“I was the Roman Emperor, and died as the head of the Christian Church.
“I wasn’t really a christian and did not understand the true principles of the christian teachings, but I adopted Christianity as a state religion because of political purposes, added to my desire to destroy the power of my antagonists who were believers in, and worshipers of the god’s of paganism.
“I was a man who cared not in the slightest whether the cross or the symbol of the oracles was the true sign of religion. My great desire when I made Christianity the state religion was to obtain power and the allegiance of a majority of the people of the Empire. The christians were very numerous, and were persons of such intense convictions that I knew that when they once gave me their allegiance, I would have a following that could not be overthrown by those who were worshipers of the old gods. These people were not so much interested in their religious beliefs, individually, as to cause them to have such convictions as would interfere with any religion that I might establish. Their beliefs were not the result of personal conviction, but were merely those that had been accepted by their ansestors and transmitted to them as a kind of inheretance. They believed in the gods and the oracles as a matter of course without ever having made the objects of their beliefs matters of investigation. Truth was not sought for and hence conviction was a mere shallow acquiescence.
“During all the time of my office as emperor, I never changed my beliefs, and never accepted the teachings of the Christians as a revelation of truth. And in fact, I never considered such a matter as religion worthy of serious consideration. Many doctrines were proposed and discussed by the ecclesiastical teachers and leaders of this religion, and those doctrines were approved by me which were adopted by a majority of these leaders as true. I let these leaders fight their own battles as to doctrines, and when they decided what should be accepted and declared by the church to be true, I approved the same and promulgated them as binding upon all the followers of the Christian faith.
“So I did not establish the canonicity of the Bible, or determine the doctrines made binding by the conventions of the church, I only gave them my sanction.”
To be continued…