CHAPTER XXXII

WILL OF THE BLESSED EMPEROR CONSTANTINE

A YEAR and a few months subsequently (A.D. 337), the emperor was taken ill at Nicomedia, a city of Bithynia. Being thus led to reflect on the uncertainty of human life, he received the holy rite of baptism, which he had intended to have deferred until he could be baptised in the river Jordan. He settled the succession to the imperial throne upon his three children, Constantine, Constantius, and Constans. He enacted that the great Athanasius should return to Alexandria, and expressed this decision in the presence of Eusebius, who used every argument to dissuade him.