On the other hand the army of Maxentius, consisting of three divisions of veteran soldiers, esteemed the most efficient in the empire, engaged Constantine in the Quintian fields near the bridge Milvius. The attack was fast and furious. But the aggressors were at all points met with vigour and bravery, and soon succumbed and were in retreat. Constantine, with far fewer numbers than those opposed to him, was completely victorious; the legions of Maxentius were scattered or slain, and on the same day, with the sacred Labarum (as the imperial standard in question was termed) borne before him, he entered Rome in triumph. His conversion to Christianity soon followed upon his victory. In his triumph he dropped the old customs of his Pagan predecessors. He neither mounted the Capitol, nor offered sacrifices to the deities of Rome, but by suitable inscriptions recorded his belief in the power of Christ’s saving Cross. In his palace at Constantinople, as well as in the chief square of that city, the sacred sign was at once set up; and medals were struck, with representations of the symbol in question upon them, to commemorate both the victory and his own religious change. This occurred about A.D. 312. Here then we find the record of a distinctively supernatural intervention. No known physical cause could have formed a sentence of Greek or Latin in the air. Nor could a whole army have mistaken a Cross, with its corresponding and appropriate inscription, for a halo of light, or a mere natural phenomenon. Moreover: three years after the event, Constantine erected his triumphal arch at Rome, with an inscription, which still remains, testifying that he had gained the victory “instinctu divinitatis, mentis magnitudine.” Lactantius, likewise, in his treatise “De mortibus Persecutorum” (if it be his book, though some attribute it to Cæcilius), asserts the main facts of the case as regards the dream, describing the “heavenly sign of God;” and this in a treatise certainly written within two years of its occurrence. Seven years later, Nazarius, a Pagan orator, in a panegyric on the Emperor, also puts upon record his solemn conviction that celestial aid was miraculously rendered to Constantine in his defeat of Maxentius. Thus far those who were not Christians testify to the fact under consideration. On the other hand, Eusebius, who received the account from Constantine himself (who is known to have confirmed it with an oath), gives that record of the occurrence which has been already set forth--and he was notoriously an historian who had small leaning towards over-belief. While the reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that so many independent writers and records of the fact could not have been made to conspire in disseminating a falsehood; the action of the Emperor which followed the event was in perfect harmony with that which might have been looked for under the circumstances narrated--the supernatural appearance