Replies

Understand now, by this present statute, ye Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulians, ye who are called Cataphrygians, and all ye who devise and support heresies by means of your private assemblies, with what a tissue of falsehood and vanity, with what destructive and venomous errors, your doctrines are inseparably interwoven, so that through you the healthy soul is stricken with disease, and the living becomes the prey of everlasting death. Ye haters and enemies of truth and life, in league with destruction! All your counsels are opposed to the truth, but familiar with deeds of baseness, fit subjects for the fabulous follies of the stage. …We have directed, accordingly, that you be deprived of all the houses in which you are accustomed to hold your assemblies, and our care in this respect extends as far as to forbid the holding of your superstitious and senseless meetings, not in public merely, but in any private house or place whatsoever. Let those of you, therefore, who are desirous of embracing the true and pure religion, take the far better course of entering the Catholic Church, and uniting with it in holy fellowship, whereby you will be enabled to arrive at the knowledge of the truth.[2]

Now, I know that such fierce and overly zealous words may set alarms off in your heads. These poor believers are banned from preaching their theologies, and not only that, they are being coerced into joining the Catholic Church which, as many believe, is the Harlot of Babylon.

The one thing we do know is that all these denominations had one thing in common...They refused to bow down to the Constantine religion and many, many were murdered for it...

It's impossible to say whether any of the Catholic charges against those Christians has any validity but probably not...

They were castigated for not bowing to your religion...Any thing else is likely an embellishment for a little 'icing' on the cake to hopefully impede any more Constantinians from leaving that religion to join with the Christians...

Had I been there, I proudly would have been counted with those martyrs...

They refused to bow down to the Constantine religion and many, many were murdered for it...I proudly would have been counted with those martyrs...

Your history is wrong and anachronistic. From Constantine's perspective, the whole idea of executing people for heresy was still about 800 years in the future. Can we blame you for stuff that won't happen until the year 2813? I thought not ...

You might as well blame Constantine for Muslims killing Christians, while you're at it. It makes as much historical sense.

The main historical event of Constantine's reign, from the POV of church history, was the Council of Nicaea, called in AD 325 to condemn a heresy called "Arianism". (Arianism is the belief that Jesus was something less than God incarnate; JW's are modern-day Arians. Since I've seen you defending the Trinity elsewhere (good for you!) you would presumably not defend Arians as good Christians.

Arius the archheretic was exiled, but not executed, following the Council. In fact, he lived for another 20+ years. No martyrdom, no martyrs, nothing like that.

Constantine's edict of AD 313 was called the "Edict of Toleration" for a reason. It didn't make Christianity the state religion, didn't make heresy (or paganism, or Judaism, etc.) crimes in the eyes of the state, etc. It just said that Christianity wouldn't be persecuted, and that Christians had the same rights as other Roman citizens.

One other thing ... Constantine was not actually baptized until he was on his deathbed. For most of his life, he was technically a pagan with Christian sympathies. Until he was close to death, the only "Constantine religion," legally speaking, was Roman paganism. You know, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, all that stuff you heard about in mythology class.

Catholics had already spent 260 years being martyred for that particular "Constantine religion". The Roman catacombs are full of those martyrs' tombs to this day.