"These are the executions," he says, "which above all others cast a reflection upon the reign of Constantine; though there are also hints of the deaths of some others about the same time, with whom Constantine had till then lived in friendship."[C] After which the Doctor immediately adds--in the very face of all the facts he adduces, and after reciting the condemnation of both heathen and Christian writers of some of these murders--the following: "I do by no means think that Constantine was a man of a cruel disposition; and therefore I am unwilling to touch upon any other actions of a like nature: as his making some German princes taken captive, fight in the theatre; and sending the head of Maxentius to Africa, after it had been made a part of Constantine's triumphal entry at Rome." When one finds a sober Christian writer of the eighteenth century who can thus speak of Constantine; and further remembers that to this day a priest of the Greek Church seldom mentions the name of the "imperial saint," without adding the title, "Equal to the Apostles;" one is not surprised that while he lived and at his court a Christian bishop could be found who "congratulated him as constituted by God to rule over all, in the present world, and destined to reign with the son of God in the world to come."[D] Or that Eusebius, who is spoken of as one of the best bishops of the imperial court, "did not scruple for a moment to ascribe to the purest motives of a true servant of God, all those transactions into which the emperor, without evincing the slightest regard to truth or to humanity, had suffered himself to be drawn by an ambition which could not abide a rival, in the struggle with Licinius; when he represents the emperor, in a war which, beyond a doubt, had been undertaken from motives of a purely selfish policy, as marshaling the order of the battle, and giving out the words of command by divine inspiration bestowed in answer to his prayer."[E] [Footnote A: Lardner, vol. iv, p. 39.] [Footnote B: Lardner, vol. iv, p. 39.] [Footnote C: Lardner, vol. iv, p. 44.] [Footnote D: Neander Ch. His., vol. ii, p. 25.] [Footnote E: Neander Ch. Hist., vol. ii, p. 25.]