CHAP. LXIV.
Peace. I have often heard that history reports, and I have heard that Mr. Cotton himself hath affirmed it, that Christianity fell asleep in Constantine’s bosom, and [in] the laps and bosoms of those emperors professing the name of Christ.
Truth. The unknowing zeal of Constantine and other emperors, did more hurt to Christ Jesus’s crown and kingdom, than the raging fury of the most bloody Neros.[173] In the persecutions of the latter, Christians were sweet and fragrant, like spice pounded and beaten in mortars. But these good emperors, persecuting some erroneous persons, Arius, &c., and advancing the professors of some truths of Christ—for there was no small number of truths lost in those times—and maintaining their religion by the material sword—I say, by this means Christianity was eclipsed, and the professors of it fell asleep, Cant. v. 2. Babel, or confusion, was ushered in, and by degrees the gardens of the churches of saints were turned into the wilderness of whole nations, until the whole world became Christian, or Christendom, Rev. xii. and xiii.
Doubtless those holy men, emperors and bishops, intended and aimed right to exalt Christ; but not attending to the command of Christ Jesus, to permit the tares to grow in the field of the world, they make the garden of the church and field of the world to be all one; and might not only sometimes, in their zealous mistakes, persecute good wheat instead of tares, but also pluck up thousands of those precious stalks by commotions and combustions about religion, as hath been since practised in the great and wonderful changes wrought by such wars in many great and mighty states and kingdoms, as we heard even now in the observation of the King of Bohemia.