{93} Sometimes infidels tell us that the Emperor Constantine called various councils which compiled the New Testament, in the fourth century. We can scarcely wonder at this statement coming from those who look upon the Catholic church as representing Christianity. Constantine, the man who had murdered two of his sons, and strangled, while in a bath, the wife who had trusted in him, was surely a worthy representative of that church whom the Apostle John styles _the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth_. Still we cannot help asking how it was that this murderer who had made himself obnoxious even in pagan Rome on account of his crimes and his confederates equally wicked, was able to dictate words of such sublime virtue as are everywhere found in the New Testament. The infidel, Gibbon, attempts to explain, and tells us "The austerity, purity and zeal of the first Christians, their good discipline, their belief in the resurrection of the body, and the general judgment, and their persuasion that Christ and His apostles wrought miracles, had made a great many converts." But how came they to have this "belief, purity and zeal?" Just as if we should enquire how the Chicago fire originated, and you should tell us, that it burned very fast because it was very hot. What we want to know is how it happened that frivolous Greeks, licentious Asiatics and warlike Romans at once became pure and adopted the humble life of the early Christians? What implanted the belief of a judgment to come in the minds of {94} these heathen scoffers? Gibbon admits that, "Christian churches were sufficiently numerous in the Roman empire, to make it politic for the emperor to profess Christianity, and sufficiently powerful to secure his success." Thus according to the admissions of an infidel writer the Christians were already numerous, and the story of Constantine forming the New Testament, which had been read in churches and believed in for two hundred years, is as absurd as to hear it stated that the saloon keepers, prize-fighters and hoodlums of New York had just assembled in the Large Tabernacle in Salt Lake City to construct the revelations contained in the book of Doctrine and Covenants, which have been already accepted and believed by the Saints, for more than fifty years.