year 325. The leaders of this controversy, as you know, were Arius, on
the Unitarian side, and Athanasius, fighting hard for the doctrine then
new in the Church, of the Trinity.

The majority of the bishops and leading men of the Church at that time
were on the side of Arius; but at last the Emperor Constantine settled
the dispute. Now you know that the sceptre of a despotic emperor may
not reason, may not think; but it is weightier than either reason or
thought in the settlement of a controversy like this at such a period
in the history of the world. So Constantine settled the controversy in
favor of the Trinitarians; and henceforth you need not wonder that
Unitarianism did not grow, for it was mercilessly repressed and crushed
out for the next thousand years.

Unitarianism, however, is not alone in this. Let me call your attention
to a fact of immense significance in this matter. All this time the
study of science and philosophy, that dared to think beyond the limits
of the Church's doctrine, were crushed out. There was no free
philosophy, there was no free study of science, there was no free
anything for a thousand years. The secular armed forces of Europe, with
penalties of imprisonment, of the rack, of the fagot, of torture of
every kind, were enlisted against anything like liberty of thinking.

So you need not wonder, then, that there was neither any science nor
any Unitarianism to be heard of until the Renaissance. What was the
Renaissance? It was the rising again of human liberty, the possibility
once more of man's freedom to think and study. Though the armed forces
of Europe were for a long time against it, the rising tide could not be
entirely rolled back, and so it gained on human thought and human life
more and more. And out of this the Renaissance came, the new birth of