Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/58

56 verses are authentic, they would be an affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity, dating from the first century, at a time when the Gospels, the Acts, and St. Paul ignore it. It was first pointed out in 1806 that these verses were an interpolation, for they do not appear in the best manuscripts, notably all the Greek manuscripts down to the fifteenth century. The Roman Church refused to bow to evidence. The Congregation of the Index, on January 13, 1897, with the approbation of Leo XIII, forbade any question as to the authenticity of the text relating to the "three heavenly witnesses." It appeared strange to the Martian that a god should need the lies of his disciples to be incorporated in a divine revelation. But his confusion was even greater when he read, "We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance and yet, they are not three Eternals, but One Eternal, not three Almighties, but One Almighty. So, the Father is God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and yet they are not three Gods, but One God. . . . The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, neither made nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. . . . And in this Trinity, none is afore or after the other; none is greater or less than another; but the whole three Persons are coeternal together and coequal."

He thought this would make a great puzzle, truly an insoluble conundrum, to take back to bewilder his Martian friends. However, he was able to comprehend the remarks of Vigilantius, "who returned from a journey in Italy and the Holy Land disgusted with official Christianity. He protested vehemently against the idolatrous worship of images, the legacy of Paganism to the