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And so furious was the strife between those theological disputants, estimable in other respects as were their characters, that even the Emperor Constantine at last lost all patience and banished Athanasius himself to a Gaulish city, after he had promoted him to the great See of Alexandria as a reward for his services to the Church at the Council of Nice.
So he left things from day to day, and went about his episcopal routines. He preached and delivered addresses in such phrases as he knew people expected, and wondered profoundly why it was that it should be impossible for him to discuss theological points with Lady Ella.
Humor played over much of his sermonizing; wit coruscated through it; but there was at times a pathos which pervaded the deep places of the human heart. By virtue of his poetic insight he sounded depths of thought and feeling which no mere theological reasoning could ever reach. He was a man, indeed, a great man, but to the end of his life he retained the freshness of youth.
Proud of his theological acquirements, he appeared, in 1522, as an author against Luther, in a book in defense of the Seven Sacraments, for which he received from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith. The vituperative character of Luther's answer confirmed him in his hatred of the new doctrine.
To say that it brings disgrace upon a man, is a frivolous idea grounded in mere fancy. The reason why adultery is against the laws and statutes of the church, is owing to the ecclesiastic order for the sake of power; but what have theological and spiritual things to do with a delight merely corporeal and carnal?
I admired the lady's pluck, and if I were that Moorish squire I have tried to sketch, I should esteem it an honour to have her on my visiting list. But I am a theological oddity, and my wallet of prejudices, it is to be feared, is sadly unfurnished.
Questions of delicacy and certain theological difficulties involved called for reflection, and the elder smoked a full minute on the question before be replied: "No, I wadna go so far as that. It stan's to reason as there's some of 'em there; on'y I'm no so sure o' their whereaboots." Timmins thoughtfully scratched his head ere he came back to the charge. "Meanin' as there's none in 'eaven?"
To them, these mere seekers after truth, in so far as their results are unfavourable to the creed the clerics have to support, are more or less "infidels," or favourers of "infidelity"; and the only thing they care to see, or probably can see, is the fact that, in a great many matters, the truth-seekers differ from one another, and therefore can easily be exhibited to the public, as if they did nothing else; as if any one who referred to their having, each and all, contributed his share to the results of theological science, was merely showing his ignorance; and as if a charge of inconsistency could be based on the fact that he himself often disagrees with what they say.
Without counting the three theological, there are fifty thousand kinds of virtues. It is like happiness, institutions, reputations, religions, morals, principles: Truth on this side the mount, error on that. There are as many kinds of virtues as there are different peoples. History swarms with virtuous people who have been so in their own way.
He never doubted that the extraordinary theological system which he spent his life in enforcing with fire and sword was right, for it was a part of himself. The Holy Inquisition, thoroughly established as it was in his ancestral Spain, was a portion of the regular working machinery by which his absolute kingship and his superhuman will expressed themselves.
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