CHAPTER 4.
THE CHURCH.
In the year 324, on the locality assigned by rumour to the martyrdom of St.Peter, and over the ruins of the Circus of Nero, Constantine erected the church called the Basilica of St.Peter.
For twelve centuries, this building, raised by a man infamous for his murders and his tyrannies, stood uninjured amid the shocks which during that long period devastated the rest of the city.

After that time it was removed, tottering to its base from its own reverend and illustrious age, by Pope Julius II, to make way for the foundations of the modern church.
It is towards this structure of twelve hundred years' duration, erected by hands stained with blood, and yet preserved as a star of peace in the midst of stormy centuries of war, that we would direct the reader's attention.

What art has done for the modern church, time has effected for the ancient.

If the one is majestic to the eye by its grandeur, the other is hallowed to the memory by its age.
As this church by its rise commemorated the triumphant establishment of Christianity as the religion of Rome, so in its progress it reflected every change wrought in the spirit of the new worship by the ambition, the prodigality, or the frivolity of the priests.

At first it stood awful and imposing, beautiful in all its parts as the religion for whose glory it was built.