State Religion of the world-wide Roman Empire.

This act and its far-reaching effects, are not all we owe to
Constantine, however. It should be remembered that even our creed was
to some extent decided by him. For it was this Sun-God worshipper--who,
though he advised others to enter what he wished should become a
catholic and all-embracing religion, refused to do so himself till he
was dying--who called together our bishops, and, presiding over them in
council at Nicaea, demanded that they should determine the controversy
in the ranks of the Christians as to whether the Christ was or was not
God, by subscribing to a declaration of his Deity. It is even recorded
that he forced the unwilling ones to sign under penalty off deprivation
and banishment.

From these and other incidents in his career it would appear that,
either from policy or conviction, Constantine acted as if he thought
the Sun-God and the Christ were one and the same deity.

The probability of this is more or less apparent from what we are told
concerning the part he played in connection with what, thanks, as we
are about to see, to him, became our recognised symbol.

Our knowledge of the part played by Constantine in connection with the
symbol of the cross, except so far as we can gather it from a study of
ancient coins and other relics, unfortunately comes to us solely
through Christian sources. And the first that famous bishop and
ecclesiastical historian Eusebius of Caesarea, to whom we owe so large
a proportion of our real or supposed knowledge of the early days of
Christianity, tells us about Constantine and the cross, is that in the
year A.C. 312--a quarter of a century before his admission into the