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I AM HERE. Constantine. (Roman Emperor)
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 powers of my antagonists who were believers in and worshipers of the gods 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, or whether the followers of religious beliefs belonged to the Christian church or the worship of the gods which our country had for so many years adopted and followed.
My great desire when I made Christianity the State religion was to obtain power and the allegiance of the majority of the people of the empire. The Christians were very numerous and were persons of such intense convictions--so intense, that not even death could remove or change these convictions--I knew that when they once gave me their allegiance, I should have a following that could not be overthrown by those who were worshipers of the old gods. The latter people were not so interested in their religious beliefs, individually, as to cause them to have such convictions as would interfere with any religion that I might establish, when they realized that their material interests would be advanced by at least, formally recognizing that religion as a state establishment. Their beliefs were not the results of conviction but merely those of what had been accepted by their ancestors and transmitted to them as a kind of inheritance. They believed in the gods and the oracles as a matter of course, without ever having made the the objects of their beliefs matters of investigation in order to learn if those beliefs were true or not. 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 the revelation of truth, and in fact, I never considered such a matter as religion, worthy of my 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 and the correct declarations of what the Scriptures of the Christians contained.
I let these leaders fight their own battles as to doctrines and truths, and when they decided what should be accepted and declared by the church to be true doctrines, I appoved the same and promulgated them as binding upon all the followers of the Christian faith.
So I, though it has been frequently said, did not establish the canonicity of the Bible, or determine and legalize the doctrines which were declared and made binding by the conventions of the leaders of the church. Of course, I gave them my sanction and official approval, but they were not mine and should not be said to have been established by me, for if the doctrines of the Arians had been accepted and declared by a majority of these ecclesiasts as the true teachings of the Christian scriptures, I should have sanctioned and given them the States authority.
As I said, I was not a Christian when I lived and I did not die a Christian, notwithstanding all the fantastical and miraculous things which have been written about me and my conversion to Christianity.
When I came into the spirit world, I found myself in great darkness and suffering, realizing that I had to pay the penalties for the sins thought and committed by me on earth; and all the masses which were said for the benefit of my soul never helped me one particle to get out of my unhappy condition.
I knew nothing about the Divine Love or the mission of Jesus in coming to earth, and I found that my sins had not been washed away as the teachers had often told me on earth would be done for me.
Many long years I remained in this condition of darkness and unhappiness, without finding any relief by reason of the mystical workings of Jesus' atonement of which the priests had told me, and which I did not believe, nor the help of the gods in whom I had been taught to believe by our philosophers and religious teachers. No, I found no relief and my condition seemed to be fixed, and hope of the Christian heaven that was never mine, and of the fields Elysian that would be mine in a hazy way, did not cause me to feel that my sufferings would at sometime come to an end and the glad face of happiness appear.
But after a time the light of the truth in which Jesus came to teach broke in on my understanding and soul, and the Divine Love of the Father commenced to flow into my soul and continued until I became a possessor of it to that degree that I was carried to the Celestial Spheres, where I now am, a redeemed pure and immortal soul, having undoubting knowledge and conviction that I possess in my soul the Divine Essence of the Father, and the certainty of eternal life in the Celestial Kingdom.
I cannot to-night write you of my experience in either the dark planes or in the successive progressive spheres, but sometime I will come and detail that experience.
But before ceasing my writing, I wish to say with all the force that I have, that only the Divine Love of the Father can save a soul from its sins and make it at one with the Father in His divine nature.
LET CREEDS AND DOGMAS AND MAN MADE DOCTRINES TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES, AND LEARN THE TRUTH, AND IN THAT TRUTH ABIDE, FOR TRUTH IS ETERNAL AND NEVER CHANGES, AND NO DECREES OF MAN OR DOGMAS OF CHURCH TRADITION OF THE EARLY FATHERS OR WRITERS, OR CREEDS OF ECCLESIASTICAL CONVENTIONS, SO SOLEMNLY ADOPTED, AND DECLARED, CAN MAKE THAT A TRUTH WHICH IS NOT A TRUTH. TRUTH EXISTED BEFORE ALL THESE THINGS AND IS NOT SUBJECT TO THEM, NOR BY THEM CAN IT BE ADDED TO OR TAKEN FROM.
I must not write more now, and thank you for having permitted me to write.
So with my love, I will say good-night.
Your brother in Christ,
CONSTANTINE.Vol. II, p. 171
