from the standpoint of
religion but are false from the standpoint of reason. To a plain mind
this seems much as if one said that the doctrine of immortality is true
on Sundays but not on week-days, or that the Apostles' Creed is false in
the drawing-room and true in the kitchen. This dangerous movement was
crushed, and the saving principle of double truth condemned, by Pope
John XXI. The spread of Averroistic and similar speculations called
forth the Theology of Thomas, of Aquino in South Italy (died 1274), a
most subtle thinker, whose mind had a natural turn for scepticism. He
enlisted Aristotle, hitherto the guide of infidelity, on the side of
orthodoxy, and constructed an ingenious Christian philosophy which is
still authoritative in the Roman Church. But Aristotle and reason are
dangerous allies for faith, and the treatise of Thomas is perhaps more
calculated to unsettle a believing mind by the doubts which it
powerfully states than to quiet the scruples of a doubter by its
solutions.

There must always have been some private

[70] and underground unbelief here and there, which did not lead to any
serious consequences. The blasphemous statement that the world had been
deceived by three impostors, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, was current in
the thirteenth century. It was attributed to the freethinking Emperor
Frederick II (died 1250), who has been described as "the first modern
man." The same idea, in a milder form, was expressed in the story of the
Three Rings, which is at least as old. A Mohammedan ruler, desiring to
extort money from a rich Jew, summoned him to his court and laid a snare
for him. "My friend," he said, "I have often heard it reported that thou
art a very wise man. Tell me therefore which of the three religions,
that of the Jews, that of the Mohammedans, and that of the Christians,
thou believest to be the truest." The Jew saw that a trap was laid for
him and answered as follows: "My lord, there was once a rich man who
among his treasures had a ring of such great value that he wished to
leave it as a perpetual heirloom to his successors. So he made a will
that whichever of his sons should be found in possession of this ring
after his death should be considered his heir. The son to whom he gave
the ring acted in the same way as his father, and so the ring passed
from hand to

[71] hand. At last it came into the possession of a man who had three
sons whom he loved equally. Unable to make up his min