Christians Banished and Their Property Seized

Constantine, the friend of God, had given God’s worshipers free access to the imperial palaces. This enemy of God, in a spirit the very reverse, drove out of his palaces all the Christians under his authority. He banished those who had proved themselves his most faithful and devoted servants. Others, whom he himself had honored and promoted as a reward for their earlier outstanding service, he forced to do menial work as slaves to others. And at last, bent on seizing everyone’s property as a windfall for himself, he even threatened with death those who confessed the Savior’s name. Moreover, since he himself was hopelessly debased by sensuality and degraded by constant adultery and other shameless vices, he took his own worthless character as a sample of human nature in general, and denied that the virtue of chastity and self-control existed among men at all.