A feature of greater interest is the extraordinary part which this theosophy played in the Christian Church, especially at the time of the Renaissance. We have already seen that the Sephiric decade or the archetypal man, like Christ, is considered to be of a double nature, both infinite and finite, perfect and imperfect. More distinct, however, is the doctrine of the Trinity. In Deut. vi. 43, where Yahweh occurs first, then Elohenu, and then again Yahweh, we are told "The voice though one, consists of three elements, fire (i.e. warmth), air (i.e. breath), and water (i.e. humidity), yet all three are one in the mystery of the voice and can only be one. Thus also Yahweh, Elohenu, Yahweh, constitute one--three forms which are one" (_Zohar_, ii. 43; compare iii. 65). Discussing the thrice holy in Isaiah vi. 3, one codex of the _Zohar_ had the following remark: "The first holy denotes the Holy Father, the second the Holy Son, and the third the Holy Ghost" (cf. Galatinus, _De arcanis cathol._ lib. ii. c. 3, p. 31; Wolf, _Bibliotheca hebraica_, i. 1136). Still more distinct is the doctrine of the atonement. "The Messiah invokes all the sufferings, pain, and afflictions of Israel to come upon Him. Now if He did not remove them thus and take them upon Himself, no man could endure the sufferings of Israel, due as their punishment for transgressing the law; as it is written (Isa. liii. 4), Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows" (_Zohar_, ii. 12). These and similar statements favouring the doctrines of the New Testament made many Kabbalists of the highest position in the synagogue embrace the Christian faith and write elaborate books to win their Jewish brethren over to Christ. As early as 1450 a company of Jewish converts in Spain, at the head of which were Paul de Heredia, Vidal de Saragossa de Aragon, and Davila, published compilations of Kabbalistic treatises to prove from them the doctrines of Christianity. They were followed by Paul Rici, professor at Pavia, and physician to the emperor Maximilian I. Among the best-known non-Jewish exponents of the Kabbalah were the Italian count Pico di Mirandola (1463-1494), the renowned Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1487-1535), Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541), and, later, the Englishman Robert Fludd (1574-1637). Prominent among the "nine hundred theses" which Mirandola had placarded in Rome, and which he undertook to defend in the presence of all European scholars, whom he invited to the Eternal City, promising to defray their travelling expenses, was the following: "No science yields greater proof of the divinity of Christ than magic and the Kabbalah." Mirandola so convinced Pope Sixtus of the paramount importance of the Kabbalah as an auxiliary to Christianity that his holiness exerted himself to have Kabbalistic writings translated into Latin for the use of divinity students. With equal zeal did Reuchlin act as the apostle of the Kabbalah. His treatises exercised an almost magic influence upon the greatest thinkers of the time. Pope Leo X. and the early Reformers were alike captivated by the charms of the Kabbalah as propounded by Reuchlin, and not only divines, but statesmen and warriors, began to study the Oriental languages in order to be able to fathom the mysteries of Jewish theosophy. The _Zohar_, that farrago of absurdity and spiritual devotion, was the weapon with which these Christians defended Jewish literature against hostile ecclesiastic bodies (Abrahams, _Jew. Lit._ p. 106). Thus the Kabbalah linked the old scholasticism with the new and independent inquiries in learning and philosophy after the Renaissance, and although it had evolved a remarkably bizarre conception of the universe, it partly anticipated, in its own way, the scientific study of natural philosophy.[11] Jewish theosophy, then, with its good and evil tendencies, and with its varied results, may thus claim to have played no unimportant part in the history of European scholarship and thought.