Some modern
Protestant apologists (usually those who are on the same level as Jack Chick or
Alexander Hislop) have argued that Constantine was unregenerate and never a
true believer (see the quotations from Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast and Matthew Paulson, Breaking the Mormon Code at Constantine
was Unregenerate according to Some Evangelical Apologists).
Notwithstanding,
many historical Protestant sources, even those who held a very anti-Catholic
understanding of the book of Revelation (e.g., the victory over the antichrist being
a victory over the Papacy and Catholic sacerdotalism) explicitly taught that
Constantine was a regenerate believer. Note the following from Alexander Fraser’s
1820 book on prophecy:
The grand adversary represented by the
serpent, first directed his fury against the progress of the gospel, left
Christianity should be spread in the world, and exerted for this end the force
of the civil and military government, by his deputies the Pagan Roman Emperors.
But in process of time, a regenerate son
of the Church, Constantine, was advanced to the throne of the Roman empire,
Satan and his votaries were deprived of all power, civil and ecclesiastical,
and Christianity became the established religion of the empire, (Rev. xii. 1.—5
and 7.—9.). (Alexander Fraser, A Key to
the Prophecies of the Old and New Testaments, Which are Not Yet Accomplished:
Containing, I. Rules For their Arrangement. II. Observations On their Dates.
III. A General View of the Events Foretold in Them [Philadelphia: D. Hogan,
1802], 160-61, emphasis added)
