How could the Christian Church, apparently quite willingly, accommodate this weird megalomaniac [Constantine] in it's theocratic system? Was there a conscious bargain? Which side benefited most form this unseemly marriage between church and state? Or, to put it another way, did the empire surrender to Christianity, or did Christianity prostitute itself to the empire? It is characteristic of the complexities of early Christian history that we cannot give a definite answer to this question. Paul Johnson
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The Roman Empire was a powerful state that heavily influenced the world around it. The Roman Empire was an empire that worshiped the pagan gods, and it came to be a religious empire. The Christian church was a small group of people who believed in a different religion from the empire. Was Christianity taking advantage of the pagan state, or was the pagan state taking advantage of Christianity? It is impossible to say with certainty what happened.

Source: A History Of Christianity

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