Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/205

 insensibly judge of what we do not understand. And it is there where it begins. And these senseless words, according to the confession of the Theology, the highest reason and the highest goodness speaks in reply to the entreaties of his children searching after truth.

“(c) On the contrary, common sense cannot help recognizing this idea as completely true and devoid of any contradiction. It does not comprehend its internal meaning; but on the basis of external testimony it knows conclusively that this idea has clearly been communicated by God himself in the Christian revelation: God is the God of truth.” (p. 205.)

What is said cannot be understood, but it is so “on the basis of external, conclusive testimony,” so that it is possible, without understanding them, to repeat the words which the Theology speaks; but in this case, as we see, there are none of those external proofs, not only no conclusive proofs, but no proofs at all. Nowhere in Holy Scripture does it say that the Spirit of God is a third person. What Moses wrote about God saying to himself, “Let us make,” cannot be called a reliable proof. And the fact that in Jesus Christ’s conversation in St. John there is once used the word Holy Ghost when speaking of the truth, is not a conclusive evidence. The fact that in baptizing into Christianity the words, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” are used is also not an evidence. The spurious verse from the Epistle of John not only does not argue in favour of the Trinity, but is a clear proof of there not being, and never having been, any proof, and that those who wanted to prove it felt so themselves.

From the external evidences there is left only the polemic of the author against those who reject the verse from St. John and against the rationalists who assert that the church did not accept the doctrine of the Trinity until the fourth century. Let us assume that I am so little in-