Constantine’s Deal With The Devil Led To A Pagan Infection

APO-19
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Constantine had a vision in which a flaming cross appeared in the sky with an inscription over it reading in Latin, “In Hoc Signo Vinces” – In This Sign Conquer! He dedicated the battle to the Christian God (whose sign he believed he was shown) and upon victory became supreme ruler in the Western Roman Empire. Christianity had finally gained favor in high places.
In 313 A.D., Constantine issues the Edict of Milan which gives Christians the freedom to worship openly throughout the empire, putting the growing new religion on an equal plane with the popular pagan cults and practices that thrived there. Suddenly, after more than two centuries of persecution unleashed on Christians by various Emperors, all Christians both “true and false”, enjoy a new era of tolerance and acceptance throughout the empire. Unfortunately for “True Christians”, it doesn’t last long.
The first public evidence of a positive leaning towards the Christian religion he gave in his contest with the pagan Maxentius, who had usurped the government of Italy and Africa, and is universally represented as a cruel, dissolute tyrant, hated by heathens and Christians alike, called by the Roman people to their aid, Constantine marched from Gaul across the Alps with an army of ninety-eight thousand soldiers of every nationality, and defeated Maxentius in three battles; the last in October, 312, at the Milvian Bridge, near Rome, where Maxentius found a disgraceful death in the waters of the Tiber.
Here belongs the familiar story of the miraculous cross. The precise day and place cannot be fixed, but the event must have occurred shortly before the final victory over Maxentius in the neighborhood of Rome. As this vision is one of the most noted miracles in church history and has a representative significance, it deserves a closer examination. It marks for us, on the one hand, the victory of Christianity over paganism in the Roman empire, and on the other the ominous admixture of foreign, political, and military interests with it. We need not be surprised that in the Nicene age so great a revolution and transition should have been clothed with a supernatural character.

The occurrence is variously described and is not without serious difficulties. Lactantius, the earliest witness, some three years after the battle, speaks only of a dream by night, in which the emperor was directed (it is not stated by whom, whether by Christ, or by an angel) to stamp on the shields of his soldiers “the heavenly sign of God,” that is, the cross with the name of Christ, and thus to go forth against his enemy. Eusebius, on the contrary, gives a more minute account on the authority of a subsequent private communication of the aged Constantine himself under oath—not, however, till the year 338, a year after the death of the emperor, his only witness, and twenty-six years after the event. On his march from Gaul to Italy (the spot and date are not specified), the emperor, whilst earnestly praying to the true God for light and help at this critical time, saw, together with his army, in clear daylight towards evening, a shining cross in the heavens above the sun) with the inscription: “By this conquer,” and in the following night Christ himself appeared to him while he slept, and directed him to have a standard prepared in the form of this sign of the cross, and with that to proceed against