184. The fact that the minds of Christians are obsessed with the idea of a Trinity of Gods, for all that shame makes them deny it, is perfectly clear from the ingenuity many of them display in proving that three are one and one is three. They use various devices in geometry, solids, arithmetic and physics for the purpose, as well as folds in garments and sheets of paper. So they make the Divine Trinity a subject for games, like scenes between comic actors. This farce can be likened to the vision of patients in fevers, who see a single object, whether it be a person, a table or a candle, as three, or see three objects as one. It can also be likened to the game in which the players knead soft wax between their fingers, and pinch it into various shapes, now making it triangular to represent the Trinity, now into a ball to show it is all one, saying, 'Is it not still one and the same substance?' Yet the Divine Trinity is like a pearl* of great price; but divided into persons it is like a pearl cut into three, which is obviously completely ruined.