The Farmer’s Belief
A farmer went to confession and the priest asked him if he knew anything about the Trinity. The good man knew nothing about it. The priest did his best to explain it to him and at last said: “My good friend, to make it still plainer to you, imagine yourself God the Father, respect your son as if he were the Son of God, and take your wife to be the Holy Ghost. Now remember, you three are as one. You are one household and live together; that makes a trinity.” With this the good man went home.
A year later, he came again to confess. The priest asked him at once whether he believed now in a trinity. “No,” said the farmer, “I only believe in the first two, the Father and the Son, in those two I believe firmly. In the Holy Ghost I don’t believe at all; for everything that the Father and the Son gain by hard, heavy labor, the Holy Ghost squanders and spends.” The priest had to give up trying to enlighten the good farmer. He absolved him and let him depart.