surmounted, the Phoenix and its wonderful egg were not only connected with the Sun-God, but also had a phallic signification. The problem as to whether bird or egg first existed scarcely applies to the fabulous Phoenix and its equally fabulous egg, and need not be discussed here. Suffice it to say that the round object from which that Christian symbol the Coronation Orb is descended, though it may at times have more or less represented the world upon which we dwell, seems to have primarily signified, as associated with each other in idea, both the Golden Apple of Love and the Phoenix-like life principle enshrined in the Egg, both the egg-like _Cosmos_ or Universe and Eternity; but in all, and through all, and above all, the basis of all power whether finite or infinite, _viz._, Life. It is therefore not surprising to find that the monarchs of ancient days claimed to rule by divine right as vice-gerents of the Sun-God, to whose favouring influence all earthly life is traceable; and caused themselves to be represented, upon Roman coins as receiving the Golden Apple, and upon Egyptian monuments as receiving the Cross, from the Sun-God, as the symbol of their authority. Yet another point to be borne in mind, is that we Christians are expressly taught that God the Father and God the Son are as nearly identical as the ancients considered the Central Fire, which they deemed the Parent of all things, and the Warmth and Light issuing therefrom to be; or the Sun's disc and the emanations therefrom; the Christ being represented as saying "I and My Father are one" and "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." For though we describe ours as a _co-equal_ Trinity, no such identity with either God the Father or God the Son is affirmed of God the Holy Ghost, and it is remarkable that in our ancient illustrations of the Three Persons, both the First and the Second are represented as holding the so-called globe and Cross, while the Third, even where depicted as of human shape like the other two, is not. The fact is that the co-equality of the Holy Spirit of a God who is Himself, as Jesus declared, a Spirit, is an idea which did not find much acceptance among Christians till a comparatively late date and is the outcome of confused thought. And the separate personality of this Spirit of a Spirit being entirely a Christian conception, and without a counterpart in the theology of the ancients, few if any Pagan symbols such as the so-called globe and the cross would have been associated with it in any case. CHAPTER XI. THE COINS OF CONSTANTINE.