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| His Sickness at Helenopolis, and Prayers respecting his Baptism.
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Chapter LXI.—His Sickness at
Helenopolis, and Prayers respecting his Baptism.
At first he experienced some slight bodily indisposition, which was
soon followed by positive disease. In consequence of this he visited
the hot baths of his own city; and thence proceeded to that which bore
the name of his mother. Here he passed some time in the church of
the martyrs, and offered up supplications and prayers to God. Being at
length convinced that his life was drawing to a close, he felt the time
was come at which he should seek purification from sins of his past
career, firmly believing that whatever errors he had committed as a
mortal man, his soul would be purified from them through the efficacy
of the mystical words and the salutary waters of baptism.3357
| 3357 Literally “salutary word of cleansing,” but the
paraphrase of Bag. will stand well whichever of the readings,
“salutary cleansing,” or “salutary word of
cleansing,” is adopted. | Impressed with these thoughts, he
poured forth his supplications and confessions to God, kneeling on the
pavement in the church itself, in which he also now for the first time
received the imposition of hands with prayer.3358
| 3358 [These words seem to prove that the emperor now first became a
catechumen. His postponement of baptism until his last illness (after
having stood forward so long as the public advocate and protector of
the Christian religion), and the superstitious reliance which he was
encouraged to place on the late performance of this
“mysterious” rite, afford an evidence of the melancholy
obscuration of Christian truth at the very time when Christianity was
ostensibly becoming the religion of the Roman Empire. There is probably
too much truth in the following remarks of Gibbon: “The pride of
Constantine, who refused the privileges of a catechumen, cannot easily
be explained or excused: but the delay of his baptism maybe justified
by the maxims and practice of ecclesiastical antiquity. The sacrament
of baptism was supposed to contain a full and absolute expiation of
sin; and the soul was instantly restored to its original purity, and
entitled to the promise of eternal salvation. Among the proselytes of
Christianity, there were many who judged it imprudent to precipitate a
salutary rite, which could not be repeated; to throw away an
inestimable privilege, which could never be recovered,” &c.
(Decline and Fall, ch. 20).—Bag.] On the forms of
admission to the catechumenate, compare Marriott, Baptism, in
Smith and Cheetham, Dict. | After this he proceeded as far as the
suburbs of Nicomedia, and there, having summoned the bishops to meet
him, addressed them in the following words.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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