Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/106

82 geometry. How? Because every single one of them is a corollary of the axiom, "Two and two make four." It is not exactly the same in the mixture of metaphysics and theology.

When Bishop Alexander and the priest Arius began [in the fourth century] to dispute as to the way in which the Logos emanated from the Father,  the Emperor Constantine at first wrote to them as  follows (as we find in Eusebius and Socrates):  "You are great fools to dispute about things you  do not understand."

If the two parties had been wise enough to perceive that the emperor was right, the Christian world would not have been stained with blood for three hundred years.

What, indeed, can be more stupid and more horrible than to say to men: "My friends, it is not enough to be loyal subjects, submissive children,  tender fathers, just neighbours, and to practise  every virtue, cultivate friendship, avoid ingratitude,  and worship Christ in peace; you must, in addition,  know how one is engendered from all eternity, and  how to distinguish the homoousion in the hypostasis,  or we shall condemn you to be burned for ever, and  will meantime put you to death"?

Had such a proposition been made to Archimedes, or Poseidonius, or Varro, or Cato, or Cicero, what would he have said?

Constantine did not persevere in his resolution to impose silence on the contending parties. He might have invited the leaders of the pious frenzy  to his palace and asked them what authority they  had to disturb the world: "Have you the title-deeds