Up to this time the church had been perfectly free and independent of the state. She had a divine constitution -direct from heaven—and outside the world. She made her way, not by state patronage, but by divine power, against every hostile influence. In place of receiving support from the civil government, she had been persecuted from the first as a foreign foe, as an obstinate and pestilent superstition. Ten times the devil had been permitted to stir up against her the whole Roman world, which ten times had to confess weakness and defeat. Had she kept in mind the day of her espousals, and the love of Him who says, "No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church," she never would have accepted the protection of Constantine at the cost of her fidelity to Christ. But the church as a whole was now much mixed up with the world, and far away from her first love.
We have already seen, that since the days of the apostles there had been a growing love of the world, and of outward display. This tendency, so natural to us all, the Lord in love checked by allowing Satan to persecute. But in place of the church accepting the trial as chastening from the hand of the Lord, and owning her worldliness, she grew weary of the place and path of rejection, and thinking she might still please and serve the Lord, and walk in the sunshine of the world. This Satanic delusion was accomplished by Constantine, though he knew not what he was doing. "Whatever the motives of his conversion," says Milman, "Constantine, no doubt, adopted a wise and judicious policy, in securing the alliance, rather than continuing the strife, with an adversary which divided the wealth, the intellect, if not the property, and the population of the empire."