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  WRITINGS OF TYRANNIUS RUFINUS
  by Tyrannius Rufinus
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Writings of Tyrannius Rufinus (c. AD 411). Tyrannius Rufinus was an early church
father whose writings have been preserved for the edification of the church.

  Chapters: 22

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    0. Writings of Tyrannius Rufinus
    1. A Commentary on the Apostles' Creed
    2. Jerome's Apology for Himself Against the Books of Rufinus - Book 1
    3. Jerome's Apology for Himself Against the Books of Rufinus - Book 2
    4. Jerome's Apology for Himself Against the Books of Rufinus - Book 3
    5. Preface to Book 3 of On the First Principles
    6. Preface to Origen's Homilies on Numbers
    7. Preface to the Commentary on the Benedictions of the Twelve Patriarchs  Book 2
    8. Preface to the Commentary on the Benedictions of the Twelve Patriarchs 
    9. Preface to the Translation of the Sayings of Xystus
   10. Preface to the Translations of Origen's Books On the First Principles
   11. Preface to the Two Books of Ecclesiastical History
   12. Rufinus' Apology in Defence of Himself
   13. Rufinus' Preface to the Translation of Origen's Commentary on Psalms 36, 37, and 38
   14. Rufinus' Preface to the Translation of Origen's Commentary on Romans
   15. Rufinus's Epilogue to Pamphilus the Martyr's Apology for Origen 
   16. The Apology of Rufinus - Book 1
   17. The Apology of Rufinus - Book 2
   18. The Letter of Anastasius to John Bishop Concerning the Character of Rufinus
   19. The Peroration of Rufinus Appended to His Translation of Origen's Commentary on Romans
   20. The Preface to the Books of Recognitions of St. Clement
   21. Translation of Pamphilus' Defence of Origen

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  CHAPTER 0: WRITINGS OF TYRANNIUS RUFINUS
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  CHAPTER 1: A COMMENTARY ON THE APOSTLES' CREED
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A Commentary on the Apostles' Creed. A Commentary on the Apostles' Creed.

This exposition of the Creed was made at the request of Laurentius, a Bishop
whose see is unknown, but is conjectured by Fontanini, in his life of Rufinus,
to have been Concordia, Rufinus' birthplace. Its exact date cannot be fixed; but
from the fact that he says nothing of his difficulty in writing Latin after
being so long in the East, as he does in several of his books, and from the
comparative ease of the style, it is most probable that it was written in the
later years of his sojourn at Aquileia, that is, about 307-309. Its value is
considerable (1) as bearing witness to the state of the Creed in local churches
at the beginning of the 5th century, especially their variations. (In the church
of Aquileia, in Jesu Christo. Patrem invisibilem et impassibilem. Resurrectio
hujus carnis); (2) as showing the adaptation of Eastern ideas to the formation
of Western theology; (2)as giving the Canon of the books of Scripture, and the
Apocrypha of both the Old and New dispensations. The exposition is clear and
reasonable; and, with the exception of a very few passages, such as the argument
from the Phoenix for the Virgin Birth of our Lord, is still of use to us.

We prefix the words of the creed on which Rufinus makes his commentary.

It seems desirable to give the original Latin, as well as the English version of
the Creed of Aquileia. The words or letters which are peculiar to this creed are
put in italics.

1.

Credo in Deo Patre omnipotenti invisibili et impassibili.

1.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, invisible and impassible.

2.

Et in Jesu Christo, unico Filio ejus, Domino nostro;

2. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;

3.

Qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine;

3. Who was born from the Holy Ghost, of the Virgin Mary;

4.

Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato, et sepultus;

4. Was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and buried;

5.

Descendit ad inferna; tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;

5.

He descended to hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead.

6.

Ascendit in coelos; sedet ad dexteram Patris;

6.

He ascended to the heavens; he sitteth at the right hand of the Father;

7.

Inde venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos;

7.

Thence he is to come to judge the quick and the dead.

8.

Et in Spiritu Sancto;

8. And in the Holy Ghost;

9.

Sanctam Ecclesiam;

9. The Holy Church.

10.

Remissionem peccatorum;

10. The remission of sins.

11.

Hujus carnis resurrectionem.

11. The resurrection of this flesh.

My mind has as little inclination for writing as sufficiency, most faithful
Bishop (Papa) Laurentius,1 for I well know that it is a matter of no little
peril to submit a slender ability to general criticism. But, since in your
letter you rashly (forgive my saying so) require me, by Christ's sacraments,
which I hold in the greatest reverence, to compose something for you concerning
the Faith, in accordance with the traditional and natural meaning of the Creed.
although in so doing you impose a burthen upon me beyond my strength to bear
(for I do not forget the opinion of the wise, which so justly says, that "to
speak of God even what is true is perilous"); still, if you will aid with your
prayers the necessity which your requisition has laid upon me, I will try to say
something, moved rather by a reverential regard for your injunction than by
presumptuous confidence in my ability. What I write, however, will hardly seem
worthy of the consideration of persons of mature understanding, but suited
rather to the capacity of children and young beginners in Christ.

I find, indeed, that some eminent writers have published treatises on these
matters piously and briefly written. Moreover, I know that the heretic Photinus
has written on the same; but with the object, not of explaining the meaning of
the text to his readers. but of wresting things simply and truthfully said in
support of his own dogma, while yet the Holy Spirit has taken care that in these
words nothing should be set down which is ambiguous or obscure, or inconsistent
with other truths: for therein is that prophecy verified, "Finishing and cutting
short the word in equity: because a short word will the Lord make upon the
earth."2 It shall be our endeavour, then, first to restore and emphasize the
words of the Apostles in their native simplicity; and, secondly, to supply such
things as seem to have been omitted by former expositors. But that the scope of
this "short word," as we have called it, may be made more plain, we will enquire
from the beginning how it came to be given to the Churches.

2. Our forefathers have handed down to us the tradition, that, after the Lord's
ascension, when, through the coming of the Holy Ghost, tongues of flame had
settled upon each of the Apostles, that they might speak diverse languages, so
that no race however foreign, no tongue however barbarous, might be inaccessible
to them and beyond their reach, they were commanded by the Lord to go severally
to the several nations to preach the word of God. Being on the eve therefore of
departing from one another, they first mutually agreed upon a standard of their
future preaching, lest haply, when separated, they might in any instance vary in
the statements which they should make to those whom they should invite to
believe in Christ. Being all therefore met together, and being filled with the
Holy Ghost, they composed, as we have said, this brief formulary of their future
preaching, each contributing his several sentence to one common summary: and
they ordained that the rule thus framed should be given to those who believe. To
this formulary, for many and most sufficient reasons, they gave the name or
Symbol. For Symbol (ku/mblon) in Greek answers to both "Indicium" (a sign or
token) and "Collatio" (a joint contribution made by several) in Latin. For this
the Apostles did in these words, each contributing his several sentence. It is
called "Indicium" or "Signum," a sign or token, because, at that time, as the
Apostle Paul says, and as is related in the Acts of the Apostles, many of the
vagabond Jews, pretending to be apostles of Christ, went about preaching for
gain's sake or their belly's sake, naming the name of Christ indeed, but not
delivering their message according to the exact traditional lines. The Apostles
therefore prescribed this formulary as a sign or token by which he who preached
Christ truly, according to Apostolic rule, might be recognised. Finally, they
say that in civil wars, since the armour of both sides is alike, and the
language the same, and the custom and mode of warfare the same, each general, to
guard against treachery, is wont to deliver to his soldiers a distinct symbol or
watchword-in Latin "signum" or "indicium"-so that if one is met with, of whom it
is doubtful to which side he belongs, being asked the symbol (watchword), he
discloses whether he is friend or foe. And for this reason, the tradition
continues, the Creed is not written on paper or parchment, but is retained in
the hearts of the faithful, that it may be certain that no one has learnt it by
reading, as is sometimes the case with unbelievers, but by tradition from the
Apostles. The Apostles therefore, as we have said, being about to separate in
order to preach the Gospel, settled upon this sign or token of their agreement
in the faith; and, unlike the sons of Noah, who, when they were about to
separate from one another, builded a tower of baked bricks and pitch, whose top
might reach to heaven, they raised a monument of faith, which might withstand
the enemy, composed of living stones and pearls of the Lord, such that neither
winds might overthrow it, nor floods undermine it, nor the force of storms and
tempests shake it. Right justly, then, were the former, when, on the eve of
separation, they builded a tower of pride, condemned to the confusion of
tongues, so that no one might understand his neighbour's speech; while the
latter, who were building a tower of faith, were endowed with the knowledge and
understanding of all languages; so that the one might prove a sign and token of
sin, the other of faith. But it is time now that we should say something about
these same pearls, among which is placed first the fountain and source of all,
when it is said,- 3. I Believe in God the Father Almighty. But before I begin to
discuss the meaning of the words, I think it well to mention that in different
Churches some additions are found in this article. This is not the case,
however, in the Church of the city of Rome; the reason being, as I suppose,
that, on the one hand, no heresy has had its origin there, and, on the other,
that the ancient custom is there kept up, that those who are going to be
baptized should rehearse the Creed publicly, that is, in the audience of the
people; the consequence of which is that the ears of those who are already
believers will not admit the addition of a single word. But in other places, as
I understand, additions appear to have been made, on account of certain
heretics, by means of which it was hoped that novelty in doctrine would be
excluded. We, however, follow that order which we received when we were baptized
in the Church of Aquileia.

I Believe, therefore, is placed in the forefront, as the Apostle Paul, writing
to the Hebrews, says, "He that cometh to God must first of all believe that He
is, and that He is a rewarder of those who believe on Him."3 The Prophet also
says, "Except ye believe,4 ye shall not understand." That the way to understand,
therefore, may be open to you, you do rightly first of all, in professing that
you believe; for no one embarks upon the sea, and trusts himself to the deep and
liquid element, unless he first believes it possible that he will have a safe
voyage; neither does the husbandman commit his seed to the furrows and scatter
his grain on the earth, but in the belief that the showers will come, together
with the sun's warmth, through whose fostering influence, aided by favouring
winds, the earth will produce and multiply and ripen its fruits. In fine,
nothing in life can be transacted if there be not first a readiness to believe.
What wonder then, if, coming to God, we first of all profess that we believe,
seeing that, without this, not even common life can be lived. We have premised
these remarks at the outset, since the Pagans are wont to object to us that our
religion, because it lacks reasons, rests solely on belief. We have shewn,
therefore, that nothing can possibly be done or remain stable unless belief
precede. Finally, marriages are contracted in the belief that children will be
born; and children are committed to the care of masters in the belief that the
teaching of the masters will be transferred to the pupils; and one man assumes
the ensigns of empire, believing that peoples and cities and a well-equipped
army also will obey him. But if no one enters upon any one of these several
undertakings except in the belief that the results spoken of will follow, must
not belief be much more requisite if one would come to the knowledge of God? But
let us see what this "short word" of the Creed sets forth.

4. "I Believe in God the Father Almighty." The Eastern Churches almost
universally deliver the article thus, "I believe in One God the Father
Almighty;" and again in the next article, where we say, "And in Christ Jesus,
His only Son, our Lord," they deliver it., "And in One (Lord) our Lord Jesus
Christ, His only Son;" confessing, that is, "one Gods" and "one Lord," in
accordance with the authority of the Apostle Paul. But we shall return to this
by-and-by. For the present, let us turn our attention to the words, "In God the
Father Almighty."

"God," so far as the human mind can form an idea, is the name of that nature or
substance which is above all things. "Father" is a word expressive of a secret
and ineffable mystery. When you hear the word "God," you must understand thereby
a substance without beginning, without end simple, uncompounded, invisible,
incorporeal, ineffable, inappreciable, which has in it nothing which has been
either added or created. For He is without cause who is absolutely the cause of
all things. When you hear the word "Father," you must understand by this the
Father of a Son, which Son is the image of the aforesaid substance. For as no
one is called "Lord" unless he have a possession or a servant whose lord he is,
and as no one is called "master" unless he have a disciple, so no one can
possibly be called "father" unless he have a son. This very name of "Father,"
therefore, shews plainly that, together with the Father there subsists a Son
also. But I would not have you discuss how God the Father begat the Son, nor
intrude too curiously into the profound mystery, lest haply, by prying too
eagerly into the brightness of light inaccessible, you should lose the faint
glimpse which, by the gift of God, has been vouchsafed to mortals. Or, if you
suppose that this is a subject to be investigated with all possible scrutiny,
first propose to yourself questions which concern ourselves, and then, if you
are able to deal satisfactorily with them, speed on from earthly things to
heavenly, from visible to invisible. Determine first, if you can, how the mind,
which is within you, generates a word, and what is the spirit of the memory
which is in it; and how these, though diverse in reality and in operation, are
yet one in substance or nature; and though they proceed from the mind, yet are
never separated from it. And if these, though they are in us and in the
substance of our own soul, yet seem to be hidden from us in proportion as they
are invisible to our bodily sight, let us take for our enquiry things which are
more open to view. How does a spring generate a river from itself? By what
spirit is it borne into a rapidly flowing stream? How happens it that, while the
river and the spring are one and inseparable, yet neither can the river be
understood to be, or can be called, the spring, nor the spring the river, and
yet he who has seen the river has seen the spring also? Exercise yourself first
in explaining these, and explain, if you are able, things which you have trader
your hands; and then you may come to loftier matters. Do not think, however,
that I would have you ascend all at once from the earth above the heavens: I
would first, with your leave, draw your attention to this firmament which our
eyes behold, and ask you to explain, if you can, the nature of this visible
luminary,-how that celestial fire generates from itself the brightness of light,
how it also produces heat; and though these are three in reality, how they are
yet one in substance. And if you are capable of investigating each of these,
even then you must acknowledge that the mystery of the Divine generation is by
so much the more diverse and the more transcendent as the Creator is more
powerful than the creatures, as the artificer is more excellent than his work,
as He who ever is more noble than that which had its beginning out of nothing.
That God then is the Father of His only Son our Lord is to be believed, not
discussed; for it is not lawful for a servant to dispute about the nativity of
his lord. The Father hath borne witness from heaven, saying,5 "This is My
beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased: hear Him." The Father saith that He is
His Son and bids us hear Him. The Son saith, "He who seeth Me seeth the Father
also,"6 and "I and the Father are one,"7 and "I came forth from God and am come
into the world."8 Where is the man who can thrust himself as a disputant between
these words of Father and Son, who cart divide the Godhead, separate its
volition, break asunder the substance, cut the spirit in parts, and deny that
what the Truth speaks is true? God then is a true Father as the Father of the
Truth, not begetting extrinsically, but generating the Son from that which
Himself is; that is, as the All-wise He generates Wisdom, as the Just Justice,
as the Everlasting the Everlasting, as the Immortal Immortality, as the
Invisible the Invisible; because He is Light, He generates Brightness, because
He is Mind, He generates the Word.

5. Now whereas we said that the Eastern Churches, in their delivery. of the
Creed, say, "In one God9 the Father Almighty," and "in one Lord," the "one" is
not to be understood numerically but absolutely. For example, if one should say,
"one man" or "one horse," here "one" is used numerically. For there may be a
second man and a third, or a second horse and a third. But where a second or a
third cannot be added, if we say "one" we mean one not numerically but
absolutely. For example, if we say, "one Sun," here the meaning is that a second
or a third cannot be added, for there is but one Sun. Much more then is God,
when He is said to be "one," called "one," not numerically but absolutely, that
is, He is therefore said to be one because there is no other. In like manner,
also, it is to be understood of the Lord, that He is one Lord, Jesus Christ, by
or through Whom God the Father possesses dominion over all, whence also, in the
next clause, God is called "Almighty."

God is called Almighty because He possesses rule and dominion over all things.10
But the Father possesses all things by His Son, as the Apostle says, "By Him
were created all things, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or
dominions, or principalities, or powers."11 And again, writing to the Hebrews,
he says, "By Him also He made the worlds," and "He appointed Him heir of all
things."12 By "appointed" we are to understand "generated." Now if the Father
made the worlds by Him, and all things were created by Him, and He is heir of
all things, then by Him He possesses rule also over all things. Because, as
light is born of light, and truth of truth, so. Almighty is born of Almighty. As
it is written of the Seraphim in the Revelation of John, "And they have no rest
day and night, crying Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, which was and which
is and which is to come, the Almighty."13 He then who "is to come" is called
"Almighty." And what other is there who "is to come" but Christ, the Son of God?
To the foregoing is added "Invisible and Impassible." I should mention that
these two words are not in the Creed of the Roman Church. They were added in our
Church, as is well known, on account of the Sabellian heresy, called by us "the
Patripassian," that, namely, which says that the Father Himself was born of the
Virgin andbecame visible, or affirms that He suffered in the flesh. To exclude
such impiety, therefore, concerning the Father, our forefathers seem to have
added these words, calling the Father "invisible and impassible." For it is
evident that the Son, not the Father, became incarnate and was born in the
flesh, and that from that nativity in the flesh the Son became "visible and
passible." Yet so far as regards that immortal substance of the Godhead, which
He possesses, and which is one and the same with that of the Father, we must
believe that neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Ghost is "visible or
passible." But the Son, in that He condescended to assume flesh, was both seen
and also suffered in the flesh. Which also the Prophet fore told when he said,
"This is our God: noother shah be accounted of in comparison of Him. He hath
found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob His servant and
to Israel His beloved. Afterward He shewed Himself upon the earth, and conversed
with men."14

6. Next there follows, "And in Christ Jesus, His Only Son, Our Lord." "Jesus" is
a Hebrew word meaning "Saviour." "Christ" is so called from "Chrism," i.e.
unction. For we read in the Books of Moses, that Auses, the son of Nave,15 when
he was chosen to lead the people, had his name changed from "Auses" to "Jesus,"
to shew that this was a name proper for princes and generals, for those, namely,
who should "save" the people who followed them. Therefore, both were called
"Jesus," both the one who conducted the people, who had been brought forth out
of the land of Egypt, and freed from the wanderings of the wilderness, into the
land of promise, and the other, who conducted the people, who had been brought
forth from the darkness of ignorance, and recalled from the errors of the world,
into the kingdom of heaven.

"Christ" is a name proper either to High Priests or Kings. For formerly both
high priests and kings were consecrated with the ointment of chrism: but these,
as mortal and corruptible, with material and corruptible ointment. Jesus is made
Christ, being anointed with tile Holy Spirit, as the Scripture saith of Him
"Whom the Father hath anointed with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven."16
And Isaiah had prefigured the same, saying in the person of the Son, "The Spirit
of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me, He hath sent Me to preach
good tidings to the poor."17

Having shewn them what "Jesus" is, Who saves His people, and what "Christ" is,
Who is made a High Priest for ever, let us now see in what follows, of Whom
these things are said, "His only Son, our Lord." Here we are taught that this
Jesus, of whom we have spoken, and this Christ, the meaning of whose name we
have expounded, is "the only Son of God" and "our Lord." Lest, perchance, you
should think that these human names have an earthly significance, therefore it
is added that He is "the only Son of God, our Lord." For He is born One of One,
because there is one brightness of light, and there is one word of the
understanding. Neither does an incorporeal generation degenerate into the plural
number, or suffer division, where He Who is born is in no wise separated from
Him Who begets. He is "only" (unique), as thought is to the mind, as wisdom is
to the wise, as a word is to the understanding, as valour is to the brave. For
as the Father is said by the Apostle to be "alone wise,"18 so likewise the Son
alone is called wisdom. He is then the "only Son." And, although in glory,
everlastingness, virtue, dominion, power, He is what the Father is, vet all
these He hath not unoriginately as the Father, but from the Father, as the Son,
without beginning and equal; and although He is the Head of all things, yet the
Father is the Head of Him. For so it is written, "The Head of Christ is God."19

7. When you hear the word "Son," you must not think of a nativity after the
flesh; but remember that it is spoken of an incorporeal substance, and a simple
and uncompounded nature. For if, as we said above, whether when the
understanding generates a word, or the mind sense, or light brings forth
brightness from itself, nothingof this sort is sought for, or any manner of
weakness and imperfection imagined in this kind of generation, how much purer
and more sacred ought to be our conception of the Creator of all these! But
perhaps you say, "The generation of which you speak is an unsubstantial
generation. For light does not produce substantial brightness, nor the
understanding generate a substantial word, but the Son of God, it is affirmed,
was generated substantially." To this we reply, first, When in other things
examples or illustrations are used, the resemblance cannot hold in every
particular, but only in some one point for which the illustration is employed.
For instance, When it is said in the Gospel, "The kingdom of heaven is like
leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal,"20 are we to imagine that
the kingdom of heaven is in all respects like leaven, so that like leaven it is
palpable and perishable so as to become sour and unfit for use? Obviously the
illustration was employed simply for this object-to shew how, through the
preaching of God's word which seems so small a thing, men's minds could be
imbued with the leaven of faith. So likewise, when it is said, "The kingdom of
heaven is like unto a net cast into the sea, which draws in fishes of every
kind,"21 are we to suppose that the substance of the kingdom of heaven is
likened in all respects to the nature of twine of which a net is made, and to
the knots with which the meshes are tied? No; the sole object of the comparison
is to shew that, as a net brings fishes to the shore from the depths of the sea,
so by the preaching of the kingdom of heaven men's souls are liberated from the
depth of the error of this world. From whence it is evident that examples or
illustrations do not answer in every particular to the things which they are
brought to exemplify or illustrate. Otherwise, if they were the same in all
respects, they would no longer be called examples or illustrations, but rather
would be the things themselves.

8. Then further it is to be observed that no creature can be such as its
Creator. And therefore, as the divine substance or essence admits of no
comparison, so neither does the Divinity. Moreover, every creature is of
nothing. If therefore a spark which is so unsubstantial but vet is fire, begets
of itself a creature which is of nothing, and maintains in it the essential
nature of that from which it springs, (i.e. the fire of the parent spark), why
could not the substance of that eternal Light which ever has been because it has
in itself nothing which is not substantial, produce froth itself substantial
brightness? Rightly, therefore, is the Son called "only," "unique." For He who
hath been so born is "only" and "unique." That which is unique can admit of no
comparison. Nor can He who made all things be like in substance to the things
which He has made. This then is Christ Jesus, the only Son of God, who is also
our Lord. "Only" may be referred both to Son and to Lord. For Jesus Christ is
"only" both as truly Son and as one Lord. For all other sons, though they are
called sons, are so called by the grace of adoption, not by verity of nature;
and if there be others who are called lords, they are called so from an
authority bestowed not inherent. But Christ alone is the only Sonand the only
Lord. as the Apostle saith, "One Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom are all things."22
Therefore, after the Creed has in due order set forth the ineffable mystery of
the nativity of the Son froth the Father, it now descends to the dispensation
which He vouchsafed to enter upon for man's salvation. And of Him whom just now
it called the "only Son of God" and "our Lord," it now says.

9. "Who Was Born by (de) The Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary." This nativity among
men is in the way of dispensation,23 whereas the former nativity is of the
divine substance; the one results from his condescension, the other from his
essential nature. He is born by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin. Here a chaste ear
and a pure mind is required. For you must understand that now a temple hath been
built within the secret recesses of a Virgin's womb for Him of Whom erewhile you
learnt that He was born ineffably of the Father. And just as in the
sanctification of the Holy Ghost no thought of imperfection is to be admitted,
so in the Virgin-birth no defilement is to be imagined. For this birth was a new
birth given to this world, and rightly new. For He Who is the only Son in heaven
is by consequence the only Son on earth, and was uniquely born, born as no other
ever was or can be. The words of the Prophets concerning Him, "A Virgin shall
conceive and bring forth a Son,"24 are known to all, and are cited in the
Gospels again and again. The Prophet Ezekiel too had predicted the miraculous
manner of that birth, calling Mary figuratively "the Gate of the Lord," the
gate, namely, through which the Lord entered the world. For he saith, "The gate
which looks towards the East shall be closed, and shall not be opened, and no
one shall pass through it, because the Lord God of Israel shall pass through it,
and it shall be closed."25 What could be said with such evident reference to the
inviolate preservation of the Virgin's condition? That Gate of Virginity was
closed; through it the Lord God of Israel entered; through it He came forth from
the Virgin's womb into this world; and the Virgin-state being preserved
inviolate, the gate of the Virgin remained closed for ever. Therefore the Holy
Ghost is spoken of as the Creator of the Lord's flesh and of His temple.

10. Starting from this point you may understand the majesty of the Holy Ghost
also. For the Gospel witnesses of Him that when the angel said to the Virgin,
"Thou shalt bring forth a Son and shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save
His people from their sins,"26 she replied, "How shall this be, seeing I know
not a man?" on which the angel said to her, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon
thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. Wherefore that holy
Thing which shall be born of Thee shall be called the Son of God."27 See here
the Trinity mutually cooperating with each other. The Holy Ghost is spoken of as
coming upon the Virgin, and the Power of the Highest as overshadowing her. What
is the Power of the Highest but Christ Himself, Who is the Power of God and the
Wisdom of God? Whose is this Power? The Power of the Highest. There is here then
the Highest, there is also the Power of the Highest, there is also the Holy
Ghost. This is the Trinity, everywhere latent, and everywhere apparent, distinct
in names and persons, but inseparable in the substance of the Godhead. And
although the Son alone is born of the Virgin, yet there is present also the
Highest, there is present also the Holy Ghost, that both the conception and the
bringing forth of the Virgin may be sanctified.

11. These things, since they are asserted upon the warrant of the Prophetical
Scriptures, may possibly silence the Jews, infidel and incredulous though they
be. But the Pagans are wont to ridicule us when they hear us speak of a
Virgin-birth. We must, therefore, say a few words in reply to their cavils.
Every birth, I suppose, depends upon three conditions. There must be a woman of
mature age, she must have intercourse with a man, her womb must not be barren.
Of these three conditions, in the birth of which we are speaking, one was
wanting, the man. And this, forasmuch as He of Whose birth we speak was not an
earthly but a heavenly man, was supplied by the Heavenly Spirit, the virginity
of the mother being preserved inviolate. And yet why should it be thought
marvellous for a virgin to conceive, when it is well known that the Eastern
bird, which they call the Phoenix, is in such wise born, or born again, without
the intervention of a mate, that it remains continually one, and continually by
being born or born again succeeds itself?28 That bees know no wedlock, and no
bringing forth of young, is notorious. There are also other things which are
found to be subject to some such law of birth. Shall it be thought incredible,
then, that was done by divine power, for the renewal and restoration of the
whole world, of which instances are observed in the nativity of animals? And yet
it is strange that the Gentiles should think this impossible, who believe their
own Minerva to have been born from the brain of Jupiter. What is more difficult
to believe, or what more contrary to nature? Here, there is a woman, the order
of nature is kept, there is conception, and in due time birth; there, there is
no female, but a man alone, and-birth! Why does he who believes the one marvel
at the other? Again, they say that Father Bacchus was born from Jupiter's thigh.
Here is another portent, yet it is believed. Venus also, whom they call
Aphrodite, was born, they believe, of the foam of the sea, as her compounded
name shews. They affirm that Castor and Pollux were born of an egg, the
Myrmidons of ants. There are a thousand other things which, though contrary to
nature, find credit with them, such as the stones thrown by Deucalion and
Pyrrha, and the crop of men sprung from thence. And when they believe such myths
and so many of them, does one thing seem impossible to them, that a woman of
mature age, not defiled by man but impregnated by the Holy Ghost, should
conceive a divine progeny? who, forsooth, if they are hard of belief, ought in
no wise to have given credence to those prodigies, being, as they are, so many
and so degrading; but if they do believe them, they ought much more readily to
receive these beliefs of ours, so honourable and so holy, than theirs so
discreditable and so vile.

12. But they say, perhaps, If it was possible to God that a virgin should
conceive, it was possible also that she should bring forth, but they think it
unmeet that a being of so great majesty should enter the world in such wise,
that even though there had been no defilement from intercourse with man, there
should yet be the unseemliness attendant upon the act of delivery. To which let
us reply briefly, meeting them on their own level. If a person should see a
little child in the act of being suffocated in a quagmire, and himself, a great
man and powerful, should go into the mire, just at its verge, so to say, to
rescue the dying child; would you blame this than as defiled for having stepped
into a little mire, or would you praise him as merciful, for having preserved
the life of one that was perishing? But the case supposed is that of an ordinary
man. Let us return to the nature of Him Who was born. How much, think you, is
the nature of the Sun inferior to him? How much beyond doubt, the Creature to
the Creator? Consider now if a ray of the sun alights upon a quagmire, does it
receive any pollution from it? or is the sun the worse for shedding his light
upon foul objects? Fire, too, how far inferior is its nature to the things of
which we are speaking? Yet no substance, whether foul or vile, is believed to
pollute fire if applied to it. When the case is plainly thus with regard to
material things, do you suppose that aught of pollution and defilement can
befall that supereminent and incorporeal nature, which is above all fire and all
light? Then, lastly, note this also: we say that man was created by God out of
the clay of the earth. But if God is thought to be defiled in seeking to recover
His own work, much more must He be thought so in making that work originally.
And it is idle to ask why He passed through what is repugnant to our sense of
modesty, when you cannot tell why He made what is so repugnant. And therefore it
is not nature but general estimation that has made us think these things to be
such. Otherwise, all things that are in the body, being formed from one and the
same clay, are distinguished from one another only in their uses. and natural
offices.

13. But there is another consideration which we must not leave out in the
solution of this question, namely, that the substance of God, which is wholly
incorporeal, cannot be introduced into bodies or be received by them in the
first instance, unless there be some spiritual substance as a medium, which is
capable of receiving the divine Spirit. For instance, if we say that light is
able to irradiate all the members of the body, yet by none of them can it be
received except by the eye. For it is the eve alone which is receptive of light.
So the Son of God is horn of a virgin, not associated with the flesh alone in
the first instance, but begotten with a soul as a medium between the flesh and
God. With the soul, then, serving as a medium, and receiving the Word of God in
the secret citadel of the rational spirit, God was born of the Virgin without
any such disparagement as you imagine. And therefore nothing is to be esteemed
base or unseemly wherein was the sanctification of the Spirit, and where the
soul which was capable of God became also a partaker of flesh. Account nothing
impossible where the power of the Most High was present. Have no thought of
human weakness where there was the plenitude of Divinity.

14. He Was Crucified Under Pontius Pilate and Was Buried: He Descended into
Hell.The Apostle Paul teaches us that we ought to have "the eyes of our
understanding enlightened"29 "that we may understand what is the height and
breadth and depth."30 "The height and breadth and depth" is a description of the
Cross, of which that part which is fixed in the earth he calls the depth, the
height that which is erected upon the earth and reaches upward, the breadth that
which is spread out to the right hand and to the left. Since, therefore, there
are so many kinds of death by which it is given to men to depart this life, why
does the Apostle wish us to have our understanding enlightened so as to know the
reason why, of all of them, the Cross was chosen in preference for the death of
the Saviour. We must know, then, that Cross was a triumph. It was a signal
trophy. A triumph is a token of victory over an enemy. Since then Christ, when
He came, brought three kingdoms at once into subjection under His sway (for this
He signifies when he says, "That in tile name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth"),31 and
conquered all of these by His death, a death was sought answerable to the
mystery, so that being lifted up in the air, and subduing the powers of the air,
He might make a display of His victory over these supernatural and celestial
powers. Moreover the holy Prophet says that "all the day long He stretched out
His hands"32 to the people on the earth, that He might both make protestation to
unbelievers and invite believers: finally, by that part which is sunk under the
earth, He signified His bringing into subjection to Himself the kingdoms of the
nether world.

15. Moreover,-to touch briefly some of the more recondite topics,-when God made
the world in the beginning, He set over it and appointed certain powers of
celestial virtues by whom the race of mortal men might be governed and directed.
That this was so done Moses signifies in the Song in Deuteronomy, "When the Most
High divided the nations, He appointed the bounds of the nations according to
the number of the angels of God."33 But some of these, as he who is called the
Prince of this world, did not exercise the power which God had committed to them
according to the laws by which they had received it, nor did they teach mankind
to obey God's commandments, but taught them rather to follow their own perverse
guidance. Thus we were brought under the bonds of sin, because, as the Prophet
saith, "We were sold under our sins."34 For every man, when he yields to lust,
is receiving the purchase-money of his soul. Under that bond then every man was
held by those most wicked rulers, which same bond Christ, when the came, tore
down and stripped them of this their power. This Paul signifies under a great
mystery, when he says of Him, "He destroyed the hand-writing which was against
us, nailing it to His cross, and led away principalities and powers, triumphing
over them in Himself."35 Those rulers, then, whom God had set over mankind,
having become contumacious and tyrannical, took in hand to assail the men who
had been committed to their charge and to rout them utterly in the conflicts of
sin, as the Prophet Ezekiel mystically intimates when he says, "In that day
angels36 shall come forth hastening to exterminate Ethiopia, and there shall he
perturbation among them in the day of Egypt; for behold He comes."37 Having
stript them then of their almighty power, Christ is said to have triumphed, and
to have delivered to men the power which was taken from them, as also Himself
saith to His disciples in the Gospel, "Behold I have given you power to tread
upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the might of the enemy."38 The Cross
of Christ, then, brought those who had wrongfully abused the authority which
they had received into subjection to those who had before been in subjection to
them. But us, that is, mankind, it teaches first of all to resist sin even unto
death, and willingly to die for the sake of religion. Next, this same Cross sets
before us an example of obedience, in like manner as it hath punished the
contumacy of those who were once oar rulers. Hear, therefore, how the Apostle
would teach us obedience by the Cross of Christ: "Let this mind be in you, which
was in Christ Jesus, Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be
equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking upon Him the form of a
servant, being made in the likeness of men; and, being found in fashion as a
man, He became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross."39 As, then, a
consummate master teaches both by example and precept, so Christ taught the
obedience, which good men are to render even at the cost of death, by Himself
first dying in rendering it.

16. But perhaps some one is alarmed at hearing us discourse of the death of Him
of Whom, a short while since, we said that He is everlasting with God the
Father, and that He was begotten of the Father's substance, and is one with God
the Father, in dominion, majesty, and eternity. But be not alarmed, O faithful
hearer. Presently thou wilt see Him of Whose death thou hearest once more
immortal; for the death to which He submits is about to spoil death. For the
object of that mystery of the Incarnation which we expounded just now was that
the divine virtue of the Son of God, as though it were a hook concealed beneath
the form and fashion of human flesh (He being, as the Apostle Paul says, "found
in fashion as a man"),40 might lure on the Prince of this world to a conflict,
to whom offering His flesh as a bait, His divinity underneath might catch him
and hold him fast with its hook, through the shedding of His immaculate blood.
For He alone Who knows no stain of sin hath destroyed the sins of all, of those,
at least, who have marked the door-posts of their faith with His blood. As,
therefore, if a fish seizes a baited hook, it not only does not take the bait
off the hook, but is drawn out of the water to be itself food for others, so He
Who had the power of death seized the body of Jesus in death, not being aware of
the hook of Divinity inclosed within it, but having swallowed it he was caught
forthwith, and the bars of hell being burst asunder, he was drawn forth as it
were from the abyss to become food for others. Which result the Prophet Ezekiel
long ago foretold under this same figure, saying, "I will draw thee out with My
hook, and stretch thee out upon the earth: the plains shall be filled with thee,
and I will set all the fowls of the air over thee, and I will satiate all tim
beasts of the earth with thee."41 The Prophet David also says, "Thou hast broken
the heads of the great dragon, Thou hast given him to be meat to the people of
Ethiopia."42 And Job in like manner witnesses of the same mystery, for he says
in the person of the Lord speaking to him, "Wilt thou draw forth the dragon with
a hook, and wilt thou put thy bit in his nostrils?"43

17. It is with no loss or disparagement therefore of His Divine nature that
Christ suffers in the flesh, but His Divine nature through the flesh descended
into death, that by the infirmity of the flesh He might effect salvation; not
that He might be detained by death according to the law of mortality, but that
He might by Himself in his resurrection open the gates of death. It is as if a
king were to proceed to a prison, and to go in and open the doors, undo the
fetters, break in pieces the chains, the bars, and the bolts, and bring forth
and set at liberty the prisoners, and restore those who are sitting in darkness
and in the shadow of death to light and life. The king, therefore, is said
indeed to have been in prison, but not under the same condition as the prisoners
who were detained there. They were in prison to be punished, He to free them
from punishment.

18. They who have handed down the Creed to us have with much forethought
specified the time when these things were done-"under Pontius Pilate,"-lest in
any respect the tradition should falter, as though vague and uncertain. But it
should be known that the clause, "He descended into Hell," is not added in the
Creed of the Roman Church, neither is it in that of the Oriental Churches. It
seems to be implied, however, when it is said that "He was buried." But in the
love and zeal for the Divine Scriptures which possess you, you say to me, I
doubt not, "These things ought to be proved by more evident testimonies from the
Divine Scriptures. For the more important the things are which are to be
believed, so much the more do they need apt and undoubted witness." True. But
we, as speaking to those who know the law, have left unnoticed, for the sake of
brevity, a whole forest of testimonies. But if this also be required, let us
cite a few out of many, knowing, as we do, that to those who are acquainted with
the Scriptures, a very ample sea of testimonies lies open.

19. First of all, then, we must know that the doctrine of the Cross is not
regarded by all in the same light. It is one thing to the Gentiles, to the Jews
another, to Christians another; as also the Apostle says. "We preach Christ
crucified,-to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Gentiles foolishness, but to
those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the
wisdom of God;"44 and, in the same place, "For the preaching of the Cross is to
those who perish foolishness, but to those who are saved," that is, to us, it is
"the Power of God."45 The Jews, to whom it had been delivered out of the Law,
that Christ should abide for ever, were offended by His Cross, because they were
unwilling to believe His resurrection. To the Gentiles it seemed foolishness
that God should have submitted to death, because they were ignorant of the
mystery of the Incarnation. But Christians, who had accepted His birth and
passion in the flesh and His resurrection from the dead, of course believed that
it was the power of God which had overcome death.

First, therefore, hear how this very thing is prophetically declared by Isaiah,
that the Jews, to whom the Prophets had foretold these things, would not
believe, bat that they who had never heard them from the Prophets, would believe
them. "To whom He was not spoken of they shall see, and they that have not heard
shall understand."46 Moreover, this same Isaiah foretells that, while those who
were engaged in the study of the Law from childhood to old age believed not, to
the Gentiles every mystery should be transferred. His words are: "And the Lord
of Hosts shall make a feast on this mountain unto all nations: they shall drink
joy, they shall drink wine, they shall be anointed with ointment on this
mountain. Deliver all these things to the nations."47 This was the counsel of
the Almighty respecting all the nations. But they who boast themselves of their
knowledge of the Law will, perhaps, say to us, "You blaspheme in saying that the
Lord was subjected to the corruption of death and to the suffering of the
Cross." Read, therefore, what you find written in the Lamentations of Jeremiah:
"The Spirit of our countenance, Christ the Lord, was taken in our48 corruptions,
of whom we said, we shall live under His shadow among the nations."49 Thou
hearest how the Prophet gays that Christ the Lord was taken, and for us, that
is, for our sins, delivered to corruption. Under whose shadow, since the people
of the Jews have continued in unbelief, he says the Gentiles lie, because we
live not in Israel, but among the Gentiles.

20. But, if it does not weary you, let the point out as briefly as possible,
specific references to prophecy in the Gospels, that those who are being
instructed in the first elements of the faith may have these testimonies written
on their hearts, test any doubt concerning the things which they believe should
at any time take them by surprise. We are told in the Gospel that Judas, one of
Christ's friends and associates at table, betrayed Him. Let the show you how
this is foretold in the Psalms: "He who hath eaten My bread hath lifted up his
heel against Me:"50 and in another place; "My friends and My neighbours drew
near and set themselves against Me:"51 and again; "His words were made softer
than oil and yet be they very darts."52 What then is meant by his words were
made soft? "Judas came to Jesus and said unto Him, Hail, Master, and kissed
Him."53 Thus through the soft blandishment of a kiss he implanted the execrable
dart of betrayal. On which the Lord said to him, "Judas, betrayest thou the Son
of Man with a kiss?"54 You observe that He was appraised by the traitor's
covetousness at thirty pieces of silver. Of this also the Prophet speaks, "And I
said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price, or if not, forbear;" and
presently, "I received from them," he says, "thirty pieces of silver, and I cast
them into the house of the Lord, into the foundry."55 Is not this what is
written in the Gospels, that Judas, "repenting of what he had done, brought back
the money, and threw it down in the temple and departed?"56 Well did He call it
His price, as though blaming and upbraiding. For He had done so many good works
among them, He had given sight to the blind, feet to the lame, the power of
walking to the palsied, life also to the dead; for all these good works they
paid Him death as His price, appraised at thirty pieces of silver. It is related
also in the Gospels that He was bound. This also the word of prophecy had
foretold by Isaiah, saying, "Woe unto their soul, who have devised a most evil
device against themselves, saying, Let us bind the just One, seeing that He is
unprofitable to us."57

21. But, says some one, "Are these things to be understood of the Lord? Could
the Lord be held prisoner by men and dragged to judgment?" Of this also the same
Prophet shall convince you. For he says, "The Lord Himself shall come into
judgment with the elders and princes of the people."58 The Lord is judged then
according to the Prophet's testimony, and not only judged, but scourged, and
smitten on the face with the palms (of men's bands), and spitted on, and suffers
every insult and indignity for our sake. And because all who should hear these
things preached by the Apostles would be perfectly amazed, therefore also the
Prophet speaking in their person exclaims, "Lord, who hath believed our
report?"59 For it is incredible that God, the Son of God, should be spoken of
and preached as having suffered these things. For this reason they are foretold
by the Prophets, lest any doubt should spring up in those who are about to
believe. Christ the Lord Himself therefore in His own person, says, "I gave My
back to the scourges, and My cheeks to the palms,60 I turned not away My face
from shame and spitting."61 This also is written among His other sufferings,
that they bound Him, and led Him away to Pilate. This also the Prophet foretold,
saying, "And they bound him and conducted Him as a pledge of friendship (xenium)
to King Jarim."62 But some one objects, "But Pilate was not a king." Hear then
what the Gospel relates next, "Pilate hearing that He was from Galilee, sent Him
to Herod, who was king in Israel at that time."63 And rightly does the Prophet
add the name "Jarim," which means "a wild-vine, for Herod was not of the house
of Israel, nor of that Israelitish vine which the Lord had brought out of Egypt,
and "planted in a very fruitful hill,"64 but was a wild vine, i.e. of an alien
stock. Rightly, therefore, was he called "a wild-vine," because he in nowise
sprung from the shoots of the vine of Israel. And whereas the Prophet used the
phrase "xenium," "A pledge of friendship," this also corresponds, "For Herod and
Pilate," as the Gospel witnesses, "from being enemies were made friends,"65 and,
as though in token of their reconciliation, each sent Jesus bound to the other.
What matter, so long as Jesus, as Saviour, reconciles those who were at
variance, and restores peace, and also brings back concord! Wherefore of this
also it is written in Job, "May the Lord reconcile the hearts of the princes of
the earth."66

22. It is related that when Pilate would fain have released Him all the people
cried out, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him!"67 This also the Prophet Jeremiah
foretells, saying, in the person of the Lord Himself, "My inheritance is become
to Me as a lion in the forest. He hath uttered his voice against Me, wherefore I
have hated it. And therefore (saith He) I have forsaken and left My house."68
And again in another place, "Against whom have ye opened your mouth, and against
whom have ye let loose your tongues?"69 When He stood before His judge, it is
written that "He held His peace."70 Many Scriptures testify of this. In the
Psalms it is written, "I became as a man that beareth not, and in whose mouth
are no reproofs."71 And again, "I was as a deaf man, and heard not, and as one
that is dumb and openeth not his mouth." And again another Prophet saith, "As a
lamb before her shearer, so He opened not Ills mouth. In His humiliation His
judgmentwas taken away."72 It is written that there was put on Him a crown of
thorns. Of thishear in the Canticles the voice of God the Father marvelling at
the iniquity of Jerusalem in the insult done to His Son: "Go forth and see, ye
daughters of Jerusalem, the crown wherewith His mother hath crowned Him"73
Moreover, of the thorns another Prophet makes mention: "I looked that she should
bring forth grapes, and she brought forth thorns, and instead of righteousness a
cry."74 But that thou mayest know the secrets of the mystery, it behoved Him,
Who came to take away the sins of the world, to free the earth also from the
curse, which it had received through the sin of the first man, when the Lord
said "Cursed be the earth in thy labours: thorns: and thistles shall it bring
forth to thee."75 For this cause, therefore, is Jesus crowned with thorns, that
first sentence of condemnation might be remitted. He is led to the cross, and
the life of the whole word is suspended on the wood of which it is made. I would
point out how this also is confirmed by testimony from the Prophets. You find
Jeremiah speaking of it thus, "Come and let us cast wood into His bread, and
crush Him out of the land of the living."76 And again, Moses, mourning over
them, says, "Thy life shall be suspended before thine eyes, and thou shall fear
day and night, and shall not believe thy life."77 But we must pass on, for
already we are exceeding our proposed measure of brevity, and are lengthening
out our "short word" by a long dissertation. Yet we will add a few words more,
test we should seem altogether to have passed over what we undertook.

23. It is written that when the side of Jesus was pierced "He shed thereout
blood and water."78 This has a mystical meaning. For Himself had said, "Out of
His belly shall flow rivers of living water."79 But He shed forth blood also, of
which the Jews sought that it might be upon themselves and upon their children.
He shed forth water, therefore, which might wash believers; He shed forth blood
also which might condemn unbelievers. Yet it might be understood also as
prefiguring the twofold grace of baptism, one that which is given by the baptism
of water, the other that which is sought through martyrdom in the outpouring of
blood, for both are called baptism. But if you ask further why our Lord is said
to have poured forth blood and water from His side rather than from any other
member, I imagine that by the rib in the side the woman is signified. Since the
fountain of sin and death proceeded from the first woman, who was the rib of the
first Adam, the fountain of redemption and life is drawn from the rib of the
second Adam.

24. It is written that in our Lord's passion there was darkness over the earth
from the sixth hour until the ninth. To this also you will find the Prophet
witnessing, "Thy Sun shall go down at mid-day."80 And again, the Prophet
Zechariah, "In that day there shall be no more light. There shall be cold and
frost in one day, and that day known to the Lord; and it shall be neither day
nor night, hut at evening time there shall be light"81 What plainer language
could the Prophet have used for his words to seem not so much a prophecy of the
future as a narrative of the past? He foretold both the cold and the frost. For
Peter was warming himself at the fire because it was cold: and he was suffering
cold not only in respect of the time (the early hour), but also of his faith.
There is added,82 "and that day shall be known to the Lord; and it shall be
neither day nor night." What is "neither day nor night?" Did he not plainly
speak of the darkness interposed in the day, and then the light afterwards
restored? That was not day, for it did not begin with sun-rise, neither was it
complete night, for it did not, when the day was ended, receive its due space
from the beginning or prolong it to the end; but the light which had been driven
away by the crime of wicked men is restored at evening time. For after the ninth
hour, the darkness is driven away, and the sun is restored to the world. Again,
another Prophet witnesses of the same, "The light shall be darkened upon the
earth in the day-time."83

25. The Gospel further relates that the soldiers parted the garments of Jesus
among themselves, and cast lots upon His vesture. The Holy Spirit provided that
this also should be witnessed beforehand by the Prophets, for David says, "They
parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture they did cast lots."84 Nor
were the Prophets silent even as to the robe, the scarlet robe, which the
soldiers are said to have put upon Him in mockery. Listen to Isaiah, "Who is
this that cometh from Edom, red in his garments from Bozrah? Wherefore are thy
garments red, and thy raiment as though thou hadst trodden in the wine-press?"
To which Himself replies, "I have trodden the wine-press alone, O daughter of
Sion."85 For He alone it is Who hath not sinned, and hath taken away the sins of
the world. For if by one man death could enter into the world, how much more by
one man. Who was God also, could life be restored!

26. It is related also that vinegar was given Him to drink, or wine mingled with
myrrh which is bitterer than gall. Hear what the Prophet has foretold of this:
"They gave Me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty they gave Me vinegar to
drink."86 Agreeably with which Moses, even in his day, said to the people,
"Their vine is of the vineyards of Sodom, and their branch of Gomorrah; their
grape is a grape of gall, and their cluster a cluster of bitterness."87 And
again, the Prophet upbraiding them says, "Oh foolish people and unwise, have ye
thus requited the Lord?"88 Moreover, in the Canticles the same things are
foretold, where even the garden in which the Lord was crucified is indicated: "I
have come into my garden, my sister, my spouse, and have gathered in my
myrrh."89 Here the Prophet has plainly set forth the wine mingled with myrrh
which the Lord has given Him to drink.27. Next it is written that "He gave up
the ghost."90 This also had been foretold, by the Prophet, who says, addressing
the Father in the Person of the Son. "Into Thy hands I commend My Spirit."91 He
is related also to have been buried, and a great stone laid at the door of the
sepulchre. Hear what the word of prophecy foretoldby Jeremiah concerning this
also, "They have cut off my life in the pit, and have laid a stone upon Me."92
These words of the Prophet point most plainly to His burial. Here are yet
others, "The righteous hath been taken away from beholding iniquity, and his
place is in peace."93 And in another place, "I will give the malignant for his
burial;"94 and yet once more, "He hath lain down and slept as a lion, and as a
lion's whelp; who shall rouse Him tip?"95

28. That He descended into hell is also evidently foretold in the Psalms, where
it is said, "Thou hast brought Me also into the dust of the death."96 And again,
"What profit is there in my blood, when I shall have descended into
corruption?"97 And again, "I descended into the deep mire, where there is no
bottom."98 Moreover, John says, "Art Thou He that shall come (into hell, without
doubt), or do we look for another?"99 Whence also Peter says that "Christ being
put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit which dwells in Him,
descended to the spirits who were shut up in prison, who in the days of Noah
believed not, to preach unto them;"100 where also what He did in hell is
declared. Moreover, the Lord says by the Prophet, as though speaking of the
future, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou stiffer Thy Holy
One to see corruption."101 Which again, in prophetic language he speaks of as
actually fulfilled, "O Lord, Thou hast brought my soul out of hell: Thou hast
saved me from them that go down into the pit."102 There follows next,-

29. The Third Day He Rose Again from the Dead. The glory of Christ's
resurrection threw a lustre upon everything which before had the appearance of
weakness and frailty. If a while since it seemed to you impossible that an
immortal Being could die, you see now that He who has overcome death and is
risen again cannot be mortal. But understand herein the goodness of the Creator,
that so far as you by sinning have cast yourself down, so far has He descended
in following you. And do not impute lack of power to God, the Creator of all
things, by imagining his work to have ended in the fall into an abyss which He
in His redemptive purpose was unable to reach. We speak of infernal and
supernal, because we are bounded by the definite circumference of the body, and
are confined within the limits of the region prescribed to us. But to God, Who
is present everywhere and absent nowhere, what is infernal and what supernal?
Notwithstanding, through the assumption of a body there is room for these also.
The flesh which had been deposited in the sepulchre, is raised, that might be
fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet, "Thou wilt not suffer Thy Holy One to
see corruption."103 He returned, therefore, a victor from the dead, leading with
Him the spoils of hell. For He led forth those who were held in captivity by
death, as He Himself had foretold, when He said, "When I shall be lifted up from
the earth I shall draw all unto Me."104 To this the Gospel bears witness, when
it says, "The graves were opened, and many bodies of saints which slept arose,
and appeared unto many, and entered into the holy City,"105 that city,
doubtless, of which the Apostle says, "Jerusalem which is above is free, which
is the Mother of us all."106 As also he says again to the Hebrews, "It became
Him, for Whom are all things, and by Whom are all things, Who had brought many
sons into glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through
suffering."107 Sitting, therefore, on the right hand of God in the highest
heavens, He placed there that human flesh, made perfect through sufferings,
which had fallen to death by the lapse of the first man, but was now restored by
the virtue of the resurrection. Whence also the Apostle says, "Who hath raised
us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places."108 For He was
the potter, Who, as the Prophet Jeremiah teaches, "took up again with His hands,
and formed anew, as it seemed good to Him, the vessel which had fallen from His
hands and was broken in pieces."109 And it seemed good to Him that the mortal
and corruptible body which He had assumed, this body raised from the rocky
sepulchre and rendered immortal and incorruptible, He should now place not on
the earth but in heaven, and at His Father's right hand. The Scriptures of the
Old Testament are full of these mysteries. No Prophet, no Lawgiver, no Psalmist
is silent, but almost every one of the sacred pages speaks of them. It seems
superfluous, therefore, to linger in collecting testimonies; vet we will cite
some few, remitting those who desire to drink more largely to the well-springs
of the divine volumes themselves.

30. It is said then in the Psalms, "I laid me down and slept, and rose up again,
because the Lord sustained me."110 Again, in another place, "Because of the
wretchedness of the needy and the groaning of the poor, now will I arise, saith
the Lord."111 And elsewhere, as we have said above, "O Lord, thou hast brought
my soul out of hell; Thou hast saved me from them that go down into the pit."112
And in another place, "Because Thou hast turned and quickened me, and brought me
out of the deep of the earth again."113 In the 87th Psalm He is most evidently
spoken of: "He became as a man without help, free among the dead."114 It is not
said "a man," but "as a man." For in that He descended into hell, He was "as a
man:" but He was "free among the dead." because He could not be detained by
death. And therefore in the one nature the power of human weakness, in the other
the power of divine majesty is exhibited. The Prophet Hosea also speaks most
manifestly of the third day in this wise, "After two days He will heal us; but
on the third day we shall rise and shall live in His presence."115 This he says
in the person of those who, rising with Him on the third day, are recalled from
death to life. And they are the same persons who say, "On the third day we shall
rise again, and shall live in His presence." But Isaiah says plainly, "Who
brought forth from the earth the great Shepherd of the sheep."116 Then, that the
women were to see His resurrection, while the Scribes and Pharisees and the
people disbelieved, this also Isaiah foretold in these words, "Ye women, who
come from beholding, come: for it is a people that hath no understanding."117
But as to the women who are related to have gone to the sepulchre after the
resurrection, and to have sought Him without finding, as Mary Magdalene, who is
related to have come to the sepulchre before it was light, and not finding Him,
to have said, weeping, to the angels who were there, "They have taken away the
Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him"118 -even this is foretold in the
Canticles: "On my bed I sought Him Whom my soul loveth; I sought Him in the
night, and found Him not."119 Of those also who found Him, and held Him by the
feet, it is foretold, in the same book, "I will hold Him Whom my soul loveth,
and will not let Him go."120 Take these passages, a few of many; for being
intent on brevity we cannot heap together more.

31. He Ascended into Heaven, and Sitteth on the Right Hand of the Father: from
Thence He Shall Come to Judge the Quick and the Dead. These clauses follow with
suitable brevity at the end of this part of the Creed which treats of the Son.
What is said is plain, but the question is how and in what sense it is to be
understood. For to "ascend," and to "sit," and to "come," unless you understand
the words in accordance with the dignity of the divine nature, appear to point
to something of human weakness. For having consummated what was to be done on
earth, and having recalled souls from the captivity of hell, He is spoken of as
ascending up to heaven, as the Prophet had foretold, "Ascending up on high He
led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men,"121 those gifts, namely, which
Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, spoke of concerning the Holy Ghost, "Being
therefore by the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this gift which
ye do see and hear."122 He gave the gift of the Holy Ghost to men, because the
captives, whom the devil had before carried into hell through sin, Christ by His
resurrection from death recalled to heaven. He ascended therefore into heaven,
not where God the Word had not been before, for He was always in heaven, and
abode in the Father, but where the Word made flesh had not been seated before.
Lastly, since this entrance within the gates of heaven seemed new to its
ministers and princes, they say to one another, on seeing the nature of flesh
penetrating into the secret recesses of heaven, as David full of the Holy Ghost,
declares, "Lift up your gates, ye princes, and be ye lift up ye everlasting
gates, and the King of glory shall enter in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord
strong and mighty, the Lord might in battle."123 Which words are spoken not with
reference to the power of the divine nature, but with reference to the novelty
of flesh ascending to the right hand of God. The same David says elsewhere, "God
hath ascended jubilantly, and the Lord with the sound of the trumpet."124 For
conquerors are wont to return from battle with the sound of the trumpet. Of Him
also it is said, "Who buildeth up His ascent in heaven."125 And again, "Who hath
ascended above the cherubims, flying upon the wings of the winds."126

32. To sit at the right hand of the Father is a mystery belonging to the
Incarnation. For it does not befit that incorporeal nature without the
assumption of flesh; neither is the excellency of a heavenly seat sought for the
divine nature, but for the human. Whence it is said of Him, "Thy seat, O God, is
prepared from thence forward; Thou art from everlasting."127 The seat, then,
whereon the Lord Jesus was to sit, was prepared from everlasting, "in whose name
every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth, and things
tinder the earth; and every tongue shall confess to Him that Jesus is Lord in
the glory of God the Father;"128 of Whom also David thus speaks, "The Lord said
unto my Lord. Sit Thou on my right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy
footstool."129 Referring to which words the Lord in the Gospel said to the
Pharisees, "If therefore David in spirit calleth Him Lord, how is He his
Son?"130 By which He shewed that according to the Spirit He was the Lord,
according to the flesh He was the Son, of David. Whence also the Lord Himself
says in another place, "Verily I say unto you, henceforth ye shall see the Son
of Man sitting at the right hand of the power of God."131 And the Apostle Peter
says of Christ, "Who is on the right hand of God, seated in the heavens."132 And
Paul also, writing to the Ephesians, "According to the working of the might of
His power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him froth the dead, and
seated Him on His right hand."133

33. That He shall come to judge the quick and the dead we are taught by many
testimonies of the divine Scriptures. But before we cite what the Prophets say
on this point, we think it necessary to remind you that this doctrine of the
faith would have us daily solicitous concerning the coming of the Judge, that we
may so frame our conduct as having to give account to the Judge who is at hand.
For this is what the Prophet said of the than who is blessed, that, "He ordereth
his words in judgment."134 When, however, He is said to judge the quick and the
dead. this does not mean that some will come to judgment who are still living,
others who are already dead; but that He will judge both souls and bodies,
where, by souls are meant "the quick," and the bodies "the dead;" as also the
Lord Himself saith in the Gospel, "Fear not them who are able to kill the body,
but are not able to hurt the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy
both soul and body in Gehenna."135

34. Now let us shew briefly, if you will, that these things were foretold by the
Prophets. You will yourself, since you are so minded, gather together more from
the ample range of the Scriptures. The Prophet Malachi says, "Behold the Lord
Almighty shall come, and who shall abide the day of His coming, or who shall
abide the sight of Him? For He doth come as the fire of a furnace and as
fuller's soap: and He shall sit, refining and purifying as it were gold and
silver."136 But that thou mayest know more certainly Who this Lord is of Whom
these things are said, hear what the Prophet Daniel also foretells: "I saw,"
saith he, "in the vision of the night, and, behold, One like the Son of Man
coming with the clouds of heaven, and He came nigh to the Ancient of days, and
was brought near before Him; and there was given to Him dominion, and honour,
and a kingdom. And all peoples, tribes, and languages shall serve Him. And His
dominion is an eternal dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom shall
not be destroyed."137 By these words we are taught not only of His coming and
judgment, but of His dominion and kingdom, that His dominion is eternal, and His
kingdom indestructible, without end; as it is said in the Creed,138 "and of His
kingdom there shall be no end." So that one who says that Christ's kingdom shall
one day have an end is very far from the faith. Yet it behoves us to know that
the enemy is wont to counterfeit this salutary advent of Christ with
cunningfraud in order to deceive the faithful, and in the place of the Son of
Man, Who is looked for as coming in the majesty of His Father, to prepare the
Son of Perdition with prodigies and lying signs, that instead of Christ he may
introduce Antichrist into the world; of whom the Lord Himself warned the Jews
beforehand in the Gospels, "Because I am come in My Father's Name, and ye
received Me not, another will come in his own name, and him ye will receive."139
And again, "When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel
the Prophet, standing in the holy place, let him that readeth understand."140
Daniel, therefore, in his visions speaks very fully and amply of the coming of
that delusion: but it is not worth while to cite instances, for we have enlarged
enough already; we therefore refer any one who may wish to know more concerning
these matters to the visions themselves. The Apostle also himself says, "Let no
than deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come except there come a
falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the Son of Perdition, who
opposeth and exalteth himself above everything that is called God, or that is
worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as though
himself were God."141 And soon afterwards, "Then shall that wicked one be
revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of His mouth, and shall
destroy with the brightness of His coming: whose coming is after the working of
Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders."142 And again, shortly
afterwards, "And therefore the Lord shall send unto them strong delusion, that
they may believe a lie, that all may be judged who have not believed the
truth."143 For this reason, therefore, is this "delusion" foretold unto us by
the words of Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles, lest any one should mistake
the coming of Antichrist for the coming of Christ. But as the Lord Himself says,
"When they shall say unto you, lo, here is Christ, or lo, He is there, believe
it not. For many false Christs and false prophets shall come and shall seduce
many." But let us see how He hath pointed out the judgment of the true Christ:
"As the lightning shineth from the east unto the west, so shall the coming of
the Son of Man be."144 When, therefore, the true Lord Jesus Christ shall come,
He will sit and set up his throne of judgment. As also He says in the Gospel,
"He shall separate the sheep from the goats,"145 that is, the righteous from the
unrighteous; as the Apostle writes, "We must all stand before the judgment-seat
of Christ, that every man may receive the awards due to the body, according as
he hath done, whether they be good or evil."146 Moreover, the judgment will be
not only for deeds, but for thoughts also, as the same Apostle saith, "Their
thoughts mutually accusing or else excusing One another, in the day when God
shall judge the secrets of men."147 But on these points let this suffice. Next
follows in the order of the faith,-

35. And in the Holy Ghost. What has been delivered above somewhat at large
concerning Christ relates to the mystery of His Incarnation and of His Passion,
and, by thus intervening, as belonging to His Person, has somewhat delayed the
mention of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, if the divine nature alone be taken into
account, as in the beginning of the Creed we say "I believe in God the Father
Almighty," and afterwards, "In Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord," so in like
manner we add, "And in the Holy Ghost." But all of these particulars which are
spoken of above concerning Christ relate, as we have said, to the dispensation
of the flesh (to His Incarnation). By the mention of the Holy Spirit, the
mystery of the Trinity is completed. For as one Father is mentioned, and there
is no other Father, and one only-begotten Son is mentioned, and there is no
other only-begot-ten Son, so also there is one Holy Ghost, and there cannot be
another Holy Ghost. In order, therefore, that the Persons may be distinguished,
the terms expressing relationship (the properties) are varied, whereby the first
is understood to be the Father, of Whom are all things, Who Himself also hath no
Father, the second the Son, as born of the Father, and the third the Holy Ghost,
as proceeding from both,148 and sanctifying all things. But that in the Trinity
one and the same Godhead may be set forth, since, prefixing the preposition "in"
we say that we believe "in God the Father," so also we say, "in Christ His Son,"
so also "in the Holy Ghost." But our meaning will be made more plain in what
follows. For the Creed proceeds,-

36. "The Holy Church; The Forgiveness of Sin, the Resurrection of This Flesh."
It is not said, "In the holy Church," nor "In the forgiveness of sins," nor "In
the resurrection of the flesh." For if the preposition "in" had been added, it
would have had the same force as in the preceding articles. But now in those
clauses in which the faith concerning the Godhead is declared, we say "In God
the Father," and "In Jesus Christ His Son," and "In the Holy Ghost," but in the
rest, where we speak not of the Godhead but of creatures and mysteries, the
preposition "in " is not added. We do not say "We believe in the holy Church,"
but "We believe the holy Church," not as God, but as the Church gathered
together to God: and we believe that there is "forgiveness of sins;" we do not
say "We believe in the forgiveness of sins;" and we believe that there will be a
"Resurrection of the flesh;" we do not say "We believe in the resurrection of
the flesh." By this monosyllabic preposition, therefore, the Creator is
distinguished from the creatures, and things divine are separated from things
human. This then is the Holy Ghost, who in the Old Testament inspired the Law
and the Prophets, in the New the Gospels and the Epistles. Whence also the
Apostle says, "All Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for
instruction."149 And therefore it seems proper in this place to enumerate, as we
have learnt from the tradition of the Fathers, the books of the New and of the
Old Testament, which, according to the tradition of our forefathers, are
believed to have been inspired by the Holy Ghost, and have been handed down to
the Churches of Christ.

37. Of the Old Testament, therefore, first of all there have been handed down
five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Then
Jesus Nave, (Joshua the son of Nun), The Book of Judges together with Ruth; then
fourbooks of Kings (Reigns), which the Hebrews reckon two; the Book of
Omissions, which is entitled the Book of Days (Chronicles), and two books of
Ezra (Ezra and Nehemiah), which the Hebrews reckon one, and Esther; of the
Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; moreover of the twelve (minor)
Prophets, one hook; Job also and the Psalms of David, each one book. Solomon
gave three books to the Churches, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles. These
comprise the books of the Old Testament. Of the New there are four Gospels,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke; fourteen
Epistles of the Apostle Paul, two of the Apostle Pete, one of James, brother of
the Lord and Apostle, one of Jude, three of John, the Revelation of John. These
are the books which the Fathers have comprised within the Canon, and from which
they would have us deduce the proofs of our faith.

38. But it should be known that there are also other books which our fathers
call not "Canonical" but "Ecclesiastical:" that is to say, Wisdom, called the
Wisdom of Solomon, and another Wisdom, called the Wisdom of the Son of Syrach,
which last-mentioned the Latins called by the general title Ecclesiasticus,
designating not the author of the book, but the character of the writing. To the
same class belong the Book of Tobit, and the Book of Judith, and the Books of
the Maccabees. In the New Testament the little book which is called the Book of
the Pastor of Hermas, [and that] which is called The Two Ways,150 or the
Judgment of Peter; all of which they would have read in the Churches, but not
appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they have named
"Apocrypha." These they would not have read in the Churches.

These are the traditions which the Fathers have handed down to us, which, as I
said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place, for the
instruction of those whoare being taught the first elements of the Church and of
the Faith, that they may know from what fountains of the Word of God their
draughts must be taken.

39. We come next in the order of belief to the Holy Church. We have mentioned
above why the Creed does not say here, as in the preceding article, "In the Holy
Church."They, therefore, who were taught above to believe in one God, under the
mystery of the Trinity, must believe this also, that there is one holy Church in
which there is one faith and one baptism, in which is believed one God the
Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, and one Holy Ghost. This is that
holy Church which is without spot or wrinkle. For many others have gathered
together Churches, as Marcion, and Valentinus, and Ebion, and Manichaeus, and
Arius, and all the other heretics. But those Churches are not without spot or
wrinkle of unfaithfulness. And therefore the Prophet said of them, "I hate the
Church of the malignants, and I will not sit with the ungodly."151 But of this
Church which keeps tim faith of Christ entire, hear what the Holy Spirit says in
the Canticles, "My Glove is one; the perfect one of her mother is one."152 He
then who receives this faith in the Church let him not turn aside in the Council
of vanity, and let him not enter in with those who practise iniquity. For
Marcion's assembly is a Council of vanity in that he denies that the Father of
Christ is God, the Creator, who by His Son made the world. Ebion's is a Council
of vanity since he teaches that, while we believe in Christ, we are withal to
observe the circumcision of the flesh, the keeping of the Sabbath, the
accustomed sacrifices, and all the other ordinances according to the letter of
the Law. Manichaeus' is a Council of vanity in regard of his teaching; first in
that he calls himself the Paraclete, then that he says that the world was made
by an evil God, denies God the Creator, rejects the Old Testament, asserts two
natures, one good the other evil, mutually opposing one another, affirms that
men's souls are co-eternal with God, that, according to the Pythagoreans, they
return through divers circles of nativity into cattle and animals and beasts,
denies the resurrection of our flesh, maintains that the passion and nativity of
the Lord were not in the verity of flesh, but only in appearance. It was the
Council of vanity when Paul of Samosata and his successor Photinus afterwards
taught, that Christ was not born of the Father before the world, but had His
beginning from Mary, and believed not that being God He was born man, but that
of man He was made God. It was the Council of vanity when Arius and Eunomius
taught as their determinate opinion that the Son of God was not born of the very
substance of the Father, but was created out of nothing, and that the Son of God
had a beginning, and is inferior to the Father: moreover they affirm that the
Holy Ghost is not only inferior to the Son, but is also a ministering Spirit.153
Theirs also is a Council of vanity who confess indeed that the Son is of the
substance of the Father, but distinguish and separate the Holy Spirit, while yet
the Saviour shews in the Gospel that the power and Godhead of the Trinity are
one and the same, saying, "Baptize all nations in the Name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."154 and it is plainly impious for man to put
asunder what God bath joined together. That also is the Council of vanity which
a pertinacious and wicked contention formerly gathered together, affirming that
Christ assumed human flesh indeed, but not a rational soul withal, since Christ
conferred one and the same salvation on the flesh, and the animal soul, and the
reason and mind of man. That also is the Council of vanity which Donatus drew
together throughout Africa, by charging the Church with traditorship (delivering
up the sacred books), and with which Novatus disturbed men's minds by denying
the grant of repentance to the lapsed, and condemning second marriages, though
contracted possibly of necessity. All of these then avoid as congregations of
malignants. Those also, if such there be, who are said to assert that the Son of
God does not see or know the Father, as Himself is known and seen by the Father;
or that the kingdom of Christ will have an end; or that the flesh will not be
raised in the complete restoration of its substance; these also who deny that
there will be a just judgment of God in respect of all, and affirm that the
devil will be absolved from the punishment of damnation due to him. To all
these, I say, let the believer turn a deaf ear. But hold fast by the holy
Church, which confesses God the Father Almighty, and His only Son, Jesus Christ
our Lord, and the Holy Ghost, of one concordant and harmonious substance,
believes that the Son of God was born of the Virgin, suffered for man's
salvation, rose again from the dead in the same flesh in which he was born; and,
lastly, hopes that He will come the Judge of all, through Whom also both the
Forgiveness of Sins and the Resurrection of the Flesh are preached.

40. As to the Forgiveness of Sins, it ought to be enough simple to believe. For
who would ask the cause or the reason when a Prince grants indulgence? When the
liberality of an earthly sovereign is no fit subject for discussion, shall man's
temerity discuss God's largess? For the Pagans are wont to ridicule us, saying
that we deceive ourselves, fancying that crimes committed in deed can be purged
by words. And they say, "Can he who has committed murder be no murderer, and he
who has committed adultery be accounted no adulterer? How then shall one guilty
of crimes of this sort all of a sudden be made holy?" But to this, as I said, we
answer better by faith than by reason. For he is King of all who hath promised
it: He is Lord of heaven and earth who assures us of it. Would you have me
refuse to believe that He who made me a man of the dust of the earth can of a
guilty person make me innocent? And that He who when I was blind made me see, or
when I was deaf made me bear, or lame walk, can recover for me my lost
innocence? And to come to the witness of Nature-to kill a man is not always
criminal, but to kill of malice, not by law, is criminal. It is not the deed
then, in such mailers, that condemns me, because sometimes it is rightly done,
but the evil intention of the mind. If then my mind which had been rendered
criminal, and in which the sin originated, is corrected, why should I seem to
you incapable of being made innocent, who before was criminal? For if it is
plain, as I have shewn, that crime consists not in the deed but in the will, as
an evil will, prompted by an evil demon, has made me obnoxious to sin and death,
so the will prompted by the good God, being changed to good, hath restored me to
innocence and life. It is the same also in all other crimes. In this way there
is found to be no opposition between our faith and natural reason, while
forgiveness of sins is imputed not to deeds, which when once done cannot be
changed, but to the mind, which it is certain can be converted from bad to good.

41. This last article, which affirms the Resurrection of the Flesh, concludes
the sum of all perfection with succinct brevity. Although on this point also the
faith of the Church is impugned, not only by Gentiles, but by heretics likewise.
For Valentinus altogether denies the resurrection of the flesh, so do the
Manicheans, as we shewed above. But they refuse to listen to the Prophet Isaiah
when he says, "The dead shall rise, and they who are in the graves shall be
raised,"155 or to most wise Daniel, when he declares, "Then they who are in the
dust of the earth shall arise, these to eternal life, but those to shame and
confusion."156 Yet even in the Gospels, which they appear to receive, they ought
to learn from our Lord and Saviour, Who says, when instructing the Sadducees,
"As touching the resurrection of the dead: have ye not read how He saith to
Moses in the Bush, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob?
Now God is not the God of the dead but of the living."157 Where in what goes
before He declares what and how great is the glory of the resurrection, saying,
"But in the resurrection of the dead they will neither marry or be given in
marriage, but will be as the angels of God."158 But the virtue of the
resurrection confers on men an angelical state, so that they who have risen from
the earth shall not live again on the earth with the brute animals but with
angels in heaven-yet those only whose purer life has fitted them for this-those,
namely, who even now preserving the flesh of their soul in chastity, have
brought it into subjection to the Holy Spirit, and thus with every stain of sins
done away and changed into spiritual glory by the virtue of santification, have
been counted worthy to have it admitted into the society of angels.

42. But unbelievers cry, "How can the flesh, which has been putrified and
dissolved, or changed into dust, sometimes also swallowed up by the sea, and
dispersed by the waves, be gathered up again, and again made one, and a man's
body formed anew out of it?" To whom our first answer is in Paul's words: "Thou
feel, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die. And that which
thou sowest, thou sowest not the body, which shall be, but bare grain of wheat
or of some other seed: but God giveth it a body as seemeth good to Him."159 Did
you not believe that which you see taking place every year in the seeds which
you cast into the ground will come to pass in your flesh which by the law of God
is sown in the earth? Why, pray, have you so mean an opinion of God's power that
you do not believe it possible for the scattered dust of which each man's flesh
was composed to be re-collected and restored to its own original fabric? Do you
refuse to admit the factwhen you see mortal ingenuity search for veins of metal
deeply buried in the ground, and the experienced eye discover gold where the
inexperienced thinks there is nothing but earth? Why should we refuse to grant
these things to Him who made man, when he whom He made can do so much? And when
mortal ingenuity discovers that gold has its own proper vein, and silver
another, and that a far different vein of copper, and diverse and distinct veins
of iron and lead lie concealed beneath what has the appearance of earth, shall
divine power be thought unable to discover and distinguish the component
particles belonging to each man's flesh, even though they seem to be dispersed?

43. But let us endeavour to assist those souls which fail in their faith through
reasons drawn from nature. If one should mix different sorts of seeds together
and sow them indiscriminately in the earth, will not the grain of each several
kind, wherever it may have been thrown, shoot forth at the proper time in
accordance with its own specific nature so as to reproduce the condition of its
own form and its own body.

Thus then the substance of each individual flesh, though its particles have been
variously and diversely scattered, has within it an immortal principle, since it
is the flesh of an immortal soul, and at the time which God in His good pleasure
shall appoint, there will be collected from the earth and drawn to it, its own
component particles, which will be restored to that form which death had
formerly dissolved. And thus it will come to pass that to each soul will be
restored, not a confused or foreign body but its own which it had when alive, in
order that the flesh together with its own soul may for the conflicts of the
present life either be crowned if undefiled, or punished if defiled. And
accordingly our Church.160 in teaching the faith instead of "the Resurrection of
the flesh," as the Creed is delivered in other Churches, guardedly adds the
pronoun "this"-"the resurrection of this flesh." "Of this," that is, no doubt,
of the person who rehearses the Creed, making the sign of the cross upon his
forehead, while he says the word, that each believer may know that his flesh, if
he have kept it clean from sin, will be a vessel of honour, useful to the Lord,
prepared for every good work; but, if defiled by sins, that it will be a vessel
of wrath destined to destruction. But now, concerning the glory of the
resurrection and the greatness of the promise by which God has bound Himself, if
any one desires to be more fully informed, he will find notices in almost all
the divine volumes, out of which, simply by way of bringing them to remembrance,
we will mention a few passages in the present place, and then make an end of the
work which you have enjoined. The Apostle Paul makes use of such arguments as
the following in asserting that mortal flesh will rise again. "But if there be
no resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ risen. And if Christ be not
risen, our preaching is vain and your faith is vain."161 And presently
afterwards, "But now is Christ risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them
that sleep. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of
the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But
every man in his own order. Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are
Christ's at His coming, then cometh the end."162 And afterways he adds, "Behold
I shew you a mystery: We shall all rise indeed, but we shall not163 all be
changed;" or as other copies read, "We shall all sleep, indeed but we shall not
all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for
the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be
changed."164 However, whichever be the true text, writing to the Thessalonians,
he says, "I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are
asleep, that ye sorrow not, as the others who have no hope. For if we believe
that Jesus died and rose again, so those also who sleep through Jesus shall God
bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who
are alive and remain at the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them that
sleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the
voice of the archangel, with the trump of God, and the dead who are in Christ
shall rise first: then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so shall we ever be with
the Lord."165

44. But that you may not suppose this to be a novel doctrine peculiar to Paul, I
will adduce also what the Prophet Ezekiel foretold by the Holy Ghost. "Behold,"
saith he, "I will open your graves and bring you forth out of your graves."166
Let me recall, further, how Job, who abounds in mystical language, plainly
predicts the resurrection of the dead. "There is hope for a tree; for if it be
cut down it will sprout again, and its shoot shall never fail. But if its root
have waxed old in the earth, and the stock thereof be dead in the dust, yet
through the scent of water it will flourish again, and put forth shoots as a
young plant. But man, if he be dead, is he departed and gone? And mortal man, if
he have fallen, shall he be no more?"167 Dost thou not see, that in these words
he is appealing to men's sense of shame, as it were, and saying, "Is mankind so
foolish, that when they see the stock of a tree which has been cut down shooting
forth again from the ground, and dead wood again restored to life, they imagine
their own case. to have no likeness to that of wood or trees?" But convince you
that Job's words are to be read as a question, when he says, "But mortal man
when he hath fallen shall he not rise again?" take this proof from what follows;
for he adds immediately, "But if a man be dead, shall he live?"168 And presently
afterwards he says, "I will wait till I be made again;"169 and afterwards he
repeats the same: "Who shall raise again upon the earth my skin, which is now
draining this cup of suffering?"170

45. Thus much in proof of the profession which we make in the Creed when we say
"The resurrection of this flesh." As to the addition "this" see how consonant it
is with all that we have cited from the divine books. What else does Job signify
in the place which we explained above, "He will raise again my skin, which is
now draining this cup of suffering," that is, which is undergoing these
torments? Does he not plainly say that there will be a resurrection of this
flesh, this, I mean, which is now undergoing the extremity of trials and
tribulations? Moreover, when the Apostle says, "This corruptible must put on
incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,"171 are not his words
those of one who in a manner touches his body and places his finger upon it?
This body then, which is now corruptible, will by the grace of the resurrection
be incorruptible, and this which is now mortal will be clothed with virtues of
immortality, that, as "Christ rising from the dead dieth no more, death hath no
more dominion over Him,"172 so those who shall rise in Christ shall never again
feel corruption or death, not because the nature of flesh will have been cast
off, but because its condition and quality will have been changed. There will be
a body, therefore, which will rise from the dead incorruptible and immortal, not
only of the righteous, but also of sinners; of the righteous that they may be
able ever to abide with Christ, of sinners that they may undergo without end the
punishment due to them.

46. That the righteous shall ever abide with Christ our Lord we have proved
above, where we have shewn that the Apostle says, "Then we which are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the
air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord."173 And do not marvel that the flesh
of the saints is to be changed into such a glorious condition at the
resurrection as to be caught up to meet God, suspended in the clouds and borne
in the air, since the same Apostle, setting forth the great things which God
bestows on them that love Him, says, "Who shall change our vile body that it may
be made like unto His glorious body."174 It is nowise absurd then, if the bodies
of the saints are said to be raised up into the air, seeing that they are said
to be renewed after the image of Christ's body, which is seated at God's right
hand. But this also the holy Apostle adds, speaking either of himself or of
others of his own place or merit, "He will raise us up together with Christ and
make us sit together in the heavenly places."175 Whence,since God's saints bare
these promises and an infinite number like them respecting the resurrection of
the righteous, it will now not be difficult to believe those also which the
Prophets have foretold, namely, that "the righteous shall shine as the sun and
as the brightness of the firmament in the kingdom of God."176 For who will think
it difficult that they should have the brightness of the sun, and be adorned
with the splendour of the stars and of this firmament, for whom the life and
conversation of God's angels are being prepared in heaven, or who are
represented as being hereafter to be conformed to the glory of Christ's body? In
reference to which glory, promised by the Saviour's mouth, the holy Apostle
says, "It is sown as an animal body; it will rise a spiritual body."177 For if
it is true, as it certainly is true, that God will vouchsafe to associate every
one of the righteous and of the saints in companionship with the angels, it is
certain that He will change their bodies also into the glory of a spiritual
body.

47. Nor let this promise seem to you contrary to the natural structure of the
body. For if we believe, according to what is written, that God took clay of the
earth and made man, and that the origin of our body was this, that, by the will
of God, earth was changed into flesh, why does it seem absurd to you or contrary
to reason if, on the same principles on which earth is said to be advanced to
all animal body, an animal body in turn should be believed to be advanced to a
spiritual body? These things anti many like these you will find in the divine
Scriptures concerning the resurrection of the righteous. There will be given to
sinners also, as we said above, a condition of incorruption and immortality at
the resurrection, that, as God assigns this state to the righteous for
perpetuity of glory, so He may assign the same to sinners for prolongation of
confusion and punishment. For this also the Prophet's words, which we referred
to above, state clearly: "Many shall rise froth the dust of the earth, some to
life eternal, and others to confusion and eternal shame."178

ever. Amen.

1: Nothing is known of this Pope Laurentius. The title "Papa," at first Riven to
Bishops promiscuously, was not yet restricted to the Bishop of Rome. Gregory
VII., in a Council held at Home in 1073, forbade it to be given to any other.

2: Isaiah x. 22, Isaiah x. 23, Septuag., and so cited Rom. ix. 28.

3: Heb. xi. 10.

4: Dan. xii. 10, or Is. vii. 9.

5: Matt. xvii. 5.

6: John xiv. 9.

7: John x. 30.

8: John xvi. 28.

9:

10: o pantokratwr, o pantwn kratwn, o pantwn ecousiazwn

11: Col. i. 16.

12: Heb. i. 2.

13: Heb. iv. 8.

14:

15: That is Joshua the son of Nun. It does not appear what passage is referred
to.

16: Acts x. 38.

17: Isa. lxi. 1. Comp. Luke iv. 18.

18: 1 Tim. i. 17.

19: 1 Cor. xi. 3.

20: Matt. xii. 33.

21: Matt. xiii. 47.

22: 1 Cor. viii. 6.

23: Corresponding to the Greek word Economy-the "arrangement" or "plan" by which
the Word became incarnate.

24: Isa. vii. 14.

25: Ezek. xliv. 2, LXX.

26: Matt. i. 21.

27: Luke i. 31, Luke i. 34, Luke i. 35.

28: The fable of the Phoenix was very generally believed in the ancient Church,
and was used as an illustration both of the Virgin-birth, as here, and of the
Resurrection. Cyril of Jerusalem (xviii. 8), whom Rufinus evidently had in view.
refers to it as a providentially designed confirmation of the latter. Possibly
the Septuagint translation of Ps. xcii. 12, "The righteous shall flourish as a
palm tree," wj foinic may have been thought to sanction the fable. On the
Literature connected with the Phoenix, see Bp. Jacobson's edition or the
Apostolical Fathers, Clemens Romanus, Ep. i. §25, note, p. 104.

29: Eph. i. 18.

30: Eph. iii. 18.

31: Phil. ii. 10.

32: Isa. lxv. 2.

33: Deut. xxxxi. 8, LXX.

34: Rom. vii. 14.

35: Col. ii. 14, Col. ii. 15.

36: 'lggeloi 37: Ezek. xxx. 9.

38: Luke x. 19.

39: Phil. ii. 5-8.

40: Phil. ii. 8.

41: Ezek. xxix. 4, Ezek. xxix. 4.

42: Ps. lxxiv. 14, LXX.

43: Job xli. 1.

44: 1 Cor. i. 23, 1 Cor. i. 24.

45: 1 Cor. i. 18.

46: Isa. lii. 15. Comp. Rom. xv. 21.

47: Isa. xxv. 6.

48:

49: Lamentations iv. 20.

50: Ps. xli. 9.

51: Ps. xxxv. 15.

52: Ps. lv. 21.

53: Matt. xxvi. 49.

54: Luke xxii. 48.

55: Zech. xi. 12, Zech. xi. 13, LXX.

56: Matt. xxvii. 3, Matt. xxvii. 5.

57: Isa. iii. 9, LXX.

58: Isa. iii. 14.

59: Isa. liii. 1.

60: Papismata , LXX.

61: Isa. l. 6.

62: Hos. x. 6.

63: Luke xxiii. 6, Luke xxiii. 7.

64: Isa. v. 1.

65: Luke xxiii. 12.

66: Job xii. 24. Diallasswn , LXX.

67: Luke xxiii. 21.

68: Jer. xii. 7, Jer. xii. 8.

69: Isa. lvii. 4.

70: Matt. xxvi. 63.

71: Ps. xxxviii. 13, Ps. xxxviii. 14.

72: Isa. liii. 7, Isa. liii. 8.

73: Cant. iii. 11.

74: Isa. v. 4, Isa. v. 7.

75: Gen. iii. 17, Gen. iii. 18.

76: Jer. xi. 19.

77: Deut. xxviii. 66.

78: John xix. 34.

79: John vii. 38.

80: Amos. viii. 9.

81: Zech. xiv. 6, Zech. xiv. 7, LXX.

82: Zech. xiv. 6, Zech. xiv. 7, LXX.

83: Amos viii. 9.

84: Ps. xxii. 18.

85: Isa. lxiii. 1-3.

86: Ps. lxix. 21.

87: Deut. xxxii. 32.

88: Deut. xxxii. 6.

89: Cant. v. 1.

90: Mark xv. 37.

91: Ps. xxxi. 5.

92: Lam. iii. 53.

93: Isa. lvii. 1, Isa. lvii. 2.

94: Isa. liii. 9, LXX.

95: Gen. xlix. 9.

96: Ps. xxii. 15.

97: Ps. xxx. 9.

98: Ps. lxix. 2.

99: Luke vii. 20.

100: I Pet. iii. 10-20.

101: Ps. xvi 10.

102: Ps. xxx. 3.

103: Ps. xvi. 10.

104: John xii. 32.

105: Matt. xxvii. 52, Matt. xxvii. 53.

106: Gal. iv, 23.

107: Heb. ii. 10.

108: Eph. ii. 6.

109: Jerem. xviii. 4.

110: Ps. iii. 5.

111: Ps. xii. 5.

112: Ps. xxx. 3.

113: Ps. lxxi. 10.

114: Ps. lxxxviii. 4, 5.

115: Hosea vi. 2.

116: Heb. xiii. 20.

117: Isa. xxvii. 11, LXX.

118: John xx. 13.

119: Cant iii. 1.

120: Cant. iii. 4.

121: Ps. lxviii. 18.

122: Acts ii. 33.

123: Ps. xxiv. 7, LXX.

124: Ps. xlviii. 5.

125: Ps. lxxxix. 2.

126: Ps. xviii. 10.

127: Ps. xciii. 2.

128: Phil. ii. 10, Phil. ii. 11.

129: Ps. cx. 1.

130: Matt. xxii. 43-45.

131: Matt. xxvi. 64; Luke xxii. 69.

132: 1 Pet. iii. 22.

133: Eph. i. 19, Eph. i. 20.

134: Ps. cxii. 5.

135: Matt x. 28.

136: Matt. iii. 1-3.

137: Dan. vii. 13, Dan. vii. 14.

138: "The Creed" is either the Constantinopolitan, or, more probably, that of
Jerusalem, with which Rufinus, as a Presbyter of that church, must have been
familiar. There is no reason to suppose that the clause was in the Creed of
Aquileia.

139: John v. 43.

140: Matt. xxiv. 15.

141: 2 Thess. ii. 3, 2 Thess. ii. 4.

142: 2 Thess. ii. 8, 2 Thess. ii. 9.

143: Ibid. 11, 12.

144: Matt. xxiv. 23, Matt. xxiv. 24.

145: Matt. xxv. 32.

146: 2 Cor. v. 10.

147: Rom. ii, 15, Rom. ii, 16.

148: Or, according to another reading, "from the mouth of God."

149: 2 Tim. iii. 16.

150: It is believed that this book forms part of "The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles" lately discovered and Constantinople.

151: Ps. xxvi. 5.

152: Cant. vi. 9.

153:

154: Matt. xxviii. 19.

155: Is. xxvi. 19.

156: Dan. xii. 2.

157: Mark xii. 26, Mark xii. 27.

158: Matt. xxii. 30.

159: 1 Cor. xv. 36-38.

160: The Church of Aquileia.

161: 1 Cor. xv. 13, 1 Cor. xv. 14.

162: Ibid. 20-24.

163: A reading current in Rufinus' time.

164: Ibid. 51, 52.

165: 1 Thess. iv. 13-17.

166: Ezek. xxxvii. 12.

167: Job xiv. 7-10.

168: Job xiv. 14.

169: Ibid. Job xiv. 14.

170: Job xxvi. 26, 27.

171: 1 Cor. xv. 53.

172: Rom. vi. 9.

173: 1 Thess. iv. 17.

174: Phil. iii. 21.

175: Eph. ii. 6.

176: Matt. xiii. 43.

177: 1 Cor. xv. 44.

178: Dan. xii, 2.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 2: JEROME'S APOLOGY FOR HIMSELF AGAINST THE BOOKS OF RUFINUS - BOOK 1
========================================================================

Jerome's Apology for Himself Against the Books of Rufinus.

Addressed to Pammachius and Marcella from Bethlehem, a.d. 402.

Jerome's Apology for Himself Against the Books of Rufinus.

Addressed to Pammachius and Marcella from Bethlehem, a.d. 402.

--------

Book I.

The documents which Jerome had before him when he wrote his Apology were (1)
Rufinus' Translation of Pamphilus' Apology with the Preface prefixed to it and
the book on the Falsification of the Books of Origen, (2) the Translation of the
Peri 'Arxwn and Rufinus' Preface, (3) The Apology of Rufinus addressed to
Anastasius (see p. 430), and (4) Anastasius' letter to John of Jerusalem (p. 432
Apol. ii, 14, iii, 20). He had also other letters of Anastasius like that
addressed to the Bishop of Milan (Jerome Letter 95. See also Apol. iii, 21). But
he had not the full text of Rufinus' Apology (c. 4, 15). He received letters
from Pammachius and Marcella, at the beginning of the Spring of 402, when the
Apology written at Aquileia at the end of 400 had become known to Rufinus'
friends for some time. They had been unable to obtain a full copy, but had sent
the chief heads of it, and had strongly urged Jerome to reply. At the same time
his brother Paulinianus who had been some three years in the West, returned to
Palestine by way of Rome, and there heard and saw portions of Rufinus' Apology,
which he committed to memory (Apol. i, 21, 28) and repeated at Bethlehem. To
these documents Jerome replies. The heads of the First Book are as follows.

1. It is hard that an old friend with whom I had been reconciled should attack
me in a book secretly circulated among his disciples.

2. Others have translated Origen. Why does he single me out?

3. He gave me fictitious praise in his Preface to the Peri 'Arxwn. Now, since I
defend myself, he writes 3 books against me as an enemy.

4, 5. He spoke of me as united in faith with him; but what is his faith? Why are
his books kept secret? I can meet any attack.

6. I translated the Peri 'Arxwn=n because you demanded it, and because his
translation slurred over Origen's heresies.

7. My translation put away ambiguities, and showed the real character of the
book, and of the previous translation.

8. My translation of Origen's Commentaries created no excitement; his first
translation, of Pamphilus' Apology, roused all Rome to indignation.

9. But the work was really Eusebius's, who tells us that Pamphilus wrote
nothing.

10. After the condemnation of Origen by Theophilus and Anastasius, it would be
wise in Rufinus to give up this pretended defence.

11. I had praised Eusebius as well as Origen only as writers; and was forced to
condemn them as heretics. Why should this be taken amiss?

12. I wrote a friendly letter to Rufinus, which my friends kept back.

13. There is nothing to blame in my getting the help of a Jew in translating
from the Hebrew.

14. There is nothing strange in my praising Origen before I knew the Peri
'Arxwn.

15. The accusations seem inconsistent, but I knew them only by report.

16. The office of a commentator.

17. We must distinguish methods of writing, and not expect a vulgar simplicity
in the various compositions of cultured men.

18. My assertion was true, that Origen permitted the use of falsehood.

19. The accusation about a mistranslation of Ps. ii is easily explained.

20. In the difficulties of the translator and the commentator we must get help
where we can.

21. In the Commentary on Ephesians I acted straightforwardly in giving the views
of Origen and others.

22. As to the passage "He hath chosen us before the foundation of the world."

23. As to the passage "Far above all rule and authority &c."

24. As to the passage "That in the ages to come &c."

25. As to "Paul the prisoner of Jesus Christ."

26. As to "The body fitly framed &c."

27. I quoted Origen's views as, "According to another heresy."

28, 29. As to "Men loving their wives as their own bodies."

30. To the charge of reading secular books I reply that I remember what I
learned in youth.

31. Also, a promise given in a dream must not be pressed. Why should such things
be raked up by old friends against one another?

32. I am right in my contention that all sins are remitted in baptism.

I have learned not only from your letter but from those of many others that
cavils are raised against me in the school of Tyrannus,1 "by the tongue of my
dogs from the enemies by himself"2 because I have translated the books Peri
'Arxwn into Latin. What unprecedented shamelessness is this! They accuse the
physician for detecting the poison: and this in order to protect their vendor of
drugs, not in obtaining the reward of innocence but in his partnership with the
criminal; as if the number of the offenders diminished the crime, or as if the
accusation depended on our personal feelings not on the facts. Pamphlets are
written against me; they are forced on every one's attention; and yet they are
not openly published, so that the hearts of the simple are disturbed, and no
opportunity is given me of answering. This is a new way of injuring a man, to
make accusations which you are afraid of sending abroad, to write what you are
obliged to hide. If what he writes is true, why is he afraid of the public? if
it is false, why has he written it? We read when we were boys the words of
Cicero: "I consider it a lack of self-control to write anything which you intend
to keep hidden."3 I ask, What is it of which they complain? Whence comes this
heat, this madness of theirs? Is it because I have rejected a feigned
laudation?4 Because I refused the praise offered in insincere words? Because
under the name of a friend I detected the snares of an enemy? I am called in
this Preface brother and colleague, yet my supposed crimes are set forth openly,
and it is proclaimed that I have written in favour of Origen, and have by my
praises exalted him to the skies. The writer says that he has done this with a
good intention. How then does it come to pass that he now casts in my teeth, as
an open enemy, what he then praised as a friend? He declared that he had meant
to follow me as his predecessor in his translation, and to borrow an authority
for his work from some poor works of mine. If that was so, it would have been
sufficient for him to have stated once for all that I had written. Where was the
necessity for him to repeat the same things, and to force them on men's notice
by iteration, and to turn over the same words again and again, as if no one
would believe in his praises? A praise which is simple and genuine does not show
all this anxiety about its credit with the reader. How is it that he is afraid
that, unless he produces my own words as witnesses, no one will believe him when
he praises me? You see that we perfectly understand his arts; he has evidently
been to the theatrical school, and has learned up by constant practice the part
of the mocking encomiast. It is of no use to put on a veil of simplicity, when
the schemer is detected in his malicious purpose. To have made a mistake once,
or, to stretch the point, even twice, may be an unlucky chance; but how is it
that he makes the supposed mistake with his eyes open, and repeats it, and
weaves this mistake into the whole tissue of his writings so as to make it
impossible for me to deny the things for which he praises me? A true friend who
knew what he was about would, after our previous misunderstanding and our
reconciliation, have avoided all appearance of suspicious conduct, and would
have taken care not to do through inadvertence what might seem to be done
advisedly. Tully says in his book of pleadings for Galinius: "I have always felt
that it was a religious duty of the highest kind to preserve every friendship
that I have formed; but most of all those in which kindness has been restored
after some disagreement. In the case of friendships which have never been
shaken, if some attention has not been paid, the excuse of forgetfulness, or at
the worst of neglect is readily accepted; but after a return to friendship, if
anything is done to cause offence, it is imputed not to neglect but to an
unfriendly intention, it is no longer a question of thoughtlessness but of
breach of faith." So Horace writes in his Epistle to Florus5 "Kindness,
ill-knit, cleaves not but flies apart."

2. What good does it do me that he declares on his oath that it was through
simplicity that he went wrong? His praises are, as you know, cast in my teeth,
and the laudation of this most simple friend (which however has not much either
of simplicity or of sincerity in it) is imputed to me as a crime. If he was
seeking a foundation of authority for what he was doing, and wishing to shew who
had gone before him in this path he had at hand the Confessor Hilary, who
translated the books of Origen upon Job and the Psalms consisting of forty
thousand lines. He had Ambrose whose works are, almost all of them, full of what
Origen has written; and the martyr Victorinus, who acts really with
`simplicity,' and without setting snares for others. As to all these he keeps
silence; he does not notice those who are like pillars of the church; but me,
who am but like a flea and a man of no account, he hunts out from corner to
corner. Perhaps the same simplicity which made him unconscious that he was
attacking his friend will make him swear that he knew nothing of these writers.
But who will believe that he does not know these men whose memory is quite
recent, even though they were Latins, being as he is such a very learned man,
and one who has so great a knowledge of the old writers, especially the Greeks,
that, in his zeal for foreign knowledge he has almost lost his own language?6
The truth is it is not so much that I have been praised by him as that those
writers have not been attacked. But whether what he has written is praise (as he
tries to make simpletons believe) or an attack, (as I feel it to be from the
pain which his wounds give me), he has taken care that I should have none of my
contemporaries to bring me honor by a partnership in praise, nor consolation by
a partnership in vituperation.

3. I have in my hands your letter,7 in which you tell me that I have been
accused, and expect me to reply to my accuser lest silence should be taken as an
acknowledgment of his charges. I confess that I sent the reply; but, though I
felt hurt, I observed the laws of friendship, and defended myself without
accusing my accuser. I put it as if the objections which one friend had raised
at Rome were being bruited about by many enemies in all parts of the world, so
that every one should think that I was replying to the charges, not to the man.
Will you tell me that another course was open to me, that I was bound by the law
of friendship to keep silence under accusation, and, though I felt my face, so
to say, covered with dirt and bespattered with the filth of heresy, not even to
wash it with simple water, for fear that an act of injustice might be imputed to
him. This demand is not such as any man ought to make or such as any man ought
to accept. You openly assail your friend, and set out charges against him under
the mask of an admirer; and he is not even to be allowed to prove himself a
catholic, or to reply that the supposed heresy on which this laudation is
grounded arises not from any agreement with a heresy, but from admiration of a
great genius. He thought it desirable to translate this book into Latin; or, as
he prefers to have it thought he was compelled, though unwilling, to do it. But
what need was there for him to bring me into the question, when I was in
retirement, and separated from him by vast intervals of land and sea? Why need
he expose me to the ill-will of the multitude, and do more harm to me by his
praise than good to himself by putting me forward as his example? Now also,
since I have repudiated his praise, and, by erasing what he had written, have
shewn that I am not what my friend declared, I am told that he is in a fury, and
has composed three books against me full of graceful Attic raillery, making
those very things the object of attack which he had praised before, and turning
into a ground of accusation against me the impious doctrines of Origen; although
in that Preface in which he so lauded me, he says of me: "I shall follow the
rules of translation laid down by my predecessors, and particularly those acted
on by the writer whom I have just mentioned. He has rendered into Latin more
than seventy of Origen's homiletical treatises, and a few also of his
commentaries on the Apostle; and in these, wherever the Greek text presents a
stumbling block, he has smoothed it down in his version and has so emended the
language used that a Latin writer can find no word that is at variance with our
faith. In his steps, therefore, I propose to walk, if not displaying the same
vigorous eloquence, at least observing the same rules."

4. These words are his own, he cannot deny them. The very elegance of the style
and the laboured mode of speech, and, surpassing all these, the Christian
`simplicity' which here appears, reveal the character of their author. But there
is a different phase of the matter: Eusebius, it seems, has depraved these
books; and now my friend who accuses Origen, and who is so careful of my
reputation, declares that both Eusebius and I have gone wrong together, and then
that we have held correct opinions together, and that in one and the same work.
But he cannot now be my enemy and call me a heretic, when a moment before he has
said that his belief was not dissonant from mine. Then, I must ask him what is
the meaning of his balanced and doubtful way of speaking: "The Latin reader," he
says, "will find nothing here discordant from our faith." What faith is this
which he calls his? Is it the faith by which the Roman Church is distinguished?
or is it the faith which is contained in the works of Origen? If he answers "the
Roman." then we are the Catholics, since we have adopted none of Origen's errors
in our translations. But if Origen's blasphemy is his faith, then, though he
tries to fix on me the charge of inconsistency, he proves himself to be a
heretic. If the man who praises me is orthodox, he takes me, by his own
confession as a sharer in his orthodoxy. If he is heterodox, he shews that he
had praised me before my explanation because he thought me a sharer in his
error. However, it will be time enough to reply to these books of his which
whisper in corners and made their venomous attacks in secret, when they are
published and come out from their dark places into the light, and when they have
been able to reach me either through the zeal of my friends or the imprudence of
my adversaries. We need not be much afraid of attacks which their author fears
to publish and allows only his confenderates to read. Then and not till then
will I either acknowledge the justice of his charges, or refute them, or retort
upon the accuser the accusations he has made: and will shew that my silence has
been the result not of a bad conscience but of forbearance.

5. In the meantime, I desired to free myself from suspicion in the implicit
judgment of the reader, and to refute the gravest of the charges in the eyes of
my friends. I did not wish it to appear that I had been the first to strike,
seeing that I have not, even when wounded, aimed a blow against my assailant,
but have only sought to heal my own wound. I beg the reader to let the blame
rest on him who struck the first blow, without respect of persons. He is not
content with striking; but, as if he were dealing with a man whom he had reduced
to silence and who would never speak again, he has written three elaborate books
and has made out from my works a list of "Contradictions" worthy of Marcion. Our
minds are all on fire to know at once what his doctrine is and what is this
madness of mine which we had not expected. Perhaps he has learnt (though the
time for it has been short) all that is necessary to make him my teacher, and a
sudden flow of eloquence will reveal what no one imagined that he knew.

8 "Grant it, O Father; mighty Jesus, grant. Let him begin the engagement hand to
hand."

Though he may brandish the spear of his accusations and hurl them against us
with all his might, we trust in the Lord our Saviour that his truth will
encompass us as with a shield, and we shall be able to sing with the Psalmist:9
"Their blows have become as the arrows of the little ones," and10 "Though an
host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise
against me, even then will I be confident." But of this at another time. Let us
now return to the point where we began.

6. His followers object to me, (and `11 "Weary of work they ply the arms of
Ceres,")' that I have translated into the Latin tongue the books of Origen Peri
'Arxwn, which are pernicious and repugnant to the faith of the Church. My answer
to them is brief and succinct: "Your letters, my brother Pammachius, and those
of your friends, have compelled me. You declared that these books had been
falsely translated by another, and that not a few things had been interpolated
or added or altered. And, lest your letters should fail to carry conviction, you
sent a copy of this translation, together with the Preface in which I was
praised. As soon as I had run my eye over these documents, I at once noticed
that the impious doctrine enunciated by Origen about the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit, to which the ears of Romans could not bear to listen, had been
changed by the translator so as to give a more orthodox meaning. His other
doctrines, on the fall of the angels, the lapse of human souls, his
prevarications about the resurrection, his ideas about the world, or rather
Epicurus's middle-spaces,12 on the restitution of all to a state of equality,
and others much worse than these, which it would take too long to recount, I
found that he had either translated as they stood in the Greek, or had stated
them in a stronger and exaggerated manner in words taken from the books of
Didymus, who is the most open champion of Origen. The effect of all this is that
the reader, finding that the book expressed the catholic doctrine on the
Trinity, would take in these heretical views without warning.

7. One who was not his friend would probably say to him: Either change
everything which is bad, or else make known everything which you think
thoroughly good. If for the sake of simple Christians you cut out everything
which is pernicious, and do not choose to put into a foreign language the things
that you say have been added by heretics; tell us everything which is
pernicious. But, if you mean to make a veracious and faithful translation, why
do you change some things and leave others untouched? You make an open
profession in the prologue that you have amended what is bad and have left all
that is best: and therefore, if anything in the work is proved to be heretical,
you cannot enjoy the license given to a translator but must accept the authority
of a writer: and you will be openly convicted of the criminal intent of
besmearing with honey the poisoned cup so that the sweetness which meets the
sense may hide the deadly venom. These things, and things much harder than
these, an enemy would say; and he would draw you before the tribunal of the
church, not as the translator of a bad work but as one who assents to its
doctrines. But I am satisfied with having simply defended myself. I expressed in
Latin just what I found in the Greek text of the books Peri 'Arxwn, not wishing
the reader to believe what was in my translation, but wishing him not to believe
what was in yours. I looked for a double advantage as the result of my work,
first to unveil the heresy of the author and secondly to convict the
untrustworthiness of the translator. And, that no one might think that I
assented to the doctrine which I had translated, I asserted in the Preface how I
had been compelled to make this version and pointed out what the reader ought
not to believe. The first translation makes for the glory of the author, the
second for his shame. The one summons the reader to believe its doctrines, the
other moves him to disbelieve them. In that I am claimed against my will as
praising the author; in this I not only do not praise him, but am compelled to
accuse the man who does praise him. The same task has been accomplished by each,
but with a different intention: the same journey has had two different issues.
Our friend has taken away words which existed, alleging that the books had been
depraved by heretics: and he has put in those which did not exist, alleging that
the assertions had been made by the author in other places; but of this he will
never convince us unless he can point out the actual places whence he says that
he has taken them.My endeavour was to change nothing from what was actually
there; for my object in translating the work was to expose the false doctrines
which I translated. Do you look upon me as merely a translator? I was more. I
turned informer. I informed against a heretic, to clear the church of heresy.
The reasons which led me formerly to praise Origen in certain particulars are
set forth in the treatise prefixed to this work. The sole cause which led to my
translation is now before the reader. No one has a right to charge me with the
author's impiety, for I did it with a pious intention, that of betraying the
impiety which had been commended as piety to the churches.

8. I had given Latin versions, as my friend tauntingly says, of seventy books of
Origen, and of some parts of his Tomes, but no question was ever raised about my
work; no commotion was felt on the subject in Rome. What need was there to
commit to the ears of the Latins what Greece denounces and the whole world
blames? I, though translating many of Origen's work in the course of many years,
never created a scandal: but you, though unknown before, have by your first and
only work become notorious for your rash proceeding. Your Preface tells us that
you have also translated the work of Pamphilus the martyr in defence of Origen;
and you strive with all your might to prevent the church from condemning a man
whose faith the martyr attests. The real fact is13 that Eusebius Bishop of
Caesarea, as I have already said before, who was in his day the standard bearer
of the Arian faction, wrote a large and elaborate work in six books in defence
of Origen, showing by many testimonies that Origen was in his sense a catholic,
that is, in our sense, an Arian. The first of these six books you have
translated and assigned it to the martyr. I must not wonder, therefore, that you
wish to make me, a small man and of no account, appear as an admirer of Origen,
when you bring the same calumny against the martyr. You change a few statements
about the Son of God and the holy Spirit, which you knew would offend the
Romans, and let the rest go unchanged from beginning to end; you did, in fact,
in the case of this Apology of Pamphilus as you call it, just what you did in
the translation of Origen's Peri 'Arxwn. If that book is Pamphilus's, which of
the six books is Eusebius's first? In the very volume which you pretend to be
Pamphilus's, mention is made of the later books. Also, in the second and
following books, Eusebius says that he had said such and such things in the
first book and excuses himself for repeating them. If the whole work is
Pamphilus's, why do you not translate the remaining books? If it is the work of
the other, why do you change the name? You cannot answer; but the facts make
answer of themselves: You thought that men would believe the martyr, though they
would have turned in abhorrence from the chief of the Arians.

9. Am I to say plainly what your intention was, my most simple-minded friend? Do
you think that we can believe that you unwittingly gave the name of the martyr
to the book of a man who was a heretic, and thus made the ignorant, through
their trust in Christ's witness, become the defenders of Origen? Considering the
erudition for which you are renowned, for which you are praised throughout the
West as an illustrious litterateur,14 so that the men of your party all speak of
you as their Coryphaeus, I will not suppose that you are ignorant of Eusebius'15
Catalogue, which states the fact that the martyr Pamphilus never wrote a single
book.16 Eusebius himself, the lover and companion of Pamphilus, and the herald
of his praises, wrote three books in elegant language containing the life of
Pamphilus. In these he extols other traits of his character with extraordinary
encomiums, and praises to the sky his humility; but on his literary interests he
writes as follows in the third book: "What lover of books was there who did not
find a friend in Pamphilus? If he knew of any of them being in want of the
necessaries of life, he helped them to the full extent of his power. He would
not only lend them copies of the Holy Scriptures to read, but would give them
most readily, and that not only to men, but to women also if he saw that they
were given to reading. He therefore kept a store of manuscripts, so that he
might be able to give them to those who wished for them whenever occasion
demanded. He himself however, wrote nothing whatever of his own, except private
letters which he sent to his friends, so humble was his estimate of himself. But
the treatises of the old writers he studied with the greatest diligence, and was
constantly occupied in meditation upon them."

10. The champion of Origen, you see, the encomiast of Pamphilus, declares that
Pamphilus wrote nothing whatever, that he composed no single treatise of his
own. And you cannot take refuge in the hypothesis that Pamphilus wrote this book
after Eusebius's publication, since Eusebius wrote after Pamphilus had attained
the crown of martyrdom. What then can you now do? The consciences of a great
many persons have been wounded by the book which you have published under the
name of the martyr; they give no heed to the authority of the bishops who
condemn Origen, since they think that a martyr has praised him. Of what use are
the letters of the bishop Theophilus or of the pope Anastasius, who follow out
the heretic in every part of the world, when your book passing under the name of
Pamphilus is there to oppose their letters, and the testimony of the martyr can
be set against the authority of the Bishops? I think you had better do with this
mistitled17 volume what you did with the books Peri 'Arxwn. Take my advice as a
friend, and do not be distrustful of the power of your art; say either that you
never wrote it, or else that it has been depraved by the presbyter Eusebius.18
It will be impossible to prove against you that the book was translated by you.
Your handwriting is not forthcoming to shew it; your eloquence is not so great
as that no one can imitate your style. Or, in the last resort, if the matter
comes to the proof, and your effrontery is overborne by the multitude of
testimonies, sing a palinode after the manner of Stesichnus. It is better that
you should repent of what you have done than that a martyr should remain under
calumny, and those who have been deceived under error. And you need not feel
ashamed of changing your opinion; you are not of such fame or authority as to
feel disgraced by the confession of an error. Take me for your example, whom you
love so much, and without whom you can neither live nor die, and say what I said
when you had praised me and I defended myself.

11. Eusebius the Bishop of Caesarea, of whom I have made mention above, in the
sixth book of his Apology for Origen makes the same complaint against Methodius
the bishop and martyr, which you make against me in your praises of me. He says:
How could Methodius dare to write now against Origen, after having said this
thing and that of his doctrines? This is not the place in which to speak of the
martyr; one cannot discuss every thing in all places alike. Let it suffice for
the present to mention that one who was an Arian complains of the same things in
a most eminent and eloquent man, and a martyr, which you first make a subject of
praise as a friend and afterwards, when offended turn into an accusation. I have
given you an opportunity of constructing a calumny against me if you choose, in
the present passage. "How is it", you may ask, "that I now depreciate Eusebius,
after having in other places praised him?" The name Eusebius indeed is different
from Origen; but the ground of complaint is in both cases identical. I praised
Eusebius for his Ecclesiastical History, for his Chronicle, for his description
of the holy land; and these works19 of his I gave to the men of the same
language as myself by translating them into Latin. Am I to be called an Arian
because Eusebius, the author of those books, is an Arian? If you should dare to
call me a heretic, call to mind your Preface to the Peri 'Arxwn, in which you
bear me witness that I am of the same faith with yourself: and I at the same
time entreat you to hear patiently the expostulation of one who was formerly
your friend. You enter into a warm dispute with others, and bandy mutual
reproaches with men of your own order; whether you are right or wrong in this is
for you to say. But as against a brother even a true accusation is repugnant to
me. I do not say this to blame others; I only say that I would not myself do it.
We are separated from one another by a vast interval of space. What sin had I
committed against you? What is my offence? Is it that I answered that I was not
an Origenist? Are you to be held to be accused because I defend myself? If you
say you are not an Origenist and have never been one, I believe your solemn
affirmation of this: if you once were one, I accept your repentance. Why do you
complain if I am what you say that you are? Or is my offence this that I dared
to translate the Peri 'Arxwn after you had done it, and that my translation is
supposed to detract from your work? But what was I to do? Your laudation of me,
or accusation against me, was sent to me. Your `praise' was so strong and so
long that, if I had acquiesced in it, every one would have thought me a heretic.
Look at what is said in the end of the letter which I received from Rome:20
"Clear yourself from the suspicions which men have imbibed against you, and
convict your accuser of speaking falsely; for if you leave him unnoticed, you
will be held to assent to his charges." When I was pressed by such conditions, I
determined to translate these books, and I ask your attention to the answer
which I made. It was this:21 "This is the position which my friends have made
for me, (observe that I did not say `my friend,' for fear of seeming to aim at
you); if I keep silence I am to be accounted guilty: if I answer, I am accounted
an enemy. Both these conditions are hard; but of the two I will choose the
easier: for a quarrel can be healed, but blasphemy admits of no forgiveness."
You observe that I felt this as a burden laid upon me; that I was unwilling and
recalcitrating; that I could only quiet my presentiment of the quarrel which
would ensue from this undertaking by the plea of necessity. If you had
translated the books Peri 'Arxwn without alluding to me, you would have a right
to complain that I had afterwards translated them to your prejudice. But now you
have no right to complain, since my work was only an answer to the attack you
had made on me under the guise of praise; for what you call praise all
understand as accusation. Let it be understood between us that you accused me,
and then you will not be indignant at my having replied. But now suppose that
you wrote with a good intention, that you were not merely innocent but a most
faithful friend, out of whose mouth no untruth ever proceeded, and that it was
quite unconsciously that you wounded me. What is that to me who felt the wound?
Am I not to take remedies for my wound because you inflicted it without evil
intention? I am stricken down and stricken through, with a wound in the breast
which will not be appeased; my limbs which were white before are stained with
gore; and you say to me: "Pray leave your wound untouched, for fear that I may
be thought to have wounded you." And yet the translation in question is a
reproof to Origen rather than to you. You altered for the better the passages
which you considered to have been put in by the heretics. I brought to light
what the whole Greek world with one voice attributes to him. Which of our two
views is the truer it is not for me nor for you to judge; let each of them be
touched by the censor's rod of the reader. The whole of that letter in which I
make answer for myself is directed against the heretics and against my accusers.
How does it touch you who profess to be both an orthodox person and my admirer,
if I am a little too sharp upon heretics, and expose their tricks before the
public? You should rejoice in my invectives: otherwise, if you are vexed at
them, you may be thought to be yourself a heretic. When anything is written
against some particular vice, but without the mention of any name, if a man
grows angry he accuses himself. It would have been the part of a wise man, even
if he felt hurt, to dissemble his consciousness of wrong, and by the serenity of
his countenance to dissipate the cloud that lay upon his heart.

12. Otherwise, if everything which goes against Origen and his followers is
supposed to be said by me against you, we must suppose that the letters of the
popes Theophilus and Epiphanius and the rest of the bishops which at their
desire I lately translated22 are meant to attack you and tear you to pieces; we
must suppose too that the rescripts of the Emperors which order that the
Origenists should be banished from Alexandria and from Egypt have been written
at my dictation. The abhorrence shown by the Pontiff of the city of Rome against
these men was nothing but a scheme of mine. The outburst of hatred which
immediately after your translation blazed up through the whole world against
Origen who before had been read without prejudice was the work of my pen. If I
have got all this power, I wonder that you are not afraid of me. But I really
acted with extreme moderation. In my public letter23 I took every precaution to
prevent your supposing that anything in it was directed against you; but I wrote
at the same time a short letter24 to you, expostulating with you on the subject
of your `praises.' This letter my friends did not think it right to send you,
because you were not at Rome, and because, as they tell me, you and your
companions were scattering accusations of things unworthy of the Christian
profession about my manner of life. But I have subjoined a copy of it to this
book, so that you may understand what pain you gave me and with what brotherly
self-restraint I bore it.

13. I am told, further, that you touch with some critical sharpness upon some
points of my letter, and, with the well-known wrinkles rising on your forehead
and your eyebrows knitted, make sport of me with a wit worthy of Plautus, for
having said that I had a Jew named Barabbas for my teacher. I do not wonder at
your writing Barabbas for Baranina, the letters of the names being somewhat
similar, when you allow yourself such a license in changing the names
themselves, as to turn Eusebius into Pamphilus, and a heretic into a martyr. One
must be cautious of such a man as you, and give you a wide berth; otherwise I
may find my own name turned in a trice, and without my knowing it, from Jerome
to Sardanapalus. Listen, then, O pillar of wisdom, and type of Catonian
severity. I never spoke of him as my master; I merely wished to illustrate my
method of studying the Holy Scriptures by saying that I had read Origen just in
the same way as I had taken lessons from this Jew. Did I do you an injury
because I attended the lectures of Apollinarius and Didymus rather than yours?
Was there anything to prevent my naming in my letter that most eloquent man
Gregory?25 Which of all the Latins is his equal? I may well glory and exult in
him. But I only mentioned those who were subject to censure, so as to show that
I only read Origen as I had listened to them, that is, not on account of his
soundness in the faith hut on account of the excellence of his learning. Origen
himself, and Clement and Eusebius, and many others, when they are discussing
scriptural points, and wish to have Jewish authority for what they say, write:
"A Hebrew stated this to me," or "I heard from a Hebrew," or, "That is the
opinion of the Hebrews." Origen certainly speaks of the Patriarch Huillus who
was his contemporary, and in the conclusion of his thirtieth Tome on Isaiah
(that in the end of which he explains the words26 "Woe to Ariel which David took
by storm") uses his exposition of the words, and confesses that he had adopted
through his teaching a truer opinion than that which he had previously held. He
also takes as written by Moses not only the eighty-ninth Psalm27 which is
entitled "A prayer of Moses the Man of God," but also the eleven following
Psalms which have no title according to Huillus's opinion; and he makes no
scruple of inserting in his commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures the views of
the Hebrew teachers.

14. It is said that on a recent occasion where the letters of Theophilus
exposing the errors of Origen were read, our friend stopped his ears, and along
with all present pronounced a distinct condemnation upon the author of so much
evil; and that he said that up to that moment he had never known that Origen had
written anything so wrong. I say nothing against this: I do not make the
observation which perhaps another might make, that it was impossible for him to
be ignorant of that which he had himself translated, and an apology for which by
a heretic he had published under the name of a martyr, whose defence also he had
undertaken in his own book; as to which I shall have some adverse remarks to
make later on if I have time to write them. I only make one observation which
does not admit of contradiction. If it is possible that he should have
misunderstood what he translated, why is it not possible that I should have been
ignorant of the book Peri 'Arxwn which I had not before read, and that I should
have only read those Homilies which I translated, and in which he himself
testifies that there is nothing wrong? But if, contrary to his expressed
opinion, he now finds fault with me for those things for which he before had
given me praise, he will be in a strait between two; either he praised me,
believing me to be a heretic but confessing that he shared my opinion; or else,
if he praised me before as orthodox, his present accusations come to nothing,
and are due to sheer malice. But perhaps it was only as my friend that he
formerly was silent about my errors, and now that he is angry with me brings to
light what he had concealed.

15. This abandonment of friendship gives no claim to my confidence; and open
enmity brings with it the suspicion of falsehood. Still I will be bold enough to
go to meet him, and to ask what heretical doctrine I have expressed, so that I
may either, like him, express my regret and swear that I never knew the bad
doctrines of Origen, and that his infidelity has now for the first time been
made known to me by the Pope Theophilus; or that I may at least prove that my
opinions were sound and that he, as his habit is, had not understood them. It is
impossible that in my Commentaries on the Ephesians which I hear he makes the
ground of his accusation, I should have spoken both rightly and wrongly; that
from the same fountain should have proceeded both sweet water and bitter; and
that whereas throughout the work I condemned those who believe that souls have
been created out of angels, I should suddenly have forgotten myself and have
defended the opinion which I condemned before. He can hardly raise an objection
to me on the score of folly, since he has proclaimed me in his works as a man of
the highest culture and eloquence; otherwise such silly verbosity as he imputes
is the part, one would think, of a pettifogger and a babbler rather than of an
eloquent man. What is the point of his written accusations I do not know, for it
is only report of them, not the writings, which has reached me; and, as the
Apostle tells us it is a foolish thing to beat the air. However, I must answer
in the uncertainty till the certainty reaches me: and I will begin by teaching
my rival in my old age a lesson which I learned in youth, that there are many
forms of speech, and that, according to the subject matter not only the
sentences but the words also of writings vary.

16. For instance, Chrysippus and Antipater occupy themselves with thorny
questions: Demosthenes and Aeschines speak with the voice of thunder against
each other; Lysias and Isocrates have an easy and pleasing style. There is a
wonderful difference in these writers, though each of them is perfect in his own
line. Again: read the book of Tully To Herennius; read his Rhetoricians; or,
since he tells us that these books fell from his hands in a merely inchoate and
unfinished condition, look through his three books On the orator, in which he
introduces a discussion between Crassus and Antony, the most eloquent orators of
that day; and a fourth book called The Orator which he wrote to Brutus when
already an old man; and you will realize that History, Oratory, Dialogue,
Epistolary writing, and Commentaries, have, each of them, their special style.
We have to do now with Commentaries. In those which I wrote upon the Ephesians I
only followed Origen and Didymus and Apollinarius, (whose doctrines are very
different one from another) so far as was consistent with the sincerity of my
faith: for what is the function of a Commentary? It is to interpret another
man's words, to put into plain language what he has expressed obscurely.
Consequently, it enumerates the opinions of many persons, and says, Some
interpret the passage in this sense, some in that; the one try to support their
opinion and understanding of it by such and such evidence or reasons: so that
the wise reader, after reading these different explanations, and having many
brought before his mind for acceptance or rejection, may judge which is the
truest, and, like a good banker, may reject the money of spurious mintage. Is
the commentator to be held responsible for all these different interpretations,
and all these mutually contradicting opinions because he puts down the
expositions given by many in the single work on which he is commenting? I
suppose that when you were a boy you read the commentaries of Asper upon Virgil
and Sallust, those of Vulcatius upon Cicero's Orations, of Victorinus upon his
Dialogues and upon the Comedies of Terence, and also those of my master Donatus
on Virgil, and of others on other writers such as Plautus, Lucretius, Flaccus,
Persius and Lucan. Will you find fault with those who have commented on these
writers because they have not held to a single explanation, but enumerate their
own views and those of others on the same passage?

17. I say nothing of the Greeks, since you boast of your knowledge of them, even
to the extent of saying that, in attaching yourself to foreign literature, you
have forgotten your own language. I am afraid that, according to the old
proverbs, I might be like the pig teaching Minerva, and the man carrying fagots
into the wood. I only wonder that, being as you are the Aristarchus28 of our
time, you should have shewn ignorance of these matters which every boy knows. It
is, no doubt, from your mind being fixed on the meaning of what you write, but
partly also from your being so sharp-sighted for the manufacture of calumnies
against me, that you despise the precepts of Grammarians and orators, that you
make no attempt to set straight words which have got transposed when the
sentence has become complicated, or to avoid some harsh collocation of
consonants, or to escape from a style full of gaps. It would be ridiculous to
point to one or two wounds when the whole body is enfeebled and broken. I will
not select portions for criticism; it is for him to select any portion which is
free from faults. He must have been ignorant even of the Socratic saying: "Know
thyself." To steer the ship the untaught landsman fears;

Th' untrain'd attendant dares not give the sick The drastic southernwood. The
healing drug The leech alone prescribes. Th' artificer Alone the tools can
wield. But poetry Train'd or untrain'd we all at random write.29

Possibly he will swear that he has never learned to read and write; I can easily
believe that without an oath. Or perhaps he will take refuge in what the Apostle
says of himself: "Though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge." But his
reason for saying this is plain. He had been trained in Hebrew learning and
brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, whom, though he had attained apostolic rank,
he was not ashamed to call his master; and he thought Greek eloquence of no
account, or at all events, in his humility, he would not parade his knowledge of
it. So that30 `his preaching should stand not in the persuasive wisdom of words
but in the power of the things signified.' He despised other men's riches since
he was rich in his own. Still it was not to an illiterate man who stumbled in
every sentence that Festus cried, as he stood before his judgment seat:

"Paul thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad." You who can
hardly do more than mutter in Latin, and who rather creep like a tortoise than
walk, ought either to write in Greek, so that among those who are ignorant of
Greek you may pass for one who knows a foreign tongue; or else, if you attempt
to write Latin, you should first have a grammar-master, and flinch from the
ferule, and begin again as an old scholar among children to learn the art of
speaking. Even if a man is bursting with the wealth of Croesus and Darius,
letters will not follow the money-bag. They are the companions of toil and of
labour, the associates of the fasting not of the full-fed, of self-mastery not
of self-indulgence.31 It is told of Demosthenes that he consumed more oil than
wine, and that no workman ever shortened his nights as he did. He for the sake
of enunciating the single letter Rho was willing to take a dog as his teacher;
and yet you make it a crime in me that I took a man to teach me the Hebrew
letters. This is the sort of wisdom which makes men remain unlearned: they do
not choose to learn what they do not know. They forget the words of Horace:

Why through false shame do I choose ignorance, Rather than seek to learn? That
Book of Wisdom also which is read to us as the work of Solomon says:32 "Into a
malicious soul wisdom shall not enter, nor dwell in the body that is subject to
sin. For the Holy Spirit of discipline33 will flee deceit and remove from
thoughts which are without understanding." The case is different with those who
only wish to be read by the vulgar, and do not care how they may offend the ears
of the learned; and they despise the utterance of the poet which brands the
forwardness of noisy ignorance.

'Twas you, I think, whose ignorance in the streets Murder'd the wretched strain
with creaking reed.

If you want such things, there are plenty of curly-pated fellows in every school
who will sing you snatches of doggrel from Miletus; or you may go to the
exhibition of the Bessi34 and see people shaking with laughter at the Pig's
Testament, or at any jesters entertainment where silly things of this kind are
run after. There is not a day but you may see the dressed-up clown in the
streets whacking the buttocks of some blockhead, or half-pulling out people's
teeth with the scorpion which he twists round for them to bite. We need not
wonder if the books of know-nothings find plenty of readers.

18. Our friends take it amiss that I have spoken of the Origenists as
confederated together by orgies of false oaths. I named the book in which I had
found it written, that is, the sixth book of Origen's Miscellanies, in which he
tries to adapt our Christian doctrine to the opinions of Plato. The words of
Plato in the third book of the Republic35 are as follows: "Truth, said Socrates,
is to be specially cultivated. If, however, as I was saying just now, falsehood
is disgraceful and useless to God, to men it is sometimes useful, if only it is
used as a stimulant36 or a medicine; for no one can doubt that some such
latitude of statement must be allowed to physicians, though it must be taken out
of the hands of those who are unskilled. That is quite true, it was replied; and
if one admits that any person may do this, it must be the duty of the rulers of
states at times to tell lies, either to baffle the enemy or to benefit their
country and the citizens. On the other hand to those who do not know how to make
a good rise of falsehood, the practice should be altogether prohibited." Now
take the words of Origen: "When we consider the precept37 `Speak truth every man
with his neighbour,' we need not ask, Who is my neighbour? but we should weigh
well the cautious remarks of the philosopher. He says, that to God falsehood is
shameful and useless, but to men it is occasionally useful. We must not suppose
that God ever lies, even in the way of economy;38 only, if the good of the
hearer requires it, he speaks in ambiguous language, and reveals what he wills
in enigmas, taking care at once that the dignity of truth should be preserved
and yet that what would be hurtful if produced nakedly before the crowd should
be enveloped in a veil and thus disclosed. But a man on whom necessity imposes
the responsibility of lying is bound to use very great care, and to use
falsehood as he would a stimulant or a medicine, and strictly to preserve its
measure, and not go beyond the bounds observed by Judith in her dealings with
Holofernes, whom she overcame by the wisdom with which she dissembled her words.
He should act like Esther who changed the purpose of Artaxerxes by having so
long concealed the truth as to her race; and still more the patriarch Jacob who,
as we read, obtained the blessing of his father by artifice and falsehood. From
all this it is evident that if we speak falsely with any other object than that
of obtaining by it some great good, we shall be judged as the enemies of him who
said, I am the truth." This Origen wrote, and none of us can deny it. And he
wrote it in the book which he addressed to the `perfect,' his own disciples. His
teaching is that the master may lie, but the disciple must not. The inference
from this is that the man who is a good liar, and without hesitation sets before
his brethren any fabrication which rises into his mouth, shows himself to be an
excellent teacher.

19. I am told that he also carps at me for the translation I have given of a
phrase in the Second Psalm. In the Latin it stands: "Learn discipline," in the
Hebrew it is written Nescu Bar; and I have given it in my commentary, Adore the
Son; and then, when I translated the whole Psalter into the Latin language, as
if I had forgotten my previous explanation, I put "Worship purely." No one can
deny, of course, that these interpretations are contrary to each other; and we
must pardon him for being ignorant of the Hebrew writing when he is so often at
a loss even in Latin. Nescu, translated literally, is Kiss. I wished not to give
a distasteful rendering, and preferring to follow the sense, gave the word
Worship; for those who worship are apt to kiss their hands and to bare their
heads, as is to be seen in the case of Job who declares that he has never done
either of these things,39 and says40 "If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the
moon walking in brightness, and my heart rejoiced in secret and I kissed my hand
with my mouth, which is a very great iniquity, and a lie to the most high God."
The Hebrews, according to the peculiarity of their language use this word Kiss
for adoration; and therefore I translated according to the use of those whose
language I was dealing with. The word Bar, however in Hebrew has several
meanings. It means Son, as in the words Barjona (son of a dove) Bartholomew (son
of Tholomaeus), Bartimaeus, Barjesus, Barabbas. It also means Wheat, and A sheaf
of corn, and Elect and Pure. What sin have I committed, then, when a word is
thus uncertain in its meaning, if I have rendered it differently in different
places? and if, after taking the sense "Worship the Son" in my Commentary, where
there is more freedom of discussion, I said "Worship purely" or "electively" in
my version of the Bible itself, so that I should not be thought to translate
capriciously or give grounds for cavil on the part of the Jews. This last
rendering, moreover, is that of Aquila and Symmachus: and I cannot see that the
faith of the church is injured by the reader being shewn in how many different
ways a verse is translated by the Jews.

20. Your Origen allows himself to treat of the transmigration of souls, to
introduce the belief in an infinite number of worlds, to clothe rational
creatures in one body after another, to say that Christ has often suffered, and
will often suffer again, it being always profitable to undertake what has once
been profitable. You also yourself assume such an authority as to turn a heretic
into a martyr, and to invent a heretical falsification of the books of Origen.
Why may not I then discuss about words, and in doing the work of a commentator
teach the Latins what I learn from the Hebrews? If it were not a long process
and one which savours of boasting, I should like even now to shew you how much
profit there is in waiting at the doors of great teachers, and in learning an
art from a real artificer. If I could do this, you would see what a tangled
forest of ambiguous names and words is presented by the Hebrew. It is this which
gives such a field for various renderings: for, the sense being uncertain, each
man takes the translation which seems to him the most consistent. Why should I
take you to any outlandish writers? Go over Aristotle once more and Alexander
the commentator on Aristotle; you will recognize from reading these what a
plentiful crop of uncertainties exists; and you may then cease to find fault
with your friend in reference to things which you have never had brought to your
mind even in your dreams.

21. My brother Paulinian tells me that our friend has impugned certain things in
my commentary on the Ephesians: some of these criticisms he committed to memory,
and has indicated the actual passages impugned. I must not therefore refuse to
meet his statements, and I beg the reader, if I am somewhat prolix in the
statement and the refutation of his charges, to allow for the necessary
conditions of the discussion. I am not accusing another but endeavouring to
defend myself and to refute the false accusation of heresy which is thrown in my
teeth. On the Epistle to the Ephesians Origen wrote three books. Didymus and
Apollinarius also composed works of their own. These I partly translated, partly
adapted; my method is described in the following passage of my prologue: "This
also I wish to state in my Preface. Origen, you must know, wrote three books
upon this Epistle, and I have partly followed him. Apollinarius also and Didymus
published certain commentaries on it, from which I have culled some things,
though but few; and, as seemed to me right, I put in or took out others; but I
have done this in such a way that the careful reader may from the very first see
how far the work is due to me, how far to others." Whatever fault there is
detected in the exposition given of this Epistle, if I am unable to shew that it
exists in the Greek books from which I have stated it to have been translated
into Latin, I will acknowledge that the fault is mine and not another's.
However, that I should not be thought to be raising quibbles, and by this
artifice of self-excuse to be escaping from boldly meeting him, I will set out
the actual passages which are adduced as evidences of my fault.

22. To begin. In the first book I take the words of Paul:41 "As he hath chosen
us before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and unspotted
before him." This I have interpreted as referring not, according to Origen's
opinion, to an election of those who had existed in a previous state, but to the
foreknowledge of God; and I close the discussion with these words:

"His assertion that we have been chosen before the foundation of the world that
we should be holy and without blemish before him, that is, before God, belongs
to the foreknowledge of God, to whom all things which are to be are already
made, and are known before they come into being. Thus Paul was predestinated in
the womb of his mother: and Jeremiah before his birth is sanctified, chosen,
confirmed, and, as a type of Christ, sent as a prophet to the Gentiles."

There is no crime surely in this exposition of the passage. Origen explained it
in a heterodox sense, but I followed that of the church. And, since it is the
duty of a commentator to record the opinions expressed by many others, and I had
promised in the Preface that I would do this, I set down Origen's
interpretation, though without mentioning his name which excites ill will.

"Another," I said, "who wishes to vindicate the justice of God, and to shew that
he does not choose men according to a prejudgment and foreknowledge of his own
but according to the deserts of the elect, thinks that before the visible
creation of sky, earth, sea and all that is in them, there existed the invisible
creation, part of which consisted of souls, which, for certain causes known to
God alone, were cast down into this valley of tears, this scene of our
affliction and our pilgrimage; and that it is to this that we may apply the
Psalmist's prayer, he being in this low condition and longing to return to his
former dwelling place:42 "Woe is me that my sojourn is prolonged; I have
inhabited the habitations of Kedar, my soul hath had a long pilgrimage." And
also the words of the Apostle:43 "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?" and44 "It is better to return and to be with
Christ;" and45 "Before I was brought low, I sinned." He adds much more of the
same kind."

Now observe that I said "Another who wishes to vindicate," I did not say "who
succeeds in vindicating." But if you find a stumbling block in the fact that I
condensed a very long discussion of Origen's into a brief statement so as to
give the reader a glimpse of his meaning; if you declare me to be a secret
adherent of his because I have not left out anything which he has said, I would
ask you whether it was not necessary for me to do this, so as to avoid your
cavils. Would you not otherwise have declared that I had kept silence on matters
on which he had spoken boldly, and that in the Greek text his assertions were
much stronger than I represented? I therefore put down all that I found in the
Greek text, though in a shorter form, so that his disciples should have nothing
which they could force upon the ears of the Latins as a new thing; for it is
easier for us to make light of things which we know well than of things which
take us unprepared. But after I had shewn Origen's interpretations of the
passage, I concluded this section with words to which I beg your attention:

"The Apostle does not say `He chose us before the foundation of the world
because we were then holy and without blemish;' but `He chose us that we might
be holy and without blemish,' that is, that we who before were not holy and
without blemish might afterwards become such. This expression will apply even to
sinners who turn to better things; and thus the words remain true, `In thy sight
shall no man living be justified,' that is, no one in his whole life, in the
whole of the time that he has existed in the world. If the passage be thus
understood, it makes against the opinion that before the foundation of the world
certain souls were elected because of their holiness, and that they had none of
the corruption of sinners. It is evident that Paul and those like him were not
elected because they were holy and without blemish, but they were elected and
predestinated so that in their after life, by means of their works and their
virtues, they should become holy and without blemish." Does any one dare, then,
after this statement of my opinion, to accuse me of assent to the heresy of
Origen? It is now almost eighteen years since I composed those books, at a time
when the name of Origen was highly esteemed in the world, and when as yet his
work the Peri 'Arxwn had not reached the ears of the Latins: and yet I
distinctly stated my belief and pointed out what I did not agree with. Hence,
even if my opponent could have pointed out anything heretical in other places, I
should be held guilty only of the fault of carelessness, not of the perverse
doctrines which both in this place and in my other works I have condemned.

23. I will deal shortly with the second passage which my brother tells me has
been marked for blame, because the complaint is exceedingly frivolous, and bears
on its face its calumnious character. The passage46 is that in which Paul
declares that God "made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far
above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is
named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come." After stating
various expositions which have been given, I came to the offices of the
ministers of God, and spoke of the principalities and powers, the virtues and
dominions: and I add:

"They must assuredly have others who are subject to them, who are under their
power and serve them, and are fortified by their authority: and this
distribution of offices will exist not only in the present world but in the
world to come, so that each individual will rise or fall from one step of
advancement and honour to another, some ascending and some descending, and will
come successively under each of these powers, virtues, principalities, and
dominions."

I then went on to describe the various divine offices and ministries after the
similitude of the palace of an earthly king, which I fully described; and I
added:

"Can we suppose that God the Lord of lords and King of kings, is content with a
single order of servants? We speak of an archangel because there are other
angels of whom he is chief: and so there would be nothing said of
Principalities, Powers and Dominions unless it were implied that there were
others of inferior rank."

But, if he thinks that I became a follower of Origen because I mentioned in my
exposition these advancements and honours, these ascents and descents,
increasings and diminishings; I must point out that to say, as Origen does, that
Angels and Cherubim and Seraphim are turned into demons and men, is a very
different thing from saying that the Angels themselves have various offices
allotted to them,-a doctrine which is not repugnant to that of the church. Just
as among men there are various degrees of dignity distinguished by the different
kinds of work, as the bishop, the presbyter and the other Ecclesiastical grades
have each their own order, while yet all are men; so we may believe that, while
they all retain the dignity of Angels, there are various degrees of eminence
among them, without imagining that angels are changed into men, and that men are
new-made into angels.

24. A third passage with which he finds fault is that in which I gave a
threefold interpretation of the Apostle's words:47 "That in the ages to come he
might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ
Jesus." The first was my own opinion, the second the opposite opinion held by
Origen, the third the simple explanation given by Apollinarius. As to the fact
that I did not give their names, I must ask for pardon on the ground that it was
done through modesty. I did not wish to disparage men whom I was partly
following. and whose opinions I was translating into the Latin tongue. But, I
said, the diligent reader will at once search into these things and form his own
opinion. And I repeated at the end: Another turns to a different sense the words
`That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace.'
"Ah," you will say, "I see that in the character of the diligent reader you have
unfolded the opinions of Origen." I confess that I was wrong. I ought to have
said not The diligent but The blasphemous reader. If I had anticipated that you
would adopt measures of this kind I might have done this, and so have avoided
your calumnious speeches. It is, I suppose, a great crime to have called Origen
a diligent reader, especially when I had translated seventy books of his and had
praised him up to the sky,-for doing which I had to defend myself in a short
treatise48 two years ago in answer to your trumpeting of my praises. In those
`praises' which you gave me you laid it to my charge that I had spoken of Origen
as a teacher of the churches, and now that you speak in the character of an
enemy you think that I shall be afraid because you accuse me of calling him a
diligent reader. Why, even shopkeepers who are particularly frugal, and slaves
who are not wasteful, and the care-takers who made our childhood a burden to us
and even thieves when they are particularly clever, we speak of as diligent; and
so the conduct of the unjust steward in the Gospel is spoken of as wise.
Moreover49 "The children of this world are wiser than the children of light,"
and50 "The serpent was wiser than all the beasts which the Lord had made on the
earth."

25. The fourth ground of his censure is in the beginning of my Second Book, in
which I expounded the statement which St. Paul makes "For this cause I Paul, the
prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles." The passage in itself is perfectly
plain; and I give, therefore, only that part of the comment on it which lends
itself to malevolent remark:

"The words which describe Paul as the prisoner of Jesus Christ for the Gentiles
may be understood of his martyrdom, since it was when he was thrown into chains
at Rome that he wrote this Epistle, at the same time with those to Philemon and
the Colossians and the Philippians, as we have formerly shewn. Certainly we
might adopt another sense, namely, that, since we find this body in several
places called the chain of the soul, in which it is held as in a close prison,
Paul may speak of himself as confined in the chains of the body, and so that he
could not return and be with Christ; and that thus he might perfectly fulfil his
office of preaching to the Gentiles. Some commentators, however, introduce
another idea, namely, that Paul, having been predestinated and consecrated from
his mother's womb, and before he was born, to be a preacher to the Gentiles,
afterwards took on the chains of the flesh."

Here also, as before, I gave a three fold exposition of the passage: in the
first my own view, in the second the one supported by Origen, and the third the
opinion of Apollinarius going contrary to his doctrine. Read over the Greek
commentaries. If you do not find the fact to be as I state it, I will confess
that I was wrong. What is my fault in this passage? The same, I presume, as that
to which I made answer before, namely, that I did not name those whose views I
quoted. But it was needless at each separate statement of the Apostle to give
the names of the writers whose works I had declared in the Preface that I meant
to translate. Besides, it is not an absurd way of understanding the passage, to
say that the soul is bound in the body until Christ returns and, in the glory of
the resurrection, changes our corruptible and mortal body for incorruption and
immortality: for it is in this sense that the Apostle uses the expression, "O
wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
calling it the body of death because it is subject to vices and diseases, to
disorders and to death; until it rises with Christ in glory, and, having been
nothing but fragile clay before, becomes baked by the heat of the holy Spirit
into a jar of solid consistency, thus changing its grade of glory, though not
its nature.

26. The fifth passage selected by him for blame is the most important, that in
which I explain the statement of the Apostle.51 "From whom all the body fitly
framed and knit together through every juncture of ministration, according to
the working in due measure of every several part, maketh the increase of the
body unto the building up of itself in love." Here I summed up in a short
sentence Origen's exposition which is very long and goes over the same ideas in
various words, yet so as to leave out none of his illustrations or his
assertions. And when I had come to the end, I added:

"And so in the restitution of all things, when Jesus Christ the true physician
comes to restore to health the whole body of the Church, which now lies
scattered and rent, every one will receive his proper place according to the
measure of his faith and his recognition of the Son of God (the word `recognize'
implies that he had formerly known him and afterwards had ceased to know him),
and shall then begin to be what he once had been; yet not in such a way as that,
as held by another heresy, all should be placed in one rank, and, by a
renovating process, all become angels; but that each member, according to its
own measure and office shall become perfect: for instance, that the apostate
angel shall begin to be that which he was by his creation, and that man who had
been cast out of paradise shall be restored again to the cultivation of
paradise;" and so on.

27. I wonder that you with your consummate wisdom have not understood my method
of exposition. When I say, 'But not in such a way that, as held by another
heresy, all should be placed in one rank, that is, all by a reforming process
become angels, 'I clearly shew that the things which I put forward for
discussion are heretical, and that one heresy differs from the other. Which (do
you ask?) are the two heresies? The one is that which says that all reasonable
creatures will by a reforming process become angels; the other, that which
asserts that in the restitution of the world each thing will become what it was
originally created; as for instance that devils will again become angels, and
that the souls of men will become such as they were originally formed; that is,
by the reforming process will become not angels but that which God originally
made them, so that the just and the sinners will be on an equality. Finally, to
shew you that it was not my own opinion which I was developing but two heresies
which I was comparing with one another, both of which I had found stated in the
Greek, I completed my discussion with this ending:

"These things, as I have said before, are more obscure in our tongue because
they are put in a metaphorical form in Greek; and in every metaphor, when a
translation is made word for word from one language into another, the budding
sense of the word is choked as it were with brambles."

If you do not find in the Greek the very thought which I have expressed, I give
you leave to treat all that I say as my own.

28. The sixth and last point which I am told that he brings against me (that is
if my brother has not left anything unreported) is that, in the interpretation
of the Apostle's words,52 "He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no one
ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also
the church," after my own simple explanation I propounded the question raised by
Origen, speaking his views though without mentioning his name, and saying:

"I may be met by the objection that the statement of the Apostle is not true
when he says that no man hates his own flesh, since those who labour under the
jaundice or consumption or cancer or abscesses, prefer death to life, and hate
their own bodies;" and my own opinion follows immediately: "The words,
therefore, may be more properly taken in a metaphorical sense." When I say
metaphorical, I mean to shew that what is said is not actually the case, but
that the truth is shadowed forth through a mist of allegory. However, I will set
out the actual words which are found in Origen's third book: "We may say that
the soul loves that flesh which is to see the salvation of God, that it
nourishes and cherishes it, and trains it by discipline and satisfies it with
the bread of heaven, and gives it to drink of the blood of Christ: so that it
may become well-liking through wholesome food, and may follow its husband
freely, without being weighed down by any weakness. It is by a beautiful image
that the soul is said to nourish and cherish the body as Christ nourishes and
cherishes the church, since it was he who said to Jerusalem:53

"How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings and thou wouldst not;" and that thus this corruptible
may put on incorruption, and that being poised lightly, as upon wings, may rise
more easily into the air. Let us men then cherish our wives, and let our souls
cherish our bodies in a way as that wives may be turned into men and bodies into
spirits, and that there may be no difference of sex, but that, as among the
angels there is neither male nor female, so we, who are to be the Angels, may
begin to be here what it is promised that we shall be in heaven."

29. The simple explanation of my own opinion in reference to the passage I
stated before in these words:

"Taking the simple sense of the words, we have a command, following on the
precept of mutual kindness between man and wife, that we should nourish and
cherish our wives: that is, that we should supply them with the food and
clothing which are necessary." This is my own understanding of the passage.
Consequently, my words imply that all that follows after and might be brought up
against me must be understood as spoken not as my own view but that of my
opponents. But it might be thought that my resolution of the difficulty of the
passage is too short and peremptory, and that it wraps the true sense, according
to what has been said above, in the darkness of allegory, so as to bring it
clown from its true meaning to one less rue. I will therefore come nearer to the
matter, and ask what there is in the other interpretation with which you need
disagree. It is this I suppose, that I said that souls should cherish their
bodies as men cherish their wives, so that this corruptible may put on
incorruption, and that, being lightly poised as upon wings, it may rise more
easily into the air. When I say that this corruptible must put on incorruption,
I do not change the nature of the body, but give it a higher rank in the scale
of being. And so as regards what follows, that, being lightly poised as upon
wings, it may more easily rise into the air: He who gets wings, that is,
immortality, so that he may fly more lightly up to heaven, does not cease to be
what he had been. But you may say, I am staggered by what follows:

"Let us men then cherish cur wives, and let our souls cherish our bodies, in
such away as that wives may be turned into men and bodies into spirits, and that
there may be no difference of sex, but that, as among the angels there is
neither male nor female, so we, who are to be like the angels, may begin to be
on earth what it is promised that we shall be in heaven."

You might justly be staggered, if I had not, after what goes before, said "We
may begin to be what it is promised that we shall be in heaven." When I say, "We
shall begin to be on earth," I do not take away the difference of sex; I only
take away lust, and sexual intercourse, as the Apostle does when he says, "The
time is short; it remaineth therefore that those who have wives be as though
they had none;" and as the Lord implied when, in reply to the question of which
of the seven brothers the woman would be the wife, he answered:54 "Ye err, not
knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God; for in the resurrection they shall
neither marry nor be given in marriage: but they shall be as the angels of God."
And, indeed, when chastity is observed between man and woman, it begins to be
true that there is neither male nor female; but, though living in the body, they
are being changed into angels, among whom there is neither male nor female. The
same is said by the same Apostle in another place:55 "As many of you as were
baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek,
there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female: for ye are
all one in Christ Jesus."

30. But now, since my pleading has steered its course out of these rough and
broken places, and I have refuted the charge of heresy which bad been urged
against me by looking my accuser freely in the face, I will pass on to the other
articles of charge with which he tries to assail me. The first is that I am a
scurrilous person, a detractor of every one; that I am always snarling and
biting at my predecessors. I ask him to name a single person whose reputation I
have disparaged, or whom, according to an art practised by my opponent. I have
galled by pretended praise. But, if I speak against ill-disposed persons, and
wound with the point of my pen some Luscius Lanuvinus56 or an Asinius Pollio of
the race of the Cornelii,57 if I repel the attacks of a man of boastful and
curious spirit, and aim all my shafts at a single butt, why does he divide with
others the wounds meant for him alone? And why is he so unwise as to shew, by
the irritation of his answer to my attack, his consciousness that it is he alone
whom the cap fits?

He brings against me the charge of perjury and sacrilege together, because, in a
book written for the instruction of one of Christ's virgins, I describe the
promise which I once made when I dreamed that I was before the tribunal of the
Judge, that I would never again pay attention to secular literature, and that
nevertheless I have sometimes made mention of the learning which I then
condemned. I think that I have here lighted on the man who, under the name of
Sallustianus Calpurnius, and through the letter written to me by the orator
Magnus, raised a not very58 great question. My answer on the general subject is
contained in the short treatise which I then wrote to him.59 But at the present
moment I must make answer as to the sacrilege and perjury of my dream. I said
that I would thenceforward read no secular books: it was a promise for the
future, not the abolition of my memory of the past. How, you may ask me, can you
retain what you have been so long without reading? I must give my answer by
recurring to one of these old books:60 'Tis much to be inured in tender youth.
But by this mode of denial I criminate myself; for bringing Virgil as my witness
I am accused by my own defender. I suppose I must weave a long web of words to
prove what each man is conscious of. Which of us does not remember his infancy?
I shall make you laugh though you are a man of such extreme gravity; and you
will have at last to do as Crassus did, who, Lucilius tells us, laughed but once
in his life, if I recount the memories of my childhood: how I ran about among
the offices where the slaves worked; how I spent the holidays in play; or how I
had to be dragged like a captive from my grandmother's lap to the lessons of my
enraged Orbilius.61 You may still more be astonished if I say that, even now
that my head is gray and bald, I often seem in my dreams to be standing, a curly
youth, dressed in my toga, to declaim a controversial thesis before the master
of rhetoric; and, when I wake, I congratulate myself on escaping the peril of
making a speech. Believe me, our infancy brings back to us many things most
accurately. If you had had a literary education, your mind would retain what it
was originally imbued with as a wine cask retains its scent. The purple dye on
the wool cannot be washed out with water. Even asses and other brutes know the
inns they have stopped at before, however long the journey may have been. Are
you astonished that I have not forgotten my Latin books when you learnt Greek
without a master? I learned the seven forms of Syllogisms in the Elements of
logic; I learned the meaning of an Axiom, or as it might be called in Latin a
Determination; I learned how every sentence must have in it a verb and a noun;
how to heap up the steps of the Sorites,62 how to detect the clever turns of the
Pseudomenos63 and the frauds of the stock sophisms. I can swear that I never
read any of these things after I left school. I suppose that, to escape from
having what I learned made into a crime, I must, according to the fables of the
poets, go and drink of the river Lethe. I summon you, who accuse me for my
scanty knowledge, and who think yourself a literateur and a Rabbi, tell me how
was it that you dared to write some of the things you have written, and to
translate Gregory,64 that most eloquent man, with a splendour of eloquence like
his own? Whence have you obtained that flow of words, that lucidity of
statement, that variety of translations,-you who in youth had hardly more than a
first taste of rhetoric? I must be very much mistaken if you do not study Cicero
in secret. I suspect that, being yourself so cultivated a person, you forbid me
trader penalties the reading of Cicero, so that you may be left alone among our
church writers to boast of your flow of eloquence. I must say, however, that you
seem rather to follow the philosophers, for your style is akin to that of the
thorny sentences of Cleanthes65 and the contortions of Chrysippus,66 not from
any art, for of that you say you are ignorant, but from the sympathy of genius.
The Stoics claim Logic as their own, a science which you despise as a piece of
fatuity; on this side, therefore, you are an Epicurean, and the principle of
your eloquence is, not style but matter. For, indeed, what does it matter that
no one else understands what you wish to say, when you write for your own
friends alone, not for all? I must confess that I myself do not always
understand what you write, and think that I am reading67 Heraclitus; however I
do not complain, nor lament for my sluggishness; for the trouble of reading what
you write is not more than the trouble you must have in writing it.

31. I might well reply as I have done even if it were a question of a promise
made with full consciousness. But this is a new and shameless thing; he throws
in my teeth a mere dream. How am I to answer? I have no time for thinking of
anything outside my own sphere. I wish that I were not prevented from reading
even the Holy Scriptures by the throngs that beset this place, and the gathering
of Christians from all parts of the world. Still, when a man makes a dream into
a crime, I can quote to him the words of the Prophets, who say that we are not
to believe dreams; for even to dream of adultery does not condemn us to hell,
and to dream of the crown of martyrdom does not raise us to heaven. Often I have
seen myself in dreams dead and placed in the grave: often I have flown over the
earth and been carried as if swimming through the air, over mountains and seas.
My accuser might, therefore, demand that I should cease to live, or that I
should have wings on my shoulders, because my mind has often been mocked in
sleep by vague fancies of this kind. How many people are rich while asleep and
wake to find themselves beggars! or are drinking water to cool their thirst, and
wake up with their throats parched and burning! You exact from me the fulfilment
of a promise given in a dream. I will meet you with a truer and closer question:
Have you done all that you promised in your baptism? Have you or I fulfilled all
that the profession of a monk demands? I beg you, think whether you are not
looking at the mote in my eye through the beam in your own. I say this against
my will; it is by sorrow that my reluctant tongue is forced into words. As to
you, it is not enough for you to make up charges about my waking deeds, but you
must accuse me for my dreams. You have such an interest in my actions that you
must discuss what I have said or done in my sleep. I will not dwell on the way
in which, in your zeal to speak against me, you have besmirched your own
profession, and have done all you can by word and deed for the dishonouring of
the whole body of Christians. But I give you fair warning, and will repeat it
again and again. You are attacking a creature who has horns: and, if it were not
that I lay to heart the words of the Apostle68 "The evil speakers69 shall not
inherit the kingdom of God," and70 "By hating one another you have been consumed
one of another," I would make you feel what a vast discord you have stirred up
after a slight and pretended reconciliation. What advantage is it to you to heap
up slanders against me both among friends and strangers? Is it because I am not
an Origenist, and do not believe that I sinned in heaven, that I am accused as a
sinner upon earth? And was the result of our renewal of friendship to be, that I
was not to speak against heretics for fear that my notice of them should be
taken for an assault upon you? So long as I did not refuse to be belauded by
you, you followed me as a master, you called me friend and brother, and
acknowledged me as a catholic in every respect. But when I asked to be spared
your praises, and judged myself unworthy to have such a great man for my
trumpeter, you immediately ran your pen through what you had written, and began
to abuse all that you had praised before, and to pour forth from the same mouth
both sweet and bitter words. I wish you could understand what self-repression I
am exerting in not suiting my words to the boiling heat of my breast; and how I
pray, like the Psalmist:71 "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, keep the door
of my lips. Incline not my heart to the words of malice;" and, as he says
elsewhere:72 "While the wicked stood before me I was dumb and was humbled and
kept silence even from good words;" and again:73 "I became as a man that heareth
not and in whose mouth are no reproofs." But for me the Lord the Avenger will
reply, as he says through the Prophet:74 "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith
the Lord": and in another place:75 "Thou satest and spakest against thy brother,
and hast slandered thy mother's son. These things hast thou done, and I kept
silence; thou thoughtest indeed by that I should be such an one as thyself; but
I will reprove thee, and set them before thine eyes;" so that you may see
yourself brought in guilty of those things which you falsely lay to another's
charge.

32. I am told, to take another point, that one of his followers, Chrysogonus,
finds fault with me for having said that in baptism all sins are put away,76
and, in the case of the man who was twice married, that he had died and risen up
a new man in Christ; and further that there were several such persons who were
Bishops in the churches. I will make him a short answer. He and his friends have
in their hands my letter, for which they take me to task. Let him give an answer
to it, let him overthrow its reasoning by reasoning of his own, and prove my
writings false by his writings. Why should he knit his brow and draw in and
wrinkle up his nostrils, and weigh out his hollow words, and simulate among the
common crowd a sanctity which his conduct belies? Let me proclaim my principles
once more in his ears: That the old Adam dies completely in the layer of
baptism, and a new man rises then with Christ; that the man that is earthly
perishes and the man from heaven is raised up. I say this not because I myself
have a special interest in this question, through the mercy of Christ; but that
I made answer to my brethren when they i asked me for my opinion, not intending
to prescribe for others what they may think right to believe, nor to overturn
their resolution by my opinion. For we who lie hid in our cells do not covet the
Bishop's office. We are not like some, who, despising all humility, are eager to
buy the episcopate with gold; nor do we wish, with the minds of rebels, to
suppress the Pontiff chosen by God;77 nor do we, by favouring heretics, show
that we are heretics ourselves. As for money, we neither have it nor desire to
have it.78 "Having food and clothing, we are therewith content;" and meanwhile
we constantly chant the words describing the man who shall ascend to the hill of
the Lord:79 "He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward
against the innocent; be who doeth these things shall not be moved eternally."
We may add that he who does the opposite to these will fall eternally.

--------

Almost every sentence in this last chapter is an insidious allusion to Rufinus.
His "wrinkled-up brow" and "turned-up nose," his weighing out his words, his
supposed wealth, are all alluded to in other places and especially in the
satirical description of him given after his death in Jerome's letter (cxxv. c.
18) to Rusticus.

1: Acts xix, 9. Rufinus's praenomen was Tyrannius.

2: Ps. lxviii, 23 Jerome's version is here, as in many cases unintelligible
through a perverse literalism and an incorrect Hebrew text. In our Revised
Version it stands: "That the tongue of thy dogs may have its portion from thine
enemies."

3: Cic. Quaest. Acad. Lib. i.

4: That is, The Preface of Rufinus to his Translation of the IIeri 'Arxwn (p.
427-8).

5: Hor. Ep. B. i, Ep. iii, 32.

6: See Ruf. Apol. i, 11. "I had grown dull in my Latinity through the disuse of
nearly 30 years."

7: Jerome Letter lxxxiii Pammachius to Jerome: "Refute your accuser; else, if
you do not speak out, you will appear to consent."

8: This is altered from Virg. Aen. x, 875.

9: Supposed to be a version of Ps. lxiv, 8.

10: Ps. xxvii, 3, Ps. xxvii, 4.

11: Aen: i, 177.

12: Intermundia. Spaces between the worlds, in which, according to Epicurus, the
Gods reside.

13: See this question fully argued out by Lightfoot in the Diet. of Christian
Biography, Art. Eusebius of C`saria. He says: "The Defence of Origen was the
joint work of Pamphilus and Eusebius:" and "Jerome's treatment of thismatter is
a painful exhibition of disingenuousness, &c." See De V. Ill. lxxv.

14: Suggrfeuj .

15: Suntagma

16: "The existence of a work which consisted mainly of extracts from Origen with
Comments, and of which he was only the joint author, is quite reconcilable with
this statement. Indeed, the very form of the expression in the original,
corresponding to `ipse quidem 0' `proprii 0' was probably chosen so as to
exclude this work of compilation and partnership." Lightfoot, Art. Eusebius of
Caesarea, in Dict. of Christian Biography.

17: Yeudepigrafw .

18: Eusebius of Cremona, Jerome's friend, whom Rufinus accused of stealing and
publishing his mss.

19: Jerome translated the Chronicle and the Description of the Holy Land, but
not this History. This was done later by Rufinus.

20: Jerome Letter lxxxiii.

21: Letter lxxxiv. 12.

22: Jerome, Letters 91-94.

23: Ep. lxxxiv to Pammachius and Oceanus.

24: Letter lxxxi.

25: Nazianzen, to whose instructions Jerome attached himself at Constantinople
in 381.

26: Is. xxix, 1, "Where David encamped." Rev. Ver.

27: Ps. xc.

28: A native of Samothrace who died at Cyprus b.c. 157. He was tutor to the
children of Ptolemy Philometor, and was renowned as a rhetorician and a critic.

29: Horace Ep. ii, 1, 114-7.

30: 1 Cor. ii, 4. "Not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of
the Spirit and of power." Rev. Ver.

31: Jerome often accuses Rufinus of self-indulgence. See esp. Letter cxxv, c.
18.

32: Wisd. of Sol. i, 4, Wisd. of Sol. i, 5.

33: Eruditionis.

34: A tribe of Thrace; probably troupes of them came to exhibit in Rome.

35: p. 389.

36: Condimentum, or seasoning.

37: Eph. iv, 25.

38: Pro Dispensatione. The word Economy is used in modern discussions on this
subject in the sense of dispensing truth partially to those not wholly fit for
its full disclosure.

39: To the elements of nature, or the idols.

40: Job xxxi, 26, Job xxxi, 28.

41: Eph. i, 4.

42: Ps. cxx, 5.

43: Rom. vii, 24.

44: Phil. i, 23.

45: Ps. cxix, 67.

46: Eph. i, 20, Eph i, 21.

47: Eph. ii, 7.

48: Jerome Letter 84.

49: Luke xvi, 8.

50: Gen. iii, 1.

51: Eph. iv, 16.

52: Eph. v, 28, Eph v, 29.

53: Matt. xxiii, 37.

54: Matt. xxii.

55: Gal. iii, 27, Gal. iii, 28.

56: A rival of to whom Jerome often Terence, to whom Jerome often compares
Rufinus.

57: Asinius Pollio was a rival of Cicero. It seems that some detractor of Jerome
boasted that he was of the race of the Cornelii. See Comm. on Jonah iv, 6. "A
certain Cantherius, of the most ancient race of the Cornelii, or, as he boasts,
of the stock of Asinius Pollio, is said to have accused me at Rome long ago for
havin translated `ivy 0' instead of `gourd. 0'"

58: Per oratorem Magnum non magnam moverat quaestionem.

59: Jerome, Letter LXX, c. 6. "Perhaps the question (as to Christians reading
heathen books) is suggested by one who, for his love of Sallust, might go by the
name of Calpurnius Lanarius."

60: Virg. Geor. ii, 272.

61: The name of a pedagogue recorded by Horace (Ep. ii, 1, 71), which passed
into a general name for boys' tutors.

62: The "Heap-argument," in which a number of separate arguments converge on the
same point.

63: "The Liar," another logical puzzle.

64: Nazianzen. See Prolegomena.

65: Stoic philosopher of Assus in Lydia b.c. 300-240.

66: Of Cilicia; disciple of Cleanthes, b.c. 280-208.

67: Born at Ephesus b.c. 503. His philosophy was tingedwith melancholy, and his
style obscure.

68: I. Cor. vi, 9.

69: Revilers. Rev. Ver.

70: Gal. v, 15.

71: Ps. cxli, 3, Ps. cxli, 4.

72: Ps. xxxix, 1, Ps. xxxix, 2.

73: Ps. xxxviii, 14.

74: Deut. xxxii, 35.

75: Ps. l, 20.

76: The allusion is to Jerome's letter (LXIX) on the case of Carterius a Spanish
Bishop, who had been married before his baptism, and, his wife having died, had
married again. Oceanus argued that he was to be condemned. Jerome contended in
his favour, regarding his first marriage as part of the old life obliterated by
baptism.

77: The allusion is, perhaps, to Rufinus' answer to Pope Anastasius translated
in this volume.

78: I. Tim. vi, 8.

79: Ps. xxiv, 3; Ps. xv, 5.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 3: JEROME'S APOLOGY FOR HIMSELF AGAINST THE BOOKS OF RUFINUS - BOOK 2
========================================================================

Book II.

Book II.

Summary of the Chapters.

1-3. A criticism on Rufinus' Apology to Anastasius. His excuses for not coming
to Rome are absurd. His parents are dead and the journey is easy. No one ever
heard before of his being imprisoned or exiled for the faith.

4-8. His confession of faith is unsatisfactory. No one asked him about the
Trinity, but about Origen's doctrines of the Resurrection, the origin of souls,
and the salvability of Satan. As to the Resurrection and to Satan he is
ambiguous. As to souls he professes ignorance.

9. What Latin! The poor souls must be tormented by his barbarisms.

10. It is not permitted to you to be ignorant of such a matter which all the
churches know.

11. As to translating the Peri 'Arxwn, it is not a question, but a charge that
you unjustifiably altered the book.

12, 13. Origen asserts Christ to be a creature, and maintains universal
restitution. Where has he contradicted this?

14. The question is, as Anastasius says to John of Jerusalem, with what motive
you translated the Peri 'Arxwn.

15. You pretend not to be Origen's defender, but you publish and enlarge the
Apology for him and allege the heretics' falsification of his works.

16. Your defence gains no support from Eusebius or Didymus, who, each for his
own reason, defend the Peri 'Arxwn as it stands.

17. If we may allege falsification at every turn we make a chaos of all past
literature.

18. The object of Origen's letter, of which he translates only a part, is not to
shew the falsification of his writings but to vituperate the Bishops who
condemned him.

19. It is only in reference to a particular point in his dispute with Candidus
that Origen alleges this falsification. The story of Hilary's being condemned
through his writings having been falsified has no foundation.

20. That which you tell about myself in Damasus' council is mere after-dinner
gossip.

21-2. The attack on Epiphanius as a plagiarist of Origen is an outrage on the
Bishops generally. Origen never wrote 6000 books.

23. I ascertained at the library at Caesarea that the Apology you quote as
Pamphilus' is the work of Eusebius.

24. The letter falsely circulated in Africa as mine, and expressing regret for
my translation of the Old Test. from the Hebrew bears the mark of your hand. I
have always honoured the Seventy Translators.

25-32. In proof of this, I bring forward the prefaces to my Translation of the
Books from Genesis to Isaiah.

33. As to Daniel, it was necessary to point out that Bel and the Dragon, and
similar stories were not found in the Hebrew.

34. A vindication of the importance of the Hebrew Text of Scripture.

35. Though the LXX has been of great value, we should be grateful for fresh
translations from the original.

1. Thus far I have made answer about my crimes, and indeed in defence of my
crimes, which my crafty encomiast formerly urged against me, and which his
disciples still constantly press. I have done so not as well as I ought but as I
was able, putting a check upon my complaints, for my object has been not so much
to accuse others as to defend myself. I will now come to his Apology,1 by which
he strives to justify himself to Anastasius, Bishop of the City of Rome, and, in
order to defend himself, constructs a mass of calumnies against me. His love for
me is like that which a man who has been carried away by the tempest and nearly
drowned in deep water feels for the strong swimmer at whose foot he clutches: he
is determined that I shall sink or swim with him.

2. He professes in the first place to be replying to insinuations made at Rome
against his orthodoxy, he being a man most fully approved in respect both of
divine faith and of charity. He says that he would have wished to come himself,
were it not that he had lately returned, after thirty years' absence, to his
parents, and that it would have seemed harsh and inhuman to leave them after
having been so long in coming to them; and also if he had not become somewhat
less robust through his long and toilsome journey, and too infirm to begin his
labours again. As he had not been able to come himself, he had sent his apology
as a kind of literary cudgel which the bishop might hold in his hand and drive
away the dogs who were raging against him. If he is a man approved for his
divine faith and charity by all, and especially by the Bishop to whom he writes;
how is it that at Rome he is assailed and reviled, and that the reports of the
attacks upon his reputation grow thicker. Further, what sort of humility is
this, that a man speaks of himself as approved for his divine faith and charity?
The Apostles prayed,2 "Lord increase our faith," and received for answer: "If ye
had faith as a grain of mustard seed;" and even to Peter it is said:3 "O thou of
little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" Why should I speak of charity, which
is greater than either faith or hope, and which Paul says he hopes for rather
than assumes: without which even the blood shed in martyrdom and the body given
up to the flames has no reward to crown it. Yet both of these our friend claims
as his own: in such a way, however, that there still remain creatures who bark
against him, and who will go on barking unless the illustrious Pontiff drives
them away with his stick. But how absurd is this plea which he puts forward, of
having returned to his parents after thirty years. Why, he has got neither
father nor mother! He left them alive when he was a young man, and, now that he
is old, he pines for them when they are dead. But perhaps, he means by
"parents," what is meant in the talk of the soldiers and the common people, his
kinsfolk and relations; well, he says he does not wish to be thought so harsh
and inhuman as to desert them; and therefore he leaves his home4 and goes to
live at Aquileia. That most approved faith of his is in great peril at Rome, and
yet he lies on his back, being a bit tired after thirty years, and cannot make
that very easy journey in a carnage along that Flaminian Way. He puts forward
his lassitude after his long journey, as if he had done nothing but move about
for thirty years, or as if, after resting at Aquileia for two years, he was
still worn out with the labour of his past travels.

3. I will touch upon the other points, and set down the actual words of his
letter:

"Although my faith was proved, at the time of the persecution by the heretics,
when I was living in the holy church of Alexandria, by imprisonments and exiles,
to which I was subjected because of the faith."

I only wonder that he did not add5 "The prisoner of Jesus Christ," or "I was
delivered from the jaw of the lion," or "I fought with beasts at Alexandria," or
"I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up
for me a crown of righteousness." What exiles, what imprisonments are these
which he describes? I blush for this open falsehood. As if imprisonment and
exile would be inflicted without judicial sentences! I should like to have a
list of these imprisonments and of the various provinces to which he tells us
that he was forced into exile. Next there appear to have been numerous
imprisonments and an infinite number of exiles; so that he might at least name
one of them all. Let us have the acts of his confessorship produced, for
hitherto we have been in ignorance of them; and so let us have the satisfaction
of reciting his deeds with those of the other martyrs of Alexandria, and that he
may be able to meet the people who bark against him with the words:6 "From
henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of our Lord
Jesus Christ."

4. He goes on:

"Still, since there may be some persons, who may wish to prove my faith, or to
hear and learn what it is. I will declare that I thus think of the Trinity;" and
so on. At first you said that you entrusted your faith to the Bishop as a stick
with which he might fortify himself on your behalf against those barking dogs.
Now you speak a little less confidently, "There may be some persons who wish to
prove my faith." You begin to hesitate when the barking which reach your ears
are so numerous. I will not stop to discuss the forms of diction which you use,
for these you look down upon and condemn: I will answer according to the meaning
alone. You are asked about one thing, and you give account for yourself upon
another. As to the doctrines of Arius, you contended against them at Alexandria
a long time ago, by imprisonment and exile, not with words but with blood. But
the question now relates to the heresy of Origen, and the feeling aroused
against you on the subject. I should be sorry that you should trouble yourself
to cure wounds which are already healed. You confess a Trinity in one Godhead.
The whole world now confesses this, and I think that even the devils confess
that the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary, and took upon him the flesh and
the soul belonging to human nature. But I must beg you not to think me a
contentious man if I examine you a little more strictly. You say that the Son of
God took the flesh and soul belonging to human nature. Well then, I would ask
you not to be vexed with me but to answer this question. That soul which Jesus
took upon him, did it exist before it was born of Mary? Was it created together
with the body in that original Virgin nature which was begotten by the Holy
Spirit? or, when the body was already formed within the womb, was it made all at
once, and sent down from heaven? I wish to know which one of these you choose as
your opinion. If it existed before it was born from Mary, then it was not yet
the soul of Jesus; and it was employed in some way, and, for a reward of its
virtues, it was made his soul. If it arose by traduction,7 then human souls,
which we believe to be eternal, are subject to the same condition as those of
the brutes, which perish with the body. But if it is created and sent into the
body after the body has been formed, tell us so simply, and free us from
anxiety.

5. None of these answers will you give us. You turn to other things, and by your
tricks and shew of words prevent us from paying close attention to the question.
What! you will say, was not the question about the resurrection of the flesh and
the punishment of the devil? True; and therefore I ask for a brief and sincere
answer. I raise no question as to your declaration that it is this very flesh in
which we live which rises again, without the loss of a single member, and
without any part of the body being cut off (for these are your own words). But I
want to know whether you hold, what Origen denies, that the bodies rise with the
same sex with which they died; and that Mary will still be Mary and John be
John; or whether the sexes will be so mixed and confused that there will be
neither man nor woman, but something which is both or neither; and also whether
you hold that the bodies remain uncorrupt and immortal, and, as you acutely
suggest after the Apostle, spiritual bodies forever; and not only the bodies,
but the actual flesh, with blood infused into it, and passing by channels
through the veins and bones,-such flesh as Thomas touched; or that little by
little they are dissolved into nothing, and reduced into the four elements of
which they were compounded. This you ought either to confess or deny, and not to
say what Origen also says, but insincerely, as if he were playing upon the
weakness of fools and children, "without the loss of a single member or the
cutting off of any part of the body." Do you suppose that what we feared was
that we might rise without noses and ears, that we should find that our genital
organs would be cut off or maimed and that a city of eunuchs was built up in the
new Jerusalem?

6. Of the devil he thus frames his opinion:

"We affirm also a judgment to come, in which judgment every man is to receive
the due meed of his bodily life, according to that which be has done, whether
good or evil. And, if in the case of men the reward is according to their works
how much more will it be so in the case of the devil who is the universal cause
of sin. Of the devil himself our belief is that which is written in the Gospel,
namely that both he and all his angels will receive as their portion the eternal
fire, and with him those who do his works, that is, who become the accusers of
their brethren. If then any one denies that the devil is to be subjected to
eternal fires, may he have his part with him in the eternal fire, so that he may
know by experience the fact which he now denies."

I will repeat the words one by one. "We affirm also a judgment to come, in which
judgment &c." I had determined to say nothing about verbal faults. But, since
his disciples admire the eloquence of their master, I will make one or two
strictures upon it. He had already said "a future judgment;" but, being a
cautious man, he was afraid of saving simply "in which," and therefore wrote "in
which judgment;" for fear that, if he had not said "judgment" a second time, we,
forgetting what had gone before, might have supplied the word "ass." That which
he brings in afterwards "those who become the accusers of their brethren will
with him have their portion in the eternal fire," is in a style of equal beauty.
Who ever heard of `possessing8 the flames'? It would be like `enjoying
tortures.' I suppose that, being now a Greek, he had tried to translate himself,
and that for the word klhronomhsousin,9 which can be rendered in Latin by the
single word Haereditabunt, he said Haereditate potientur10 supposing it to be
something more elaborate and ornate. With suchtrifles and such improprieties of
speech his whole discourse is teeming. But to return to the meaning of his
words.

7. To proceed:

"This is a great spear with which the devil is pierced, he, `who is the
universal cause of sin,' if he is to render account of his works, like a man,
and `with his angels possess the inheritance of eternal fires.' This, no doubt,
was what was lacking to him, that, having brought mankind into torment, he
should himself `possess the eternal fires' which he had all the while been
longing for."

You seem to me here to speak a little too hardly of the devil, and to assail the
accuser of all with false accusations. You say `he is the universal cause of
sin;' and, while you make him the author of all crimes, you free men from fault,
and take away the freedom of the will. Our Lord says that11 `from our heart come
forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses,
railings,' and of Judas we read in the Gospel;12 "After the sop Satan entered
into him," that is, because he had before the sop sinned voluntarily, and had
not been brought to repentance either by humbling himself or by the forbearance
of the Saviour. So also the Apostle says;13 "Such men I delivered to Satan, that
they might be taught not to blaspheme." He delivered to Satan as to a torturer,
with a view to their punishment, those who, before they had been delivered to
him learned to blaspheme by their own will. David also draws the distinction in
a few words between the faults due to his own will and the incentives of vice
when he says14 "Cleanse thou me from my secret faults, and keep back thy servant
from alien sins." We read also in Ecclesiastes15 "If the spirit of a ruler rise
up against thee, leave not thy place;" from which we may clearly see that we
commit sin if we give opportunity to the power which rises up, and if we fail to
hurl down headlong the enemy who is scaling our walls. As to your threatening
your brothers, that is, those who accuse you, with eternal fire in company with
the devil, it seems to me that you do not so much drag your brethren down as
raise the devil up, since he, according to you, is to be punished only with the
same fires as Christian men. But you well know, I think, what eternal fires mean
according to the ideas of Origen, namely, the sinners' conscience, and the
remorse which galls their hearts within. These ideas he thinks are intended in
the words of Isaiah:16 "Their worm shall not die neither shall their fire be
quenched." And in the words addressed to Babylon:17 "Thou hast coals of fire,
thou shalt sit upon them, these shall be thy help." So also in the Psalm it is
said to the penitent;18 "What shall be given to thee, or what shall be done more
for thee against thee false tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with desolating
coals;" which means (according to him) that the arrows of God's precepts
(concerning which the Prophet says in another place,19 "I lived in misery while
a thorn pierces me") should wound and strike through the crafty tongue, and make
an end of sins in it. He also interprets the place where the Lord testifies
saying:20 "I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish that it may burn" as
meaning "I wish that all may repent, and burn out through the Holy spirit their
vices and their sins; for I am he of whom it is written,21 "Our God is a
consuming fire;" it is no great thing then to say this of the devil, since it is
prepared also for men." You ought rather to have said, if you wished to avoid
the suspicion of believing in the salvation of the devil;22 "Thou hast become
perdition and shalt not be for ever;" and as the Lord speaks to Job concerning
the devil,23 "Behold his hope shall fail him and in the sight of all shall he be
cast down. I will not arouse him as one that is cruel, for who can resist my
countenance? Who has first given to me that I may return it to him? for all
things beneath the heaven are mine. I will not spare him and his words that are
powerful and fashioned to turn away wrath." Hence, these things may pass as the
work of a plain man. Their bearing is evident enough to those who understand
these matters; but to the unlearned they may wear the appearance of innocence.

8. But what follows about the condition of souls can by no means be excused. He
says:

"I am next informed that some stir has been made on the question of the nature
of the soul. Whether complaints on a matter of this kind ought to be entertained
instead of being put aside, you must yourself decide. If, however, you desire to
know my opinion upon this subject, I will state it frankly. I have read a great
many writers on this question, and I find that they express divers opinions.
Some of these whom I have read hold that the soul is infused together with the
material body through the channel of the human seed, and of this they give such
proofs as they can. I think that this was the opinion of Tertullian or
Lactantius among the Latins, perhaps also of a few others. Others assert that
God is every day making new souls and infusing them into the bodies which have
been framed in the womb; while others again believe that the souls were all made
long ago, when God made all things of nothing, and that all that he now does is
to send out each soul to be born in its body as it seems good to him. This is
the opinion of Origen, and of some others among the Greeks. For myself, I
declare in the presence of God that, after reading each of these opinions, I am
unable to hold any of them as certain and absolute: the determination of the
truth in this question I leave to God and to any to whom it shall please him to
reveal it. My profession on this point is, therefore, first, that these several
opinions are those which I have found in books, but, secondly, that I as yet
remain in ignorance on the subject, except so far as this, that the Church
delivers it as an article of faith that God is the creator of souls as well as
of bodies."

9. Before I enter upon the subject matter of this passage, I must stand in
admiration of words worthy of Theophrastus:

"I am informed, he says, that some stir has been made on the question of the
nature of the soul. Whether complaints on a matter of this kind ought to be
entertained instead of being put aside, you must yourself decide."

If these questions as to the origin of the soul have been stirred at Rome, what
is the meaning of this complaint and murmuring on the question whether they
ought to be entertained or not, a question which belongs entirely to the
discretion of bishops? But perhaps he thinks that question and complaint mean
the same thing, because he finds this form of speech in the Commentaries of
Caper. Then be writes: "Some of those whom I have read hold that the soul is
infused together with the material body through the channel of the human seed;
and of these they give such proofs as they can." What license have we here in
the forms of speech! What mixing of the moods and tenses!24 "I have read some
sayings-they confirmed them with what assertions they could." And in what
follows: "Others assert that God is every day making new souls and infusing them
into the bodies which have been framed in the womb; while others again believe
that the souls were all made long ago when God made all things of nothing, and
that all that he now does is to send out each soul to be born in its body as
seems good to him." Here also we have a most beautiful arrangement. Some, he
says, assert this and that; some declare that the souls were made long ago, that
is, when God made all things of nothing, and that He now sends them forth to be
born in their own body as it pleases him. He speaks so distastefully and so
confusedly that I have more trouble in correcting his mistakes than he in
writing them. At the end he says: "I, however, though I have read these things;"
and, while the sentence still hangs unfinished, he adds, as if he had brought
forward something flesh: "I, however, do not deny that I have both read each of
these things, and as yet confess that I am ignorant."

10. Unhappy souls! stricken through with all these barbarisms as with so many
lances! I doubt whether they had so much trouble when, according to the
erroneous theory of Origen, they tell from heaven to earth, and were clothed in
these gross bodies, as they have now in being knocked about on all sides by
these strange words and sentences: not to mention that word of ill omen which
says that they are infused through the channel of the human seed. I know that it
is not usual in Christian writings to criticise mere faults of style; but I
thought it well to shew by a few examples how rash it is to teach what you are
ignorant of, to write what you do not know: so that, when we come to the
subject-matter, we may be prepared to find the same amount of wisdom. He sends a
letter, which he calls a very strong stick, as a weapon for the Bishop of Rome;
and on the very subject about which the dogs are barking at him he professes
entire ignorance of the question. If he is ignorant on the subject for which
ill-reports are current against him, what need was there for him to send an
Apology, which contains no defence of himself, but only a confession of his
ignorance? This course is calculated to sow a crop of suspicions, not to calm
them. He gives us three opinions about the origin of souls; and his conclusion
at the end is: "I do not deny that I have read each of them, and I confess that
I still am ignorant." You would suppose him to be Arcesilaus25 or Carneades26
who declare that there is no certainty; though he surpasses even them in his
cautiousness; for they were driven by the intolerable ill-will which they
aroused among philosophers for taking all truth out of human life, to invent the
doctrines of probability, so that by making their probable assertions they might
temper their agnosticism; but he merely says that he is uncertain, and does not
know which of these opinions is true. If this was all the answer he had to make,
what could have induced him to invoke so great a Pontiff as the witness of his
lack of theological culture. I presume this is the lassitude about which he
tells us that he is exhausted with his thirty-years journey and cannot come to
Rome. There are a great many things of which we are all ignorant; but we do not
ask for witnesses of our ignorance. As to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, as to
the nativity of our Lord and Saviour, about which Isaiah cries,27 "Who shall
declare his generation?" he speaks boldly, and a mystery of which all past ages
knew nothing he claims as quite within his knowledge: this alone he does not
know, the ignorance of which causes men to stumble. As to how a virgin became
the mother of God, he has full knowledge; as to how he himself was born he knows
nothing. He confesses that God is the maker of souls and bodies. whether souls
existed before bodies or whether they came into being with the germs of bodies,
or are sent into them when they are already formed in the womb. In any case we
recognize God as their author. The question at issue is not whether the souls
were made by God or by another, but which of the three opinions which he states
is true. Of this he professes ignorance. Take care! You may find people saying
that the reason for your confession of your ignorance of the three is that you
do not wish to be compelled to condemn one. You spare Tertullian and Lactantius
so as not to condemn Origen with them. As far as I remember (though I may be
mistaken) I am not aware of having read that Lactantius spoke of the soul as
planted at the same time as the body.28 But, as you say that you have read it,
please to tell me in what book it is to be found, so that you may not be thought
to have calumniated him in his death as you have me in my slumber. But even here
you walk with a cautious and hesitating step. You say: "I think that, among the
Latins, Tertullian or Lactantius held this opinion, perhaps also some others.
You not only are in doubt about the origin of souls, but you have only
`thoughts' as to the opinion which each writer holds: yet the matter is of some
importance. On the question of the soul, however, you openly proclaim your
ignorance, and confess your untaught condition: as to the authors, your
knowledge amounts only to `thinking,' hardly to `presuming.' But as to Origen
alone you are quite clear. "This is Origen's opinion," you say. But, let me ask
you: Is the opinion sound or not? Your reply is, "I do not know." Then why do
you send me messengers and letter-carriers, who are constantly coming, merely to
teach me that you are ignorant? To prevent the possibility of my doubting
whether your incapacity is as great as you say, and thinking it possible that
you are cunningly concealing all you know, you take an oath in the presence of
God that up to the present moment you hold nothing for certain and definite on
this subject, and that you leave it to God to know what is true, and to any one
to whom it may please Him to reveal it. What! Through all these ages does it
seem to you that there has been no one worthy of having this revealed to him?
Neither patriarch, nor prophet, nor apostle, nor martyr? Were not these
mysteries made clear even to yourself when you dwelt amidst princes and exiles?
The Lord says in the Gospel:29 "Father, I have revealed thy name to men." Did he
who revealed the Father keep silence on the origin of souls? And are you
astonished if your brethren are scandalized when you swear that you know nothing
of a thing which the churches of Christ profess to know?30

11. After the exposition of his faith, or rather his lack of knowledge, he
passes on to another matter; and tries to make excuses for having turned the
books Peri 'Arxwn into Latin. I will put down his words literally:

"I am told that objections have been raised against me because, forsooth, at the
request of some of my brethren, I translated certain works of Origen from Greek
into Latin. I suppose that every one sees that it is only through ill-will that
this is made a matter of blame. For, if there is any offensive statement in the
author, why is this to be twisted into a fault of the translator? I was asked to
exhibit in Latin what stands written in the Greek text; and I did nothing more
than fit Latin words to Greek ideas. If, therefore, there is anything to praise
in these ideas, the praise does not belong to me: and similarly as to anything
to which blame may attach."

"I hear," he says, "that thence dispute has arisen."31 How clever this is, to
speak of it as a dispute, when it is really an accusation against him. "That I
have, at the request of my brethren, translated certain things of Origen's into
Latin." Yes, but what are these "certain things"? Have they no name? Are you
silent? Then the bills of charge brought by the accusers will speak for you. "I
suppose," he says, "that every one understands that it is only through envy that
these things are made matters of blame." What envy? Are people envious of your
eloquence? Or have you done what no other man has ever been able to do? Here am
I, who have translated many works of Origen's; yet, except you, no one shews
envy towards me or calumniates me for it. "If there is any offensive statement
in the author, why is it to be twisted into a fault of the translator? I was
asked to exhibit in Latin what stands written in the Greek text; and I did
nothing more than fit Latin words to Greek ideas. If, therefore, there is
anything to praise in these ideas, the praise does not belong to me, and
similarly as to anything to which blame may attach." Can you be astonished that
men think ill of you when you say of open blasphemies nothing more than, "If
there are any offensive statements in the author"? What is said in those books
is offensive to all men; and you stand alone in your doubt and in your complaint
that this is "twisted into a fault of the translator," when you have praised it
in your Preface. `You were asked to turn it into Latin as it stood in the Greek
text.' I wish you had done what you pretend you were asked. You would not then
be the object of any ill will. If you had kept faith as a translator, it would
not have been necessary for me to counteract your false translation by my true
one. You know in your own conscience what you added, what you subtracted, and
what you altered on one side or the other at your discretion; and after this you
have the audacity to tell us that what is good or evil is not to be attributed
to you but to the author. You shew your sense of the ill will aroused against
you by again toning down your words: and as if you were walking with your steps
in the air or on the tops of the ears of corn, you say, "Whether there is praise
or blame in these opinions." You dare not defend him, but you do not choose to
condemn him. Choose which of the two you please; the option is yours; if this
which you have translated is good, praise it, if bad, condemn it. But he makes
excuses, and weaves another artifice, He says:

"I admit that I put something of my own into the work: as I stated in my
Preface, I used my own discretion in cutting out not a few passages; but only
those as to which I had come to suspect that the thing had not been so stated by
Origen himself, and the statement appeared to me in these cases to have been
inserted by others, because in other places I had found the author state the
same matter in a catholic sense."32

What wonderful eloquence! Varied, too, with flowers of the Attic style.
"Moreover also!"33 and "Things which came to me into suspicion!" I marvel that
he should have dared to send such literary portents to Rome. One would think
that the man's tongue was in fetters, and bound with cords that cannot be
disentangled, so that it could hardly break forth into human speech. However, I
will return to the matter in hand.

11(a). I wish to know who gave you permission to cut out a number of passages
from the work you were translating? You were asked to turn a Greek book into
Latin, not to correct it; to draw out another man's words, not to write a book
of your own. You confess, by the fact of pruning away so much, that you did not
do what you were asked. And I wish that what you curtailed had all been the bad
parts, and that you had not put in many things of your own which go to support
what is bad. I will take an example, from which men may judge of the rest. In
the first book of the Peri 'Arxwn where Origen had uttered that impious
blasphemy, that the Son does not see the Father, you supply the reasons for
this, as if in the name of the writer, and translate the note of Didymus, in
which he makes a fruitless effort to defend another man's error, trying to prove
that Origen spoke rightly; but we, poor simple men, like the tame creatures
spoken of by Ennius, can understand neither his wisdom nor that of his
translator. Your Preface, which you allege in explanation, in which you flatter
and praise me so highly shows you to be guilty of the most serious faults of
translation. You say that you have cut out many things from the Greek, but you
nothing of what you have put in. Were the parts cut out good or bad? Bad, I
suppose. Was what you kept good or bad? Good, presume; for you could not
translate the bad. Then I suppose you cut off what was bad and left what was
good? Of course. But what you have translated can be shewn to be almost wholly
bad. Whatever therefore in your translation I can shew to be bad, must be laid
to your account, since you translated it as being good. It is a strange thing if
you are to act like an unjust censor, who is himself guilty of the crime, and
are allowed at your will to expel some from the Senate and keep others in it.
But you say: "It was impossible to change everything only thought I might cut
away what had been added by the heretics." Very good. Then if you cut away all
that you thought had been added by the heretics, all that you left belongs to
the work which you were translating. Answer me then, are these good or bad? You
could not translate what was bad, since once for all you had cut away what had
been added by the heretics, that is, unless you thought it your duty to cut away
the bad parts due to the heretics, while translating the errors of Origen
himself unaltered into Latin. Tell me then, why you turned Origen's heresies
into Latin. Was it to expose the author of the evil, or to praise him? If your
object is to expose him, why do you praise him in the Preface? If you praise him
you are convicted of being a heretic. The only remaining hypothesis is that you
published these things as being good. But if they are proved to be bad, then
author and translator are involved in the same crime, and the Psalmist's word is
fulfilled:34 "When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst unto him and hast been
partaker with the adulterers." It is needless to make a plain matter doubtful by
arguing about it. As to what follows, let him answer whence this suspicion arose
in his mind of these additions by heretics. "It was," he says, "because I found
the same things treated by this author in other places in a catholic sense."

12. We must consider the fact, which comes first, and so in order reach the
inference, which comes after. Now I find among many bad things written by Origen
the following most distinctly heretical: that the Son of God is a creature, that
the Holy Spirit is a servant: that there are innumerable worlds, succeeding one
another in eternal ages: that angels have been turned into human souls; that the
soul of the Saviour existed before it was born of Mary, and that it is this soul
which "being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but
emptied itself and took the form of a servant;"35 that the resurrection of our
bodies will be such that we shall not have the same members, since, when the
functions of the members cease they will become superfluous: and that our bodies
themselves will grow aërial and spirit-like, and gradually vanish and disperse
into thin air and into nothing: that in the restitution of all things, when the
fulness of forgiveness will have been reached, Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones,
Principalities, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Archangels and Angels, the devil,
the demons and the souls of men whether Christians Jews or Heathen, will be of
one condition and degree; and when they have come to their true form and weight,
and the new army of the whole race returning from the exile of the world
presents a mass of rational creatures with all their dregs left behind, then
will begin a new world from a new origin, and other bodies in which the souls
who fall from heaven will be clothed; so that we may have to fear that we who
are now men may afterwards be born women, and one who is now a virgin may chance
then to be a prostitute. These things I point out as heresies in the books of
Origen. It is for you to point out in which of his books you have found them
contradicted.

13. Do not tell me that "you have found the same things treated by the same
author in other places in a catholic sense," and thus send me to search through
the six thousand books of Origen which you charge the most reverend Bishop
Epiphanius with having read; but mention the passages with exactness: nor will
this suffice; you must produce the sentences word for word. Origen is no fool,
as I well know; he cannot contradict himself. The net result arising from all
this calculation is, then, that what you cut out was not due to the heretics,
but to Origen himself, and that you translated the bad things he had written
because you considered them good; and that both the good and the bad things in
the book are to be set to your account, since you approved his writings in the
Prologue.

14. The next passage in this apology is as follows:

"I am neither a champion nor a defender of Origen, nor am I the first who has
translated his works. Others before me have done the same thing: and I did it,
the last of many, at the request of my brethren. If an order is to be given that
such translations are not to be made, such an order holds good for the future,
not the past: but if those are to be blamed who have made these translations
before any such order was given, the blame must begin with those who took the
first step."

Here at last he has vomited forth what he wanted to say, and all his inflamed
mind has broken oat into this malicious accusation against me. When he
translates the Peri 'Arxwn he declares that he is following me. When he is
accused for having done it, he gives me as his example: whether he is in danger
or out of danger, he cannot live without me. Let me tell him, therefore, what he
professes not to know. No one reproaches you because you translated Origen,
otherwise Hilary and Ambrose would be condemned: but because you translated a
heretical work, and tried to gain support for it by praising me in the Preface.
I myself, whom you criminate, translated seventy homilies of Origen, and parts
of his Tomes, in order that by translating his best works I might withdraw the
worst from notice: and I also have openly translated the Peri 'Arxwnto prove the
falsity of your translation, so as to show the reader what to avoid. If you wish
to translate Origen into Latin, you have at hand many homilies and Tomes of his,
in which some topic of morality is handled or some obscure passage of Scripture
is opened. Translate these give these to those who ask them of you. Why should
your first labour begin with what is infamous? And why, when you were about to
translate a heretical work, did you preface and support it by the supposed book
of a martyr, and force upon the ears of Romans a book the translation of which
threw the world into panic? At all events, if you translate such a work with the
view of exhibiting the author as a heretic, change nothing from the Greek text,
and make this clear in the Preface. It is this which the Pope Anastasius most
wisely embodies in the letter which he has addressed to the Bishop John against
you; he frees me who have done this froth all blame, but condemns you who would
not do it. You will perhaps deny the existence of this letter; I have therefore
subjoined a copy of it; so that, if you will not listen to your brother when he
advises, you may listen to the Bishop when he condemns.

15. You say that you are not the defender or the champion of Origen; but I will
at once confront you with your own book of which you spoke in that notorious
preface to your renowned work in these terms:

"The cause of this diversity I have set forth more fully for you in the Apology
which Pamphilus wrote among his treatises, adding a very short document of my
own, in which I have shewn by what appear to me evident proofs, that his works
have been depraved in many places by heretics and ill-disposed persons, and
especially those which I am now translating, the Peri 'Arxwn." The defence made
by Eusebius, or if you will have it so, by Pamphilus, was not sufficient for
you, but you must add something from your superior wisdom and learning to supply
what you thought insufficient in what they had said. It would be a long business
if I were to insert the whole of your book into the present treatise, and, after
setting out each paragraph, to reply to each in turn, and shew what vices there
are in the style, what falsehoods in the assertions, what inconsistency in the
actual tissue of the language. And therefore, to avoid a redundant discussion
which is distasteful to me, I will compress the verbal matter into a narrow
compass, and reply to the meaning alone. As soon as he leaves the harbour he
runs his ship upon a rock. He recalls the words of the Apology of the Martyr
Pamphilus (which however, I have proved to be the work of Eusebius the Chief of
the Arians) of which he had said, "I translated it into the Latin tongue as best
I was able and as the matter demanded;" he then adds: "It is this as to which I
wish to give you a charge, Macarius, man of desires,36 that you may feel sure
that this rule of faith which I have above set forth out of his books, is such
as ought to be embraced and held fast: it is clearly shewn that there is a
catholic meaning in them all." Although he took away many things from the book
of Eusebius, and tried to alter in a good sense the expressions about the Son
and the Holy Spirit, still there are found in it many causes of offence, and
even open blasphemies, which our friend cannot refuse to accept since he
pronounces them to be catholic. Eusebius (or, if you please, Pamphilus) says in
that book that the Son is the Servant of the Father, the Holy Spirit is not of
the same substance with the Father and the Son; that the souls of men have
fallen from heaven; and, inasmuch as we have been changed from the state of
Angels, that in the restitution of all things angels and devils and men will all
be equal; and many other things so impious and atrocious that it would be a
crime even to repeat them. The champion of Origen and translator of Pamphilus is
in a strange position. If there is so much blasphemy in these parts which he has
corrected, what sacrilegious things must there be in the parts which, as he
pretends, have been falsified by heretics! What makes him hold this opinion, as
he says, is that a man who is neither a feel nor a madman could not have said
things mutually repugnant; and, that we may not suppose that he had written
different things at different times, and that he put forth contrary views
according to the time of writing, he has added:

"What are we to say when sometimes in the same place, and, so to speak, almost
in the following paragraph, a sentence with an opposite meaning is found
inserted? Can we believe that, in the same work and in the same book, and
sometimes, as I have said in the sentence immediately following, he can have
forgotten his own words? For example, could he who had before said, we can find
no passage throughout the Scriptures in which the Holy Spirit is said to be
created or made, immediately add that the Holy Spirit was made among the rest of
the creatures? or again, could he who defined the Father and the Son to be of
one substance, that namely which is called in Greek Homoousion, say in the
following portions that he was of another substance, and that he was created,
when but a little before he had declared him to be born from the nature of God
the Father?"

16. These are his own words, he cannot deny them. Now I do not want to be put
off with such expressions as "since he said above" but I want to have the name
of the book in which he first spoke rightly and then wrongly: in which he first
says that the Holy Spirit and the Son are of the substance of God, and in what
immediately follows declares that they are creatures. Do you not know that I
possess the whole of Origen's works and have read a vast number of them?

"Your trappings to the mob! I know you well;

What lies within and on the skin I see."37

Eusebius who was a very learned man, (observe I say learned not catholic: you
must not, according to your wont make this a ground for calumniating me) takes
up six volumes with nothing else but the attempt to shew that Origen is of his
way of believing, that is of the Arian perfidy. He brings out many
test-passages, and effectually proves his point. In what dream in an Alexandrian
prison was the revelation given to you on the strength of which you make out
these passages to be falsified which he accepts as true? But possibly he being
an Arian, took in these additions of the heretics to support his own error, so
that he should not be thought to be the only one who had held false opinions
contrary to the Church. What answer will you make, then, as to Didymus, who
certainly is catholic as regards the Trinity? You know that I translated his
book on the Holy Spirit into Latin. He surely could not have assented to the
passages in Origen's works which were added by heretics; yet he wrote some short
commentaries on the Peri 'Arxwn which you have translated; in these he never
denies that what is there written was written by Origen, but only tries to
persuade us simple people that we do not understand his meaning and how these
passages ought to be taken in a good sense. So much on the Son and the Holy
Spirit alone. But in reference to the rest of Origen's doctrines, both Eusebius
and Didymus adhere to his views, and defend, as said in a catholic and Christian
sense, what all the churches reprobate.

17. But let us consider what are the arguments by which he tries to prove that
Origen's writings have been corrupted by the heretics.

"Clement," he says, "who was the disciple of the Apostles, and who succeeded the
apostles both in the episcopate and in martyrdom, wrote the books which go by
the name of Anagnorismus; that is, Recognitions. In these, though, speaking
generally, the doctrine which is set forth in the name of the Apostle Peter is
genuinely apostolical, yet in certain passages the doctrine of Eunomius is
brought in such a way as that you would suppose Eunomius himself to be
conducting the argument and asserting his view that the Son was created out of
nothing."

And, after a passage too long to reproduce, he adds:

"What then are we to think of these facts? Must we believe that an Apostolic man
wrote heresy? or is it not more likely that men of perverse mind, wishing to
gain support for their own doctrines, and win easier credit for them, introduced
under the names of holy men views which they cannot be believed either to have
held or to have written down?"

He tells us that Clement the presbyter of Alexandria also, who was a catholic
man, writes at times in his works that the Son of God is created; and that
Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria, a most learned man, in the four books in which
he controverted the doctrines of Sabellius, lapses into the dogma of Arius. What
he aims at by quoting these instances is not to shew that Churchmen and
catholics have erred, but that their writings have been corrupted by heretics,
and he closes the discussion with these words:

"And when we find in Origen a certain diversity of doctrine, just as we have
found it in those of whom we have spoken above, will it not be sufficient for us
to believe the same in his case which we believe or understand in the case of
the catholic men whom we have passed in review? Will not the same defence hold
good when the case is the same?"

If, I reply, we admit that everything in a book which is offensive is corruptly
inserted by others, nothing will remain belonging to the author under whose name
the book passes, but everything can be assigned to those by whom it is supposed
to have been corrupted. But then it will not belong to them either, since we do
not know who they were: and the result will be that every book belongs to
everybody and nothing to any one in particular. In this confusion which this
method of defence introduces, it will be impossible to convict Marcion of error,
or Manichaeus or Arius or Eunomius; because, as soon as we point out a statement
of their unbelief, their disciples will answer that was not what the master
wrote, but was corruptly inserted by his opponents. According to this principle,
this very book of yours will not be yours nor mine. And as to this very book in
which I am making reply to your accusations, whatever you find fault with in it
will be held not be written by me but by you who now find fault with it. And
further, while you assign everything to the heretics, there will be nothing left
which you can assign to churchmen as their own. But you may ask, How is it then
that in their books some false views occur? Well, if I answer that I do not know
the parties whence these false views came, I must not be thought to have said
that they are heretics. It is possible that they may have fallen into error
unawares, or that the words bore a different meaning, or that they may have been
gradually corrupted by unskilful copyists It must be admitted that, before Arius
arose in Alexandria as a demon of the south, things were said incautiously which
cannot be defended against a malevolent criticism. But when glaring faults are
exposed in Origen, you do not defend him but accuse others; you do not deny the
faults, but summon up a host of criminals. If you were asked to name those who
have been the companions of Origen in his heresies, it would be right enough to
call in these others. But what you are now asked to tell us is whether those
statements in the books of Origen are good or evil; and you say nothing, but
bring in irrelevant matters, such as: This is what Clement says; this is an
error of which Dionysius is found guilty; these are the words in which the
bishop Athanasius defends the error of Dionysius; in a similar way the writings
of the Apostle have been tampered with: and then, while the charge of heresy is
fastened upon you, you say nothing in your own defence, but make confessions
about me. I make no accusations, and am content with answering for myself. I am
not what you try to prove me: whether you are what you are accused of being, is
for you to consider. The fact that I am acquitted of blame does not prove me
innocent nor the fact that you are accused prove you a criminal.

18. After this preface as to the falsification by heretics of the apostles, of
both the Clements, and of Dionysius, he at last comes to Origen; and these are
his words:

"I have shewn from his own words and writings how he himself complains of this
and deplores it: He explains clearly in the letter which he wrote to some of his
intimate friends at Alexandria what he suffered while living here in the flesh
and in the full enjoyment of his senses, by the corruption of his books and
treatises, or by spurious editions ofthem."

He subjoins a copy of this letter; and he who implores to the heretics the
falsification of Origen's writings himself begins by falsifying them, for he
does not translate the letter as be finds it in the Greek, and does not convey
to the Latins what Origen states in his letter. The object of the whole letter
is to assail Demetrius the Pontiff of Alexandria, and to inveigh against the
bishops throughout the world, and to tell them that their excommunication of him
is invalid; he says further that he has no intention of retorting their evil
speaking; indeed he is so much afraid of evil speaking that he does not dare to
speak evil even of the devil; insomuch that he gave occasion to Candidus an
adherent of the errors of Valentinian to represent him falsely as saying that
the devil is of such a nature as could be saved. But our friend takes no notice
of the real purport of the letter, and makes up for Origen an argument which he
does not use.I have therefore translated a part of the letter, beginning a
little way below what has been already spoken of, and have appended it to the
part which has been translated by him in a curtailed and disingenuous manner, so
that the reader may perceive the object with which be suppressed the earlier
part. He is contending, then, against the Bishops of the church generally,
because they had judged him unworthy of its communion; and he continues as
follows:

"Why need I speak of the language in which the prophets constantly threaten and
reprove the pastors, elders, the priests and the princes?These things you can of
yourselves without my aid draw out from the Holy Scriptures, and you may clearly
see that it may well be the present time of which it is said38 `Trust not in
your friends, and do not hope in princes,' and that the prophecy is now gaining
its fulfilment,39 `The leaders of my people have not known me; my sons are fools
and not wise: they are wise to do evil, but know not to do good.' We ought to
pity them, not to hate them, to pray for them, not to curse them. For we have
been created for blessing, not for cursing. Therefore even Michael,40 when he
disputed against the devil concerning the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a
railing accusation even for so great an evil, but said; `The Lord rebuke thee.'
And we read something similar in Zachariah,41 `The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan;
the Lord which hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee.' So also we desire that those
who will not humbly accept the rebuke of their neighbours may be rebuked of the
Lord. But, since Michael says, `The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan,' and Zechariah
says the same, the devil knows well whether the Lord rebukes him or not; and
must acknowledge the manner of the rebuke."

Then, after a passage too long to insert here, he adds:

"We believe that not only those who have committed great sins will be cast out
from the kingdom of heaven, such as fornicators and adulterers, and those who
defile themselves with mankind, and thieves, but those also who have done evil
of a less flagrant kind, since it is written;42 'Neither drunkards nor evil
speakers shall inherit the kingdom of God;" and that the standard by which men
will be judged is as much the goodness as the severity of God. Therefore we
strive to act thoughtfully in all things, in drinking wine, and in moderation of
language, so that we dare not speak evil of any man. Now, because, through the
fear of God, we are careful not to utter maledictions against any one,
remembering that the words `He dared not bring against him a railing
accusation,' are spoken of Michael in his dealing with the devil; as it is said
also in another place,43 `They set at naught dominions and rail at dignities;'
certain of these men who seek for matters of contention, ascribe to us and our
teaching the blasphemy (as to which they have to lay to heart the words which
apply to them, `Neither drunkards nor evil speakers shall inherit the kingdom of
God'), namely, that the father of wickedness find perdition of those who shall
be cast out of the kingdom of God can be saved; a thing which not even a madman
can say." The rest which comes in the same letter he has44 set down instead of
the later words of Origen which I have translated: "Now, because through the
fear of God we are careful not to utter maledictions against any one," and so
on; he fraudulently cuts off the earlier part, on which the later depends,and
begins to translate the letter, as though the former part began with this
statement, and says:

"Some of those who delight in bringing complaints against their neighbours,
ascribe to us and our teaching the crime of a blasphemy, which we have never
spoken, (as to which they must consider whether they are willing to stand by the
decree which says `The evil speakers shall not inherit the kingdom of God,') for
they say that I assert that the father of the wickedness and perdition of those
who shall be east out of the kingdom of God, that is, the devil, will be saved;
a thing which no man even though he had taken leave of his senses and was
manifestly insane could say."

19. Now compare the words of Origen, which I have translated word for word
above, with these which by him have been turned into Latin, or rather
overturned; and you will see clearly how great a discrepancy between them there
is, not only of word but of meaning. I beg you not to consider my translation
wearisome because it is longer; for the object I had in translating the whole
passage was to exhibit the purpose which be had in suppressing the earlier part.
There exists in Greek a dialogue between Origen and Candidus the defender of the
heresy of Valentinian, in which I confess it seems to me when I read it that I
am looking on at a fight between two Andabatian gladiators. Candidus maintains
that the Son is of the substance of the Father,falling into the error of
asserting a Probole or Production.45 On the other side, Origen, like Arius and
Eunomius, refuses to admit that He is produced or born, lest God the Father
should thus be divided into parts; but he says that He was a sublime and most
excellent creation who came into being by the will of the Father like other
creatures. They then come to a second question. Candidus asserts that the devil
is of a nature wholly evil which can never be saved. Against this Origen rightly
asserts that he is not of perishable substance, but that it is by his own will
that he felt and can be saved. This Candidus falsely turns into a reproach
against Origen, as if he had said that the diabolical nature could be saved.
What therefore Candidus had falsely accused him of, Origen refutes. But we see
that in this Dialogue alone Origen accuses the heretics of having falsified his
writings, not in the other books about which no question was ever raised.
Otherwise, if we are to believe that all which is heretical is not due to Origen
but to the heretics, while almost all his books are full of these errors,
nothing of Origen's will remain, but everything must be the work of those of
whose names we are ignorant.

It is not enough for him to calumniate the Greeks and the men of old time, about
whom the distance either of time or space gives him the power to tell any
falsehood he pleases. He comes to the Latins, and first takes the case of Hilary
the Confessor, whose book, he states, was falsified by the heretics after the
Council of Ariminum. A question arose about him on this account in a council of
bishops, and he then ordered the book to be brought from his own house. The book
in its heretical shape was in his desk, though he did not know it; and when it
was produced, the author of the book was condemned as a heretic and
excommunicated, and left the council room. This is the story, a mere dream of
his own, which he tells to his intimates; and he imagines his authority to be so
great that no one will dare to contradict him when he says such things. I will
ask him a few questions. In what city was the synod held by which Hilary was
excommunicated? What were the names of the Bishops present? Who subscribed the
sentence? Who were content, and who non-content? Who were the consuls of the
year? and who was the emperor who ordered the assembly of the council? Were the
Bishops present those of Gaul alone, or of Italy and Spain as well? and for what
purpose was the council called together? You tell us none of these things; yet,
in order to defend Origen, you treat as a criminal and as excommunicated a man
of the highest eloquence, the very clarion of the Latin tongue against the
Arians. But we are in the presence of a confessor, and even his calumnies must
be borne with patience. He next passes to Cyprian the illustrious martyr, and he
tells us that a book by Tertullian entitled "On the Trinity" is read as one of
his works by the partisans of the Macedonian heresy at Constantinople. In this
charge of his he tells two falsehoods. The book in question is not Tertullian's,
nor does it pass under the name of Cyprian. It is by Novatian and is called by
his name; the peculiarity of the style proves the authorship of the work.

20. What nonsense is this out of which they fabricate a charge against me! It
seems hardly worth while to notice it. It is a story of my own about the council
held by Damasus Bishop of Rome, and I, under the name of a certain friend of
his, am attacked for it. He bad given me some papers about church affairs to get
copied; and the story describes a trick practised by the Apollinarians who
borrowed one of these, a book of Athanasius' to read in which occur the words46
`Dominicus homo,' and falsified it by first scratching out the words, and then
writing them in again on the erasure, so that it might appear, not that the book
bad been falsified by them, but that the words had been added by me. I beg you,
my dearest friend, that in these matters of serious interest to the church,
where doctrinal truth is in question, and we are seeking for the authority of
our predecessors for the well-being of our souls to put away silly stuff of this
kind, and not take mere after-dinner stories as if they were arguments. For it
is quite possible that, even after you have heard the true story from me,
another who does not know it may declare that it is made up, and composed in
elegant language by you like a mine of Philistion or a song of Lentulus or
Marcellus.

21. To what point will not rashness reach when once the reins which check it are
relaxed? After telling us of the excommunication of Hilary, the heretical book
falsely bearing the name of Cyprian, the successive erasure and insertion in the
work of Athanasius made while I was asleep, he as a last effort breaks forth
into an attack upon the pope Epiphanius: the chagrin engendered in his heart
because Epiphanius in the letter which he wrote to the bishop John had called
him a heretic, he pours out in his apology for Origen, and comforts himself with
these words:

"The whole truth, which has been hidden, must here be laid bare. It is
impossible that any man should exercise so unrighteous a judgment as to judge
unequally where the cases are equal. But the fact is, the prompters of those who
defame Origen are men who either make it a habit to discourse in the churches at
great length or write books, the whole of which, both books and discourse are
taken from Origen. To prevent men therefore from discovering their plagiarism,
the crime of which can be concealed so long as they act ungratefully towards
their master, they deter all simple persons from reading him. One of them, who
considers himself to have a necessity laid upon him to speak evil of Origen
through every nation and tongue, as if that were to preach the Gospel, once
declared in the audience of a vast multitude of the brethren that he had read
six thousand of his books. If he read them, as he is wont to declare, in order
to know what harm there was in him, ten or twenty books, or at most thirty,
would have been sufficient for that knowledge. To read six thousand books is not
like one who wants to know the harm and the errors that are in him, but like one
who consecrates almost his whole life to studies conducted under his tuition.
How then can he claim to be listened to when he blames those who, for the sake
of instruction, have read a small portion of his works, taking care to maintain
whole their own system of belief anti their piety?"

22. Who are these men who are wont to dispute at such great length in the
churches, and to write books, and whose discourses and writings are taken wholly
from Origen; these men who are afraid of their literary thefts becoming known,
and shew ingratitude towards their master, and who therefore deter men of simple
mind from reading him? You ought to mention them by name, and designate the men
themselves. Are the reverend bishops47 Anastasius and Theophilus, Venerius and
Chromatius, and the whole council of the Catholics both in the East and in the
West, who publicly denounce him as a heretic, to be esteemed to be plagiarists
of his books? Are we to believe that, when they preach in the churches, they do
not preach the mysteries of the Scriptures, but merely repeat what they have
stolen from Origen? Is it not enough for you to disparage them all in general,
but you must specially aim the spear of your pen against a reverend and eminent
Bishop of the church? Who is this who considers that he has a necessity laid on
him of reviling Origen, as the Gospel which he must preach among all nations and
tongues? this man who proclaimed in the audience of a vast multitude of the
brethren that he had read six thousand of his books? You yourself were in the
very centre of that multitude and company of the brethren, when, as he complains
in his letter,48 the monstrous doctrines of Origen were enlarged upon by you. Is
it to be imputed to him as a crime thai he knows the Greek, the Syrian, the
Hebrew, the Egyptian, and in part also the Latin language? Then, I suppose, the
Apostles and Apostolic men, who spoke with tongues, are to be condemned; and you
who know two languages may deride me who know three. But as for the six thousand
books which you pretend that be has read, who will believe that you are speaking
the truth, or that he was capable of telling such a lie? If indeed Origen had
written six thousand books, it is possible that a man of great learning, who had
been trained from his infancy in sacred literature might have read books alien
from his own convictions, because he had an inquiring spirit and a love of
learning. But how could be read what Origen never wrote? Count up the index
contained in the third volume of Eusebius, in which is his life of Pamphilus:
you will not find, I do not say six thousand, but not a third of that number of
books. I have by me the letter of the above named Pontiff, in which he gives his
answer to this calumny of yours uttered when you were still in the East; and it
confutes this most manifest falsehood with the open countenance of truth.

23. After all this you dare to say ill your Apology, that you are not the
defender nor the champion of Origen, though you think that Eusebius and
Pamphilus said all too little in his defence. I shall try to write a reply to
those works in another treatise if God grants me a sufficient span of life. For
the present let it suffice that I have met your assertions, and that I have set
the careful reader on his guard by stating that I never saw in writing the book
which was known as the work of Pamphilus till I read it in your own manuscript.
It was no great concern of mine to know what was written: in favour of a
heretic, and therefore I always took it that the work of Pamphilus was different
from that of Eusebius; but, after the question had been raised, I wished to
reply to their works, and with this object I read what each of them had to say
in Origen's behalf; and then I discerned clearly that the first of Eusebius' six
books was the same which you had published both in Greek and Latin as the single
book of Pamphilus, only altering the opinion shout the Son and the Holy Spirit,
which bore on their face the mark of open blasphemy. It was thus that, when my
friend, Dexter, who held the office of praetorian prefect, asked me, ten years
ago, to make a list for him of the writers of our faith,49 placed among the
various treatises assigned to various authors this book as composed by
Pamphilus, supposing the matter to be as it had been brought before the public
by you and by your disciples. But, since Eusebius himself says that Pamphilus
wrote nothing except some short letters to his friends, and the first of his six
books contains the precise words which are fictitiously given by you under the
name of Pamphilus, it is plain that your object in circulating this book was to
introduce heresy under the authority of a martyr. I cannot allow you to make my
mistake a cloak for your fraud, when you first pretend that the book is by
Pamphilus and then pervert many of its passages so as to make them different in
Latin from what they are in Greek. I believed the book to be by the writer whose
name it bore, just as I did in reference to the Peri 'Arxwn, and many other of
the works of Origen and of other Greek writers, which I never read fill now, and
am now compelled to read, because the question of heresy has been raised, and l
wish to know what ought to be avoided and what opposed. In my youth, therefore,
I translated only the homilies which he delivered in public, and in which there
are fewer causes of offence; and this in ignorance and at the request of others:
I did not try to prejudice men by means of the parts which they approved in
favour of the acceptance of those which are evidently heretical. At all events,
to cut short a long discussion, I can point out whence I received the Peri
'Arxwn, namely, from those who copied it from your manuscript. We want in like
manner to know whence your copy of it came; for if you are unable to name any
one else as the source from which it was derived, you will yourself be convicted
of falsifying it.50 "A good man from the good treasure of his heart bringeth
forth what is good." A tree of a good stock is known by the sweetness of its
fruit.

24. My brother Eusebius writes to me that, when he was at a meeting of African
bishops which had been called for certain ecclesiastical affairs, he found there
a letter purporting to be written by me, in which I professed penitence and
confessed that it was through the influence of the press in my youth that I had
been led to turn the Scriptures into Latin from the Hebrew; in all of which
there is not a word of truth. When I heard this, I was stupefied. But one
witness was not enough; even Cato was not believed on his unsupported
evidence:51 "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be
established." Letters were soon brought me from many brethren in Rome asking
about this very matter, whether the facts were as was stated: and they pointed
in a way to make me weep to the person by whom the letter had been circulated
among the people. He who dared to do this, what will he not dare to do? It is
well that ill will has not a strength equal to its intentions. Innocence would
be dead long ago if wickedness were always allied to power, and calumny could
prevail in all that it seeks to accomplish. It was impossible for him,
accomplished as he was, to copy any style and manner of writing, whatever their
value may be; amidst all his tricks and his fraudulent assumption of another
man's personality, it was evident who he was. It is this same man, then, who
wrote this fictitious letter of retractation in my name, making out that my
translation of the Hebrew books was bad, who, we now hear, accuses me of having
translated the Holy Scriptures with a view to disparage the Septuagint. In any
case, whether my translation is right or wrong, I am to be condemned: I must
either confess that in my new work I was wrong, or else that by my new version I
have aimed a blow at the old. I wonder that in this letter he did not make me
out as guilty of homicide, or adultery or sacrilege or parricide or any of the
vile things which the silent working of the mind can revolve within itself.
Indeed I ought to be grateful to him for having imputed to me no more than one
act of error or false dealing out of the whole forest of possible crimes. Am I
likely to have said anything derogatory to the seventy translators, whose work I
carefully purged from corruptions arid gave to Latin readers many years ago, and
daily expound it at our conventual gatherings;52 whose version of the Psalms has
so long been the subject of my meditation and my song? Was I so foolish as to
wish to forget in old age what I learned in youth? All my treatises have been
woven out of statements warranted by their version. My commentaries on the
twelve prophets are an explanation of their version as well as my own. How
uncertain must the labours of men ever be! and how contrary at times to their
own intentions are the results which men's studies reach. I thought that I
deserved well of my countrymen the Latins by this version, and bad given them an
incitement to learning; for it is not despised even by the Greeks now that it is
retranslated into their language; yet it is now made the subject of a charge
against me; and I find that the food pressed upon them turns upon the stomach.
What is there in human life that can be safe if innocence is made the object of
accusation? I am the householder53 who finds that while he slept the enemy has
sown tares among his wheat.54 "The wild boar out of the wood has rooted up my
vineyard, and the strange wild beast has devoured it." I keep silence, but a
letter that is not mine speaks against me. I am ignorant of the crime laid
against me, yet I am made to confess the crime all through the world.55 "Woe is
me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man to be judged and condemned56 in the
whole earth."

25. All my prefaces to the books of the Old Testament, some specimens of which I
subjoin, are witnesses for me on this point; andit is needless to state the
matter otherwise than it is stated in them. I will begin therefore with Genesis.
The Prologue is as follows:

I have received letters so long and eagerly desired from my dear Desiderius57
who, as if the future had been foreseen, shares his name with Daniel,58
entreating me to put our friends in possession of a translation of the
Pentateuch from Hebrew into Latin. The work is certainly hazardous and it is
exposed to the59 attacks of my calumniators, who maintain that it is through
contempt of the Seventy that I have set to work to forge a new version to take
the place of the old. They thus test ability as they do wine; whereas I have
again and again declared that I dutifully offer, in the Tabernacle of God what I
can, and have pointed out that the great gifts which one man brings are not
marred by the inferior gifts of another. But I was stimulated to undertake the
task by the zeal of Origen, who blended with the old edition Theodotion's
translation and used throughout the work as distinguishing marks the asterisk *
and the obelus _, that is the star and the spit, the first of which makes what
had previously been defective to beam with light, while the other transfixes and
slaughters all that was superfluous. But I was encouraged above all by the
authoritative publications of the Evangelists and Apostles, in which we read
much taken from the Old Testament which is not found in our manuscripts. For
example, `Out of Egypt have I called my Son' (Matt. ii. 15): `For he shall be
called a Nazarene' (Ibid. 23): and `They shall look on him whom they pierced'
(John xix. 37): and `Rivers of living water shall flow out of his belly' (John
vii. 38): and `Things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered
into the heart of man, which God hath prepared for them that love him' (I. Cor.
ii. 9), and many other passages which lack their proper context. Let us ask our
opponents then where these things are written, and when they are unable to tell,
let us produce them from the Hebrew. The first passage is in Hosea, (xi. 1), the
second in Isaiah (xi. 1), the third in Zechariah (xii. 10), the fourth in
Proverbs (xviii. 4), the fifth also in Isaiah (lxiv. 4). Being ignorant of all
this many follow the ravings of the Apocrypha, and prefer to the inspired books
the melancholy trash which comes to us from Spain.60 It is not for me to explain
the causes of the error. The Jews gay it was deliberately and wisely done to
prevent61 Ptolemy who was a monotheist from thinking the Hebrews acknowledged
two deities. And that which chiefly influenced them in thus acting was the fact
that the king appeared to befalling into Platonism. In a word, wherever
Scripture evidenced some sacred truth respecting Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
they either translated the passage differently, or passed it over altogether in
silence, so that they might both satisfy the king, and not divulge the secrets
of the faith. I do not know whose false imagination led him to invent the story
of the62 seventy cells at Alexandria, in which, though separated from each
other, the translators were said to have written the same words. Aristeas,63 the
champion of that same Ptolemy, and Josephus, long after, relate nothing of the
kind; their account is that the Seventy assembled in one basilica consulted
together, and did not prophesy. For it is one thing to be a prophet, another to
be a translator. The former through the Spirit, foretells things to come; the
latter must use his learning and facility in speech to translate what he
understands. It can hardly be that we must suppose Tully was inspired with
oratorical spirit when he translated Xenophon's Oeconomics, Plato's Protagoras,
and the oration of Demosthenes in defence of Ctesiphon. Otherwise the Holy
Spirit must have quoted the same books in one sense through the Seventy
Translators, in another through the Apostles, so that, whereas they said nothing
of a given matter, these falsely affirm that it was so written. What then? Are
we condemning our predecessors? By no means; but following the zealous labours
of those who have preceded us we contribute such work as lies in our power in
the name of the Lord. They translated before the Advent of Christ, and expressed
in ambiguous terms that which they knew not. We after His Passion and
Resurrection write not prophecy so much as history. For one style is suitable to
what we hear, another to what we see. The better we understand a subject, the
better we describe it. Hearken then, my rival: listen, my calumniator; I do not
condemn, I do not censure the Seventy, but I am bold enough to prefer the
Apostles to them all. It is the Apostle through whose mouth I hear the voice of
Christ, and I read that in the classification of spiritual gifts they are placed
before prophets (1 Cor. xii. 28; Eph. iv. 11), while interpreters occupy almost
the lowest place. Why are you tormented with jealousy? Why do you inflame the
minds of the ignorant against me? Wherever in translation I seem to you to go
wrong, ask the Hebrews, consult their teachers in different towns. The words
which exist in their Scriptures concerning Christ your copies do not contain.
The case is different if they have64 rejected passages which were afterward used
against them by the Apostles, and the Latin texts are more correct than the
Greek, the Greek than the Hebrew.

[Chapters 26 to 32 are taken up with the quotation, almost in full, of the
Preface to the Vulgate translation of the books of the Old Testament. It is
unnecessary to give them here. They have all the same design as the Preface to
Genesis already given, namely to meet the objections of those who represented
the work as a reproach to the LXX which was then supposed to have almost the
authority of inspiration. The same arguments, illustrations, and even words, are
reiterated. Readers who may desire to go more fully into Jerome's statements
will find these Prefaces translated at length in his works, Vol. VI of this
Series.]

33. In reference to Daniel my answer will be that I did not say that he was not
a prophet; on the contrary, I confessed in the very beginning of the Preface
that he was a prophet. But I wished to show what was the opinion upheld by the
Jews; and what were the arguments on which they relied for its proof. I also
told the reader that the version read in the Christian churches was not that of
the Septuagint translators but that of Theodotion. It is true, I said that the
Septuagint version was in this book very different from the original, and that
it was condemned by the right judgment of the churches of Christ; but the fault
was not mine who only stated the fact, but that of those who read the version.
We have four versions to choose from: those of Aquila, Symmachus, the Seventy,
and Theodotion. The churches choose to read Daniel in the version of Theodotion.
What sin have I committed in following the judgment of the churches? But when I
repeat what the Jews say against the Story of Susanna and the Hymn of the Three
Children, and the fables of Bel and the Dragon, which are not contained in the
Hebrew Bible, the man who makes this a charge against me proves himself to be a
fool and a slanderer; for I explained not what I thought but what they commonly
say against us. I did not reply to their opinion in the Preface, because I was
studying brevity, and feared that I should seem to he writing not a Preface but
a book. I said therefore, "As to which this is not the time to enter into
discussion." Otherwise from the fact that I stated that Porphyry had said many
things against this prophet, and called, as witnesses of this, Methodius,
Eusebius, and Apollinarius, who have replied to his folly in many thousand
lines, it will be in his power to accuse me for not baring written in my Preface
against the books of Porphyry. If there is any one who pays attention to silly
things like this, I must tell him loudly and free that no one is compelled to
read what he does not want; that I wrote for those who asked me, not for those
who would scorn me, for the grateful not the carping, for the earnest not the
indifferent. Still, I wonder that a man should read the version of Theodotion
the heretic and judaizer, and should scorn that of a Christian, simple and
sinful though he may be.

34. I beg you, my most sweet friend, who are so curious that you even know my
dreams, and that yon scrutinize for purposes of accusations all that I have
written during these many years without fear of future calumny; answer me, how
is it you do not know the prefaces of the very books on which you ground your
charges against me? These prefaces, as if by some prophetic foresight, gave the
answer to the calumnies that were coming, thus fulfilling the proverb, "The
antidote before the poison." What harm has been done to the churches by my
translation?You bought up, as I knew, at great cost the versions of Aquila,
Symmachus, and Theodotion, and the Jewish authors of the fifth and sixth
translations. Your Origen, or, that I may not seem to be wounding you with
fictitious praises, our Origen,(for I may call him ours for his genius and
learning, though not for the truth of his doctrines) in all his books explains
and expounds not only the Septuagint but the Jewish versions. Eusebius and
Didymus do the same. I do not mention Apollinarius, who, with a laudable zeal
though not according to knowledge, attempted to patch up into one garment the
rags of all the translations, and to weave a consistent text of Scripture at his
own discretion, not according to any sound rule of criticism. The Hebrew
Scriptures are used by apostolic men; they are used, as is evident, by the
apostles and evangelists. Our Lord and Saviour himself whenever he refers to the
Scriptures, takes his quotations from the Hebrew; as in the instance of the
words65 "He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly
shall flow rivers of living water," and in the words used on the cross itself,
"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani," which is by interpretation "My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?" not, as it is given by the Septuagint, "My God, my God,
look upon me, why hast thou forsaken me?" and many similar cases. I do not say
this in order to aim a blow at the seventy translators; but I assert that the
Apostles of Christ bare an authority superior to theirs. Wherever the Seventy
agree with the Hebrew, the apostles took their quotations from that translation;
but, where they disagree, they set down in Greek what they had found in the
Hebrew. And further, I give a challenge to my accuser. I have shown that many
things are set down in the New Testament as coming from the older books, which
are not to be found in the Septuagint; and I have pointed out that these exist
in the Hebrew. Now let him show that there is anything in the New Testament
which comes from tile Septuagint but which is not found in the Hebrew, and our
controversy is at an end.

35. By all this it is made clear, first that the version of the Seventy
translators which has gained an established position by having been so long in
use, was profitable to the churches, because that by its means the Gentiles
heard of the coming of Christ before he came; secondly, that the other
translators are not to be reproved, since it was not their own works that they
published but the divine books which they translated; and, thirdly, that my own
familiar friend should frankly accept from a Christian and a friend what he has
taken great pains to obtain from the Jews and has written down for him at great
cost. I have exceeded the bounds of a letter; and, though I had taken pen in
hand to contend against a wicked heresy, I have been compelled to make answer on
my own behalf, while waiting for my friend's three books, and in a state of
constant mental suspense about the charges he had heaped up against me. It is
easier to guard against one who professes hostility than to make head against an
enemy who lurks under the guise of a friend.

1: See this Apology translated above.

2: Luke xvii, 5, Luke xvii, 6.

3: Matt. xiv. 31.

4: This old home was at Concordia. Jer. Ep. V, 2; comp. with title of Ep. X.

5: Expressions of St. Paul in Eph. iii, 1; 2 Tim. iv, 17; 1 Cor. xv, 32; 2 Tim.
iv, 7.

6: Gal. vi, 17.

7: Ex traduce, that is, from a laver like that of the vine, This emibodies the
view that the soul is derived, with the body, from the parent. There is no
English word for the process; and since the word Traducianism is used to express
the theory, `Traduction 0' is used here to express the process.

8: Potiri, rendered above `have their portion. 0' 9: Kleronomesousin, they shall
inherit.

10: They will enjoy the inheritance.

11: Matt. xv, 19.

12: John xiii, 27.

13: I. Tim. i, 20.

14: Ps. xix, 12, Ps. xix, 13. Vulg.

15: Eccl. x, 4.

16: Is. lxvi, 24.

17: Is. xlvii, 14, Is. xlvii, 15. "There shall not be a coal to warm at nor fire
to sit before it. Thus shall they be unto thee for whom thou hast laboured." A.
V. in almost exact agreement with Vulgate. Jerome must have quoted memoritet
from an older version.

18: Ps. cxx, 3, Ps. cxx, 4. Vulg.

19: Probably a loose reference to Ps. xlii, 9, Ps. xlii, 10.

20: Luke xii, 49.

21: Deut. iv, 24, Heb. xii, 29.

22: Perhaps from Jer. li, 26.

23: Leviathan, Job xli, 9-12. Vulg.

24: The words are translated literally here, so as to shew how they lend
themselves to Jerome's strictures.

25: Of Pitane in Aeolia, b.c. 316-241. Founder of the Middle Academy, half-way
between the Platonic idealism and the scepticism of Pyrrho.

26: Of Cyrene, b.c. 214-124. Founder of the Third or New Academy, a disputant
rather than a philosopher of fixed principles.

27: Is. liii, 8.

28: Suspeiromenhn .

29: John xvii, 6.

30: Though Jerome here speaks as if the question had been determined by church
authority, the perusal of his correspondence with Augustin (Jerome's Letters
126, 131, 134) shows that he was in the same perplexity as Rufinus, but less
ingenuous in confessing it.

31: As above, the word for word rendering is given.

32: See Rufinus' position vindicated in his treatise on the corruption of
Origen's writings, translated in this volume.

33: Quin immo etiam, the first words of the literally, "Yes, moreover also."

34: Ps. l, 18.

35: Phil. ii.

36: Taken from Daniel x, 11, "Thou man greatly beloved" ("a man of desires").

37: Persius, iii, 30.

38: Mic. vii, 5.

39: Jer. iv, 22.

40: Jude, 9.

41: Zach. iii, 2.

42: 1 Cor. vi, 9.

43: Jude, 8.

44: Rufinus.

45: A bringing forth of one thing from another that is according to Valentinian,
of Christ as a production from another Aeon.

46: "A man of the Lord," perhaps applied to Christ.

47: Bishops respectively of Rome, Alexandria, Milan, and Aquileia.

48: Epiphanius to John of Jerusalem. Jerome's Letters, LI, 3. See also Jerome
Against John of Jerusalem, 11, 14.

49: The Catalogue of Illustrious Men translated in this volume forms the
response to this request.

50: Luke vi, 45, Matt. vii, 17.

51: Deut. xvii, 6.

52: This translation has been almost wholly lost. The parts which remain are the
Book of Job, the Psalms, an see to the Books of Chronicles.

53: Matt. xiii, 25.

54: Ps. lxxx. 13.

55: Jer. xv, 10 (LXX).

56: Or examined. The Vulgate agrees with A. V. `A man of contention. 0'

57:

58:

59:

60: The passage is explained by Jerome's own words in the commentary on Is.
lxiv. "Certain silly women in Spain, and especially in Lusitania, have been
deceived into accepting as truth the marvels of Basilides and Balsaneus'
treasury, and even of Barbelo and Leusiboras." Jerome goes on to add that
Irenaeus in explaining the origin of many heresis pointed out that the Gnostics
deceived many noble women of the parts of Gaul about the Rhone, and afterwards
those of Spain, framing a system partly of myths partly of immorality, and
calling their folly by the name of philosophy. See also, Ep. Jer. Letter 120 to
Hedibia, and Com. on Amos cf. III.

61: That is Ptolemy commonly known as the son of Lagus, but the reputed son of
Philip of Macedon by Arsinoë Philip's concubine. He reigned over Egypt from b.c.
323-285. He was a great patron of learning, and, according to traditions current
among the fathers, wishing to adorn his Alexandrian library with the writings of
all nations, he requested the Jews of Jerusalem to furnish him with a Greek
version of their Scriptures, and thus originated the Septuagint.

62: Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Epophanius, and Augustine among the Latins, adhere
to the inspiration of the translators which Jerome here rejects.

63:

64:

65: John vii, 38, supposed to be taken from Prov. xviii, 4, or Is. lviii, 11.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 4: JEROME'S APOLOGY FOR HIMSELF AGAINST THE BOOKS OF RUFINUS - BOOK 3
========================================================================

Book III.

Book III.

The two first books formed a complete whole, but it was intimated that there
might be more to come when Jerome should have received Rufinus' work in full.
The two first books were brought to Rufinus by the captain of a merchant-ship
trading with Aquileia, together with a copy of Jerome's friendly letter which
had been suppressed by Pammachius. The bearer had (as stated by Rufinus, though
Jerome mocks at this as impossible) only two days to wait. Chromatius the Bishop
of Aquileia urged that the strife should now cease, and prevailed so far as that
Rufinus made no public reply. He wrote a private letter, however, to Jerome,
which has not come down to us, and which does not seem, from the extracts given
in c. 4, 6, etc., to have been of a pacific tenor. Its details may be gathered
from Jerome's reply. Jerome intimates that it sought to involve him in heresy,
that it renewed and aggravated the former accusations, speaking of him in
language fit only for the lowest characters on the stage; and that it declared
that, if its writer had been so minded, he could have produced facts which would
have been the destruction of his adversary. Jerome, though receiving some
expressions of the desire of Chromatius that he should not reply (perhaps also
the regretful expostulation of Augustin,-Jer. Letter cx, 6, Aug. Letter 73)
declared that it was impossible for him to yield. He could not refrain from
defending himself from a capital charge, nor could he spare the heretics. Peace
could only come by unity in the faith.

1. Your letter is full of falsehood and violence. I will try not to take the
same tone.

2. Why cannot we differ as friends? Why do you, by threats of death, compel me
to answer?

3, 4. Your shameful taunt that I wished to get copies of your Apology by bribing
your Secretary is an imputation to me of practices which are your own.

5. Eusebius should not have accused you; but your charges against him will not
stand.

6. You taunt me with boasting of my eloquence. Will you boast of your
illiteracy?

7, 8. You wish first to praise, then to amend me, but both with fisticuffs; and
make it impossible for me to keep silence.

9. Why cannot you join with me in condemning Origen, and so put an end to our
quarrel?

10. The assertion that you had only two days for your answer is a fiction.

11. Your translation, contrariwise to my Commentaries, vouches for the soundness
of Origen.

12. You try to shield Origen by falsely attributing the Apology for him to
Pamphilus.

13. In my Commentaries my quotation of opposite opinions shows that neither is
mine.

14. Had you translated honestly, you would not have had Origen's heresies
imputed to you.

15. You say the Bishops of Italy accept your views on the Resurrection. I doubt
it.

16. You rashly say that you will agree to whatever Theophilus lays down. You
have to consider your friendship for Isidore now his enemy.

17, 18. You speak of the Egyptian Bishop Paul. We received him, though an
Origenist, as a stranger; and he has united himself to the orthodox faith. Not
only Theophilus but the Emperors condemn Origen.

19. Against Vigilantius I wrote only what was right. I knew who had stirred him
up against me.

20. As to the letter of Pope Anastasius condemning you, you will find that it is
genuine.

21. Siricius who is dead may have written in your favour; Anastasius who is
living writes to the East against you.

22. My departure from Rome for the East had nothing blameable in it as you
insinuate.

23. Epiphanius, it is true, gave you the kiss of peace; but he showed afterwards
that he had come to distrust you.

24. When we parted as friends I believed you a true believer; no one was sent to
Rome to injure you.

25. You swear that you dad not write my pretended retractation. Your style
betrays you, and I have given a full answer about my translations already.

26. You bid me beware of falsification and treachery. You warn me against
yourself.

27. There is nothing inconsistent in praising a man for some things and blaming
him in others. You have done it in my case.

28-31. My ignorance of many natural phenomena is no excuse for your ignorance as
to the origin of souls. You ought, according to your boasting dream to know
everything. The thing of most importance was forgotten in your cargo of Eastern
wares.

32. Your dream was a boast: mine of which you accuse me humbled me.

33. It was not I who first disclosed your heresies, but Epiphanius long ago and
Aterbius before him.

34-36. As to our translations of the Peri 'Arxwn, yours was doing harm, and mine
was necessary in self-defence. You should be glad that heresy is exposed.

37. Your Apology for Origen did not save him but involved you in heresy.

38. My friendly letter was to prevent discord: the other to crush false
opinions.

39, 40. Pythagoras was rightly quoted by me. I produce some of his sayings.

41, 42. You threaten me with destruction. I will not reply in the same way.
Personalities should be excluded from controversies of faith.

43, 44. The way of peace is through the wisdom taught in the Book of Proverbs,
and through unity in the faith.

I have read the letter1 which you in your wisdom have written me. You inveigh
against me, and, though you once praised me and called me true partner and
brother, you now write books to summon me to reply to the charges with which you
terrify me. I see that in you are fulfilled the words of Solomon:2 "In the mouth
of the foolish is the rod of3 contumely," and4 "A fool receives not the words of
prudence, unless you say what is passing in his heart;" and the words of
Isaiah:5 "The fool will speak folly, and his heart will understand vain things,
to practise iniquity and speak falsehood against the Lord." For what need was
there for you to send me whole volumes full of accusation and malediction, and
to bring them before the public, when in the end of your letter you threaten me
with death if I dare to reply to your slanders-I beg pardon-to your praises? For
your praises and your accusations amount to the same thing; from the same
fountain proceed both sweet and bitter. I beg you to set me the example of the
modesty and shamefacedness which you recommend to me; you accuse another of
lying: cease to be a liar yourself. I wish to give no one an occasion of
stumbling, and I will not become your accuser; for I have not to consider merely
what you deserve but what is becoming in me. I tremble at our Savior's words.6
"Whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe in me to stumble,
it were better for him that a great mill stone were hanged about his neck and he
were drowned in the depths of the sea;" and7 "Woe unto the world because of
occasions of stumbling: for it must needs be that occasions arise; but woe to
the man through whom the occasion cometh." It would have been possible for me
too to pile up falsehoods against you and to say that I had heard or seen what
no one had observed, so that among the ignorant my effrontery might be taken for
veracity, and my violence for resolution. But far be it from me to be an
imitator of you, and to do thyself what I denounce in you. He who is capable of
doing filthy things may use filthy words.8 "The evil man out of the evil
treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil; for out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." You may count it as good fortune
that one whom you once called friend but now accuse has no mind to make vile
imputations against you. I say this not from any dread of the sword of your
accusation, but because I prefer to be accused than to be the accuser, to suffer
an injury than to do one. I know the precept of the Apostle:9 "Dearly beloved
avenge not yourselves but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written
Vengeance is mine, I will repay saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger
feed him, if he thirst give him drink; for in so doing thou shall heap coals of
fire upon his head." For he that avenges himself cannot claim the vindication of
the Lord.

2. But, before I make my answer to your letter, I must expostulate with you; you
who are first in age among the thanks, good presbyter, follower of Christ; is it
possible for you to wish to kill your brother, when even to hate him is to be a
homicide? Have you learned from your Saviour the lesson that if one strike you
on the one cheek you should turn to him the other also? Did not he make answer
to the man who struck him,10 "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil,
but if well, why smitest thou me?" You threaten me with death, which can be
inflicted on us even by serpents. To die is the lot of all, to commit homicide
only of the weak man. What then? If you do not kill me shall I never die?
Perhaps I ought to be grateful to you that you turn this necessity into a virtue
We read of Apostles quarrelling, namely Paul and Barnabas who were angry with
each other on account of John whose surname was Mark; those who were united by
the bonds of Christ's gospel were separated for a voyage; but they still
remained friends. Did not the same Paul resist Peter to the face because he did
not walk uprightly in the Gospel? Yet he speaks of him as his predecessor in the
Gospel, and as a pillar of the church; and he lays before him his mode of
preaching,11 `lest he should be running, or had run in vain.' Do not children
differ from parents and wives from husbands in religions matters, while yet
domestic affections remain unimpaired. If you are as I am, why should you hate
me? Even if you believe differently, why should you wish to kill me? Is it so,
that whoever differs from you is to be slain? I call upon Jesus who will judge
what I am now writing and your letter also, as a witness upon my conscience,
that when the reverend bishop Chromatius begged the to keep silence, my wish was
to do so, and thus to make an end of our dissensions, and to overcome evil with
good. But, now that yon threaten me with destruction, I am compelled to reply;
otherwise, my silence will be taken as an acknowledgment of the crime, and you
will interpret my moderation as the sign of an evil conscience.

3. The dilemma in which I am placed is of your making: it is brought out, not
from the resources of dialectics, of which you are ignorant, but from among the
tools of the murderer and with an intention like his. If I keep silence, I am
held guilty: if I speak, I become an evil speaker. You at once forbid me to
answer and compel me. Well, then; I must shun excess on both sides. I will say
nothing that is injurious; but I must dissipate the charges made against me, for
it is impossible not to be afraid of a man who is prepared to kill you. And I
will do this in the order of what you have now set before me, leaving the rest
as they are in those most learned books of yours which I confuted before I had
read them.

You say that `you sent your accusation against me not to the many but only to
those who had been offended by what I had said; for one ought to speak to
Christians not for display but for edification.' Whence then, I beg you to
consider, did the report of your having written these books reach me? Who was it
t that sowed them broadcast through Rome and Italy and the islands of the coast
of Dalmatia? How did these charges against me ever come to my ears, if they were
only lurking in your desk, and those of your friends? How can you dare to say
that you are speaking as a Christian not for display but for edification when
you set yourself in mature age to say things against your equal which a murderer
could hardly say of a thief, or a harlot against one of her class, or a buffoon
against a farce-player? You have for ever so long been labouring to bring forth
these mountains of accusations against me and sharpening these swords to pierce
my throat. Your cries have been as loud as Ceres' complaints12 or a driver's
shouts to his horses. Was this to make all the provinces through which they
resounded read the praise you wrote of me? and recite your panegyrics upon me in
every street, every corner, even in the weaving-shops of the women? This is the
religious restraint and Christian edification of which you speak. Your reserve,
your reticence is such that men come to me from the West, crowd upon crowd, and
tell me of your abuse of me; and this, though only from memory, yet with such
exact agreement that I was obliged13 to make my answer, not to your writings
which I bad not then read, but to what was said to be contained in them, and to
intercept with the shield of truth the missiles of mendacity which were flying
about through all the world.

4. Your letter goes on:

"Pray do not trouble yourself to give a large sum of gold to bribe my secretary,
as your friends did in the case of my papers containing the Peri 'Arxwn, before
they had been corrected and brought to completion, so that they might more
easily falsify documents which no one possessed, or at least very few. Accept
the document which I send you gratis, though you would be glad to pay a large
sum to buy it."

I should have thought you would be ashamed of such a beginning of your work.
What! I bribe your Secretary! Is there any one who would attempt to vie with the
wealth of Croesus14 and Darius?15 who is there that does not tremble when he is
suddenly confronted with a Demaratus16 or a Crassus?17 Have you become so
brazen-faced, theft you put your trust in lies and think lies will protect you
and that we shall believe every fiction which you choose to frame? Who then was
it who stole that letter in which you were so highly praised, from the cell of
our brother Eusebius? Whose artfulness was it, and whose accomplices, through
which a certain document was found in the lodgings of that Christian woman
Fabiola and of that wise man Oceanus, which they themselves had never seen? Do
you think that you are innocent because you can cast upon others all the
imputations which properly belong to you? Is every one who offends you, however
guiltless and harmless he may be, at once held to become a criminal? You think
so, I suppose, because you are possessed of that through which the chastity of
Danaë18 was broken down, that which had more power with Gihazi than his master's
sacred character, that for which Judas betrayed his Master.19

5. Let us understand what was the wrong done by my friend20 who, you say
`falsified parts of your papers when they had not yet been corrected nor carried
to completion, and it was the more possible to falsify them because very few if
any as yet possessed them.'21 I have already said, and I now repeat, with
protestations in the presence of God, that I did not approve his accusing you,
nor of any Christian accusing another Christian; for what need is there that
matters which can be corrected or set right in private should be published
abroad to the stumbling and fall of many? But since each man lives for his own
gullet, and a man does not by becoming your friend become master of your will,
while I blame the accusing of a brother even when it is true, so also I cannot
accept against a man of saintly character this accusation of falsify-ing your
papers. How could a man who only knows Latin change anything in a translation
from the Greek? Or how could he take out or put in anything in such books as the
Peri 'Arxwn, in which everything is so closely knit together that out part hangs
upon another, and anything that may be taken out or put in to suit your will
must at once show out like a patch on a garment? What you ask me to do, it is
for you to do yourself. Put on at least a small measure of natural if not of
Christian modesty in your assertions; do not despise and trample upon your
conscience, and imagine yourself justified by a show of words, when the facts
are against you. If Eusebius bought your uncorrected papers for money in order
to falsify them, produce the genuine papers which have not been falsified: and
if you can shew that there is nothing heretical in them, he will become amenable
to the charge of forgery. But, however much you may alter or correct them, you
will not make them out to be catholic. If the error existed only in the words or
in some few statements, what is bad might be cut off and what is good be
substituted for it. But, when the whole discussion22 proceeds on a single
principle, namely, the notion that the whole universe of reasonable creatures
have fallen by their own will, and will hereafter return to a condition of
unity: and that again from that starting point another fall will begin: what is
there that you can amend, unless you alter the whole book? But if you were to
think of doing this, you would no longer be translating another man's work but
composing a work of your own.

However, I hardly see which way your argument tends. I suppose you mean that the
papers being uncorrected and not having undergone a final revising were more
easily falsified by Eusebius. Perhaps I am stupid; but the argument appears to
me somewhat foolish and pointless. If the papers were uncorrected and had not
undergone their final revision, the errors in them mast be imputed not to
Eusebius but to your sloth and delay in putting off their correction; and all
the blame that can be laid upon him is that he circulated among the body of
Christians writings which you had intended in course of time to correct. But if,
as you assert, Eusebius falsified them, why do you put forward the allegation
that they were uncorrected, and that they had gone out before the public without
their final revision? For papers whether corrected or uncorrected are equally
susceptible of falsification. But, No one, you say possessed these books, or
very few. What contradictions this single sentence exhibits! If no one bad these
books, how could they be in the hands of a few? If a few possessed them, why do
you state falsely that there were none? Then, when you say that a few had them,
and by your own confession the statement that no one had them is overthrown,
what becomes of your complaint that your secretary was bribed with money? Tell
us the secretary's name, the amount of the bribe, the place, the intermediary,
the recipient. Of course the traitor has been cast off from you, and one
convicted of so great a crime has been separated from all familiarity with you.
Is it not more likely to be true that the copies of the work which Eusebius
obtained were given him by those few friends whom you speak of, especially since
these copies agree and coincide with one another so completely that there is not
the difference of a single stroke. We might ask also whether it was quite wise
to give a copy to others which you bad not yet corrected? The documents had not
received their last corrections, and yet other men possessed these errors of
yours which needed correction. Do you not see that your falsehood will not hold
together? Besides, what profit was there for you, at that particular moment-how
would it have helped you in escaping from the condemnation of the bishops-that
the book which was the subject of discussion should be open to everyone, and
that you should thus be refuted by your own words? From all this it is clear,
according to the epigram of the famous orator, that you have a good will for a
lie, but not the art of framing it.

6. I will follow the order of your letter, and subjoin your very words as you
spoke them. "I admit, that, as you say, I praised, your eloquence in my Preface;
and I would praise it again now were it not that contrary to the advice of your
Tully, you make it hateful by excessive boastfulness." Where have I boasted of
my eloquence? I did not even accept willingly the praise which you bestowed on
it. Perhaps your reason for saying this is that you do not wish, yourself, to be
flattered by public praise given in guile. Rest assured you shall be accused
openly; you reject one who would praise you; you shall have experience of out
who openly arraigns you. I was not so foolish as to criticize your illiterate
style; no one can expose it to condemnation so strongly as you do whenever you
write. I only wished to show your fellow-disciples who shared your lack of
literary training what progress you had made during your thirty years in the
East, an illiterate writer, who takes impudence for eloquence, and universal
evil speaking a sign of a good conscience. I am not going to administer the
ferule; I do not assume, as you put it, to apply the strokes of the leather
thong to teach an aged pupil his letters. But the fact is your eloquence and
teaching is so sparkling that we mere tract-writers cannot bear it, and you
dazzle our eyes with the acuteness of your talents to such an extent that we
must all seem to be envious of you; and we must really join in the attempt to
suppress you, for, if once you obtain the primacy among us as a writer, and
stand on the summit of the rhetorical arch, all of us who profess to know
anything will not be allowed to mutter a word. I am, according to you, a
philosopher and an orator, grammarian, dialectician, one who knows Hebrew, Greek
and Latin, a `trilingual' man. On this estimate, you also will be `bilingual,'
who know enough Latin and Greek to make the Greek think you a Latin scholar and
the Latin a Greek: and the bishop Epiphanius will be a `pentaglossic23 man'
since he speaks in five languages against you and your favorite.24 But I wonder
at the rashness which made you dare to say to one so accomplished as you profess
to think me: "You, whose accomplishments give you so many watchful eyes, how can
you be pardoned if you go wrong? How can you fail to be buried in the silence of
a never ending shame?" When I read this, and reflected that I must somewhere or
other have made a slip in my words (for25 "if any man does not go wrong in word,
the same is a perfect man") and was expecting that he was about to expose some
of my faults; all of a sudden I came upon the words: "Two days before the
carrier of this letter set out your declamation against me was put into my
hands." What became then of those threats of yours, and of your words: "How can
you be pardoned if you go wrong? How Call you fail to be covered with the
silence of a never ending shame?" Yet perhaps, notwithstanding the shortness of
the time, you were able to put this in order; or else you were intending to hire
in one of the learned sort, who would expect to find in my works the ornaments
and gems of an eloquence like yours. You wrote before this: "Accept the document
which I send which you wished to buy at a great price;" but now you speak with
the pretence of humility. "I intended to follow your example; but, since the
messenger who was returning to yon was hurrying back again I thought it better
to write shortly to you than at greater length to others." In the meantime you
boldly take pleasure in your illiteracy. Indeed you once confessed it, declaring
that `it was superfluous to notice a few faults of style, when it was
acknowledged that there were faults in every part.' I will not therefore find
fault with you for putting down that a document was acquired when you meant that
it was bought; though acquiring is said of things like in kind, whereas buying
implies the counting out of money: nor for such a sentence as "as he who was
returning to you was hurrying hack again" which is a redundancy worthy of the
poorest style of diction. I will only reply to the arguments, and will convict
you, not of solaecisms and barbarisms, but of falsehood, cunning and impudence.

7. If it is true that you write a letter to me so as to admonish me, and,
because you wish that I should be reformed, and that you do not wish that men
should have a stumbling block put in their way, and that some may be driven mad
and others be put to silence; why do you write books addressed to others against
me, and scatter them by your myrmidons for the whole world to read? And what
becomes of your dilemma in which you try to entangle me, "Whom, best of masters,
did you think to correct? If those to whom you wrote, there was no fault to find
with them; if me whom you accuse, it was not to me that you wrote"? And I will
reply to you in your own words: "Whom did you wish to correct, unlearned master?
Those who had done no wrong? or me to whom you did not write? You think your
leaders are brutish and are all incapable of understanding your subtilty, or
rather your ill will, (for it was in this that the serpent was more subtile than
all the beasts in paradise,) in asking that my admonition to you should be of a
private character, when you were pressing an indictment against me in public.
You are not ashamed to call this indictment of yours an Apology: And you
complain that I oppose a shield to your poniard, and with much religiosity and
sanctimoniousness you assume the mask of humility, and say: "If I had erred, why
did you write to others, and not try to confute me?" I will retort on you this
very point. What you complain that I did not do, why did you not do yourself? It
is as if a man who is attacking another with kicks and fisticuffs, and flints
him intending to shew fight, should say to him: "Do you not know the command,
`If a man smites you on the cheek, turn to him the other'?" It comes to this, my
good sir, you are determined to beat me, to strike out my eye; and then, when I
bestir myself ever so little, you harp upon the precept of the Gospel. Would you
like to have all the windings of your cunning exposed?-those tricks of the foxes
who dwell among the ruins, of whom Ezekiel writes,26 "Like foxes in the desert,
so are thy prophets, O Israel." Let me make you understand what you have done.
You praised me in your Preface in such a way that your praises are made a ground
of accusation against me, and if I had not declared myself to be without any
connexion with my admirer, I should have been judged as a heretic. After I
repelled your charges, that is your praises, and without shewing ill will to you
personally, answered the accusations, not the accuser, anti inveighed against
the heretics, to shew that, though defamed by you, I was a catholic; you grew
angry, and raved and composed the most magnificent works against me; and when
you had given them to all men to read and repeat, letters came to me from Italy,
and Rome and Dalmatia, shewing each more clearly than the last, what all the
encomiums were worth with which in your former laudation you had decorated me.

8. I confess, I immediately set to work to reply to the insinuations directed
against me, and tried with all my might to prove that I was no heretic, and I
sent these books of my Apology to those whom your book had pained, so that your
poison might be followed by my antidote. In reply to this, you sent me your
former books, and now send me this last letter, full of injurious language and
accusations. My good friend, what do you expect me to do? To keep silence? That
would be to acknowledge myself guilty. To speak? But you hold your sword over my
head, and threaten me with an indictment, no longer before the church but before
the law-courts. What have I done that deserves punishment? Wherein have I
injured you? Is it that I have shewn myself not to be a heretic? or that I could
not esteem myself worthy of your praises? or that I laid bare in plain words the
tricks and perjuries of the heretics? What is all this to you who boast yourself
a true man and a catholic, and who shew more zeal in attacking me than in
defending yourself? Must I be thought to be attacking yon because I defend
myself? or is it impossible that you should be orthodox unless you prove me to
be a heretic? What help can it give you to be connected with me? and what is the
meaning of your action? You are accused by one set of people and you answer only
by attacking another. You find an attack made on you by one man, and you turn
your back upon him and attack another who was for leaving you alone.

9. I call Jesus the Mediator to witness that it is against my will, and fighting
against necessity, that I come down into the arena of this war of words, and
that, had you not challenged me, I would have never broken silence. Even now,
let your charges against me cease, and my defence will cease. For it is no
edifying spectacle that is presented to our readers, that of two old men
engaging in a gladiatorial conflict on account of a heretic; especially when
both of them wish to be thought catholics. Let us leave off all favouring of
heretics, and there will be no dispute between us. We once were zealous in our
praise of Origen; let us be equally zealous in condemning him now that he is
condemned by the whole world. Let us join hands and hearts, and march with a
ready step behind the two trophy-bearers of the East and West.27 We went wrong
in our youth, let us mend our ways in our age. If you are my brother, be glad
that I have seen my errors; if I am your friend, I must give you joy on your
conversion. So long as we maintain our strife, we shall be thought to hold the
right faith not willingly but of necessity. Our enmity prevents our affording
the spectacle of a true repentance. If our faith is one, if we both of us accept
and reject the same things, (and it is from this, as even Catiline testifies,
that firm friendships arise), if we are alike in our hatred of heretics, and
equally condemn our former mistakes, why should we set out to battle against
each other, when we have the same objects both of attack and defence? Pardon me
for having praised Origen's zeal for Scriptural learning in my youthful clays
before I fully knew his heresies; and I will grant you forgiveness for having
written an Apology for his works when your head was grey.

10. You state that my book came into your hands two days before you wrote your
letter to me, and that therefore you had no sufficient leisure to make a reply.
Otherwise, if you had spoken against me after full thought and preparation, we
might think that you were casting forth lightnings rather than accusations. But
even so veracious a person as you will hardly gain credence when you tell its
that a merchant of Eastern wares whose business is to sell what he has brought
from these parts and to buy Italian goods to bring over here for sale, only
stayed two days at Aquileia, so that you were obliged to write your letter to me
in a hurried and extempore fashion. For your books which it took you three years
to put into complete shape are hardly more carefully written. Perhaps, however,
you had no one at hand then to amend your sorry productions, and this is the
reason why your literary journey is destitute of the aid of Pallas, and is
intersected by faults of style, as by rough places and chasms at every turn. It
is clear that this statement about the two days is false; you would not have
been able in that time even to read what I wrote, much less to reply to it; so
that it is evident that either you took a good many days in writing your letter,
which its elaborate style makes probable; or, if this is your hasty style of
composition, and yon can write so well off-hand, you would be very negligent in
your composition to write so much worse when you have had time for thought.

11. You state, with some prevarication, that you have translated from the Greek
what I had before translated into Latin; but I do not clearly understand to what
you are alluding, unless you are still bringing up against me the Commentary on
the Ephesians, and hardening yourself in your effrontery, as if you had received
no answer on this head. You stop your ears and will not hear the voice of the
charmer. What I have done in that and other commentaries is to develop both my
own opinion and that of others, stating clearly which are catholic and which
heretical. This is the common rule and custom of those who undertake to explain
books in commentaries: They give at length in their exposition the various
opinions, and explain what is thought by themselves and by others. This is done
not only by those who expound the holy Scriptures but also by those who explain
secular books whether in Greek or in Latin. You, however, cannot screen yourself
in reference to the Peri 'Arxwn by this fact; for you will be convicted by your
own Preface, in which you undertake that the evil parts and those which have
been added by heretics have been cut off but that all that is best remains; so
that all that you have written, whether good or bad, must be held to be the
work, not of the author whom you are translating, but of yourself who have made
the translation. Perhaps, indeed, you ought to have corrected the errors of the
heretics, and to have set forth publicly what is wrong in Origen. But on this
point, (since you refer me to the document itself.) I have made you my answer
before reading your letter.

12. About the book of Pamphilus, what happened to me was, not comical as you
call it, but perhaps ridiculous; namely28 that after I had asserted it to be by
Eusebius not by Pamphilus, I stated at the end of the discussion that I had for
many years believed that it was by Pamphilus, and that I had borrowed a copy of
this book from you. You may judge how little I fear your derision from the fact
that even now I make the same statement. I took it from your manuscript as being
a copy of a work of Pamphilus. I trusted in you as a Christian and as a monk: I
did not imagine that you would be guilty of such a wicked imposture. But, after
that the question of Origen's heresy was stirred throughout the world on account
of your translation of his work, I was more careful in examining copies of the
book, and in the library of Caesarea I found the six volumes of Eusebius'
Apology for Origen. As soon as I had looked through them, I at once detected the
book on the Son and the Holy Spirit which you alone have published under the
name of the martyr, altering most of its blasphemies into words of a better
meaning. And this I saw must have been done either by Didymus or by you or some
other (it is quite clear that you did it in reference to the Peri 'Arxwn) by
this decisive proof, that Eusebius tells us that Pamphilus published nothing of
his own. It is for you therefore to say from whence you obtained your copy; and
do not, for the sake of avoiding my accusation, say that it was from some one
who is dead, or, because you have no one to point to, name one who cannot answer
for himself. If this rivulet has its source in your desk, the inference is plain
enough, without my drawing it. But, suppose that the title of this book and the
name of the author has been changed by some other lover of Origen, what motive
had you for turning it into Latin? Evidently this, that, through the testimony
given to him by a martyr, all should trust to the writings of Origen, since they
were guaranteed beforehand by a witness of such authority. But the Apology of
this most learned man was not sufficient for you; you must write a treatise of
your own in his defence, and, when these two documents had been widely
circulated, you felt secure in proceeding to translate the Peri 'Arxwn itself
from the Greek, and commended it in a Preface, in which you said that some
things in it had been corrupted by the heretics, but that you had corrected them
from a study of others of Origen's writings. Then come in your praises of me for
the purpose of preventing any of my friends from speaking against you. You put
me forward as the trumpeter of Origen, you praise my eloquence to the skies, so
that you may drag down the faith into the mire; you call me colleague and
brother, and profess yourself the imitator of my works. Then, while on the one
hand you cry me up as having translated seventy homilies of Origen, and some of
his short treatises on the Apostle, in which you say that I so smoothed things
down that the Latin reader will find nothing in them which is discrepant from
the Catholic faith; now on the other hand you brand these very books as
heretical; and, obliterating your former praise, you accuse the man whom you had
preached up when you thought he would figure as your ally, because you find that
he is the enemy of your perfidy. Which of us two is the calumniator of the
martyr? I, who say that he was no heretic, and that he did not write the book
which is condemned by every one; or you, who have published a book written by a
man who was an Arian and changed his name into that of the martyr? It is not
enough for you that Greece has been scandalized; you must press the book upon
the ears of the Latins, and dishonor an illustrious martyr as far as in you lies
by your translation. Your intention no doubt was not this; it was not to accuse
me but to make me serve for the defence of Origen's writings. But let me tell
you that the faith of Rome which was praised by the voice of an Apostle, does
not recognize tricks of this kind. A faith which has been guaranteed by the
authority of an Apostle cannot be changed though an Angel should announce
another gospel than that which he preached. Therefore, my brother, whether the
falsification of the book proceeds from you, as many believe, or from another,
as yon will perhaps try to persuade us, in which case you have only been guilty
of rashness in believing the composition of a heretic to be that of a martyr,
change the title, and free the innocence of the Romans from this great peril. It
is of no advantage to you to be the means of a most illustrious martyr being
condemned as a heretic: of one who shed his blood for Christ being proud to be
an enemy of the Christian faith. Take another course: say, I found a book which
I believed to be the work of a martyr. Do not fear to be a penitent. I will not
press you further. I will not ask from whom you obtained it; you can name some
dead man if you please, or say you bought it from an unknown man in the street:
for I do not wish to see you condemned, but converted. It is better that it
should appear that you were in error than that the martyr was a heretic. At all
events, by some means or other, draw out your foot from its present
entanglement: consider what answer you will make in the judgment to come to the
complaints which the martyrs will bring against you.

13. Moreover, you make a charge against yourself which has been brought by no
one against you, and make excuses where no one has accused you. You say that you
have read these and in my letter: "I want to know who has given you leave when
translating a book, to remove some things, change others, and again add others."
And you go on to answer yourself, and to speak against me: "I say this to you
Who I pray, has given you leave, in your Commentaries, to put down some things
out of Origen, some from Apollinarius, some of your own, instead of all from
Origen or from yourself or from some other?" All this while, while you are
aiming at something different, you have been preferring a very strong charge
against yourself; and you have forgotten the old proverb, that those who speak
falsehood should have good memories. You say that I in my Commentaries have set
down some things out of Origen, some from Apollinarius, some of my own. If then
these things which I have set down under the names of others are the words of
Apollinarius and of Origen; what is the meaning of the charge which you fasten
upon me, that, when I say "Another says this," "The following is some one's
conjecture," that "other" or "some one" means myself? Between Origen and
Apollinarius there is a vast difference of interpretation, of style, and of
doctrine. When I set down discrepant opinions on the same passage, am I to be
supposed to accept both the contradictory views? But more of this hereafter.

14. Now I ask you this: Who may have blamed you for having either added or
changed or taken away certain things in the books of Origen, and have put you to
the question like a man on the horse-rack;29 Are those things which you put down
in your translation bad or good? It is useless for you to simulate innocence,
and by some silly question to parry the force of the true inquiry. I have never
accused you for translating Origen for your own satisfaction. I have done the
same, and so have Victorinus, Hilary, and Ambrose; but I have accused you for
fortifying your translation of a heretical work by writing a preface approving
of it. You compel me to go over the same ground, and to walk in the lines I
myself have traced. For you say in that Prologue that you have cut away what had
been added by the heretics; and have replaced it with what is good. If you have
taken out the false statement of the heretics, then what you have left or have
added must be either Origen's, or yours, and you have set them down, presumably,
as good. But that many of these are bad you cannot deny. "What is that," you
will say, "to me?" You must impute it to Origen; for I have done no more than
alter what had been added by the heretics. Tell us then for what reason yon took
out the bad things written by the heretics and left those written by Origen
untouched. Is it not clear that parts of the false doctrines of Origen you
condemned under the designation of the doctrines of heretics, and others you
accepted because you judged them to be not false but true and consonant with
your faith? It was these last about which I inquired whether those things which
you praised in your Preface were good or bad: it was these which yon confessed
you have left as perfectly good when you cut out all that was worst; and I thus
have placed you, as I said, on the horse-rack, so that, if you say that they are
good, you will be proved to be a heretic, but if you say they are bad, you will
at once be asked: "Why then did you praise these bad things in your Preface?"
And I did not add the question which you craftily pretend that I asked; "Why did
yon by your translation bring evil doctrines to the ears of the Latins?" For to
exhibit what is bad may be done at times not for the sake of teaching them but
of warning men against them: so that the reader may be on his guard not to
follow the error, but may make light of the evils which he knows, whereas if
unknown they might become objects of wonder to him. Yet after this, you dare to
say that I am the author of writings of this kind, whereas you, as a mere
translator would be going beyond the translator's province if you had chosen to
correct anything, but, if you did not correct anything, you acted as a
translator alone. You would be quite right in saying this if your translation of
the Peri 'Arxwn had no Preface; just as Hilary, when he translated Origen's
homilies took care to do it so that both the good and evil of them should be
imputed not to the translator but to their own author. If you had not boasted
that you had cut out the worst and left the best, you would, in some way or
other, have escaped from the mire. But it is this that brings to nought the
trick of your invention, and keeps you bound on all sides, so that you cannot
get out. And I must ask you not to have too mean an opinion of the intelligence
of your readers nor to think that all who will read your writings are so dull as
not to laugh at you when they see you let real wounds mortify while you put
plasters on a healthy body.

15. What your opinions are on the resurrection of the flesh, we have already
learned from your Apology. "No member will be cut off, nor any part of the body
destroyed." This is the clear and open profession which you make in your
innocence, and which you say is accepted by all the bishops of Italy. I should
believe your statement, but that the matter of that book which is not Pamphilus'
makes me doubt about you. And I wonder that Italy should have approved what Rome
rejected; that the bishops should have accepted what the Apostolic see
condemned.

16. You further write that it was by my letters that you had been informed that
the pope Theophilus lately put forth an exposition of the faith which has not
yet reached you and you promise to accept whatever he may have written. I am not
aware that I ever said this, or that I sent any letters of the sort. But you
consent to things of which you are still in uncertainty, and things as to which
you do not know what and of what kind they will turn out to be, so that you may
avoid speaking of things which you know quite well, and may not be bound by the
consent you have given to them. There are two letters of Theophilus,30 a Synodal
and a Paschal letter, against Origen and his disciples, and others against
Apollinarius and against Origen also, which, within the last two years or
thereabouts, I have translated and given to the men who speak our language for
the edification of the church. I am not aware that I have translated anything
else of his. But, when you say that you assent to the opinion of the pope
Theophilus in everything, you must take care not to let your masters and
disciples hear you, and not to offend these numerous persons who call me a
robber and you a martyr, and also not to provoke the wrath of the man31 who
wrote letters to you against the bishop Epiphanius, and exhorted you to stand
fast in the truth of the faith, and not to change your opinion for any terror.
This epistle in its complete form is held by those to whom it was brought. After
this you say, after your manner: "I will satisfy you even when you rage against
me, as I have in the matter you spoke of before." But again you say, "What do
you want? have you anything more at which you may shoot with the bow of your
oratory?" And yet you are indignant if I find fault with your distasteful way I
of speaking, though you take up the lowest expressions of the Comedians, and in
writing on church affairs adopt language fit only for the characters of harlots
and their lovers on the stage.

17. Now, as to the question which you raise, when it was that I began to admit
the authority of the pope Theophilus, and was associated with him in community
of belief. You make answer to yourself: "Then, I suppose, when you were the
supporter of Paul whom he bad condemned and made the greatest effort to help
him, and instigated him to recover through an imperial rescript the bishopric
from which he had been removed by the episcopal tribunal." I will not begin by
answering for myself, but first speak of the injury which you have here done to
another. What humanity or charity is there in rejoicing over the misfortunes of
others and in exhibiting their wounds to the world? Is that the lessen you have
learned from that Samaritan who carried back the man that was half dead to the
inn? Is this what you understand by pouring oil into his wounds, and paying the
host his expenses? Is it thus that you interpret the sheep brought back to the
fold, the piece of money recovered, the prodigal son welcomed back? Suppose that
you had a right to speak evil of me, because I had injured you, and, to use your
words, had goaded you to madness and stimulated you to evil speaking: what harm
had a man who remains in obscurity done you, that you should lay bare his scars,
and when they were skinned over, should tear them open by inflicting this
uncalled for pain? Even if he was worthy of your re preaches, were you justified
in doing this? If I am not mistaken, those whom you wish to strike at through
him (and I speak the open opinion of many) are the enemies of the Origenists;
you use the troubles of one of them to show your violence against both.32 If the
decisions of the pope Theophilus so greatly please you, and you think it impious
that an episcopal decree should be nullified, what do you say about the rest of
those whom he has condemned? And what do you say about the pope Anastasius,
about whom you assert most truly that no one thinks him capable as the bishop of
so great a city, of doing an injury to an innocent or an absent man? I do not
say this because I set myself up as a judge of episcopal decisions, or wish what
they have determined to be rescinded; but I say, Let each of them do what he
thinks right at his own risk, it is for him alone to consider how his judgment
will be judged. Our duties in our monastery are those of hospitality; we welcome
all who come to us with the smile of human friendliness. We must take care lest
it should again happen that Mary and Joseph do not find room in the inn, and
that Jesus should be shut out and say to us, "I was a stranger and ye took me
not in." The only persons we do not welcome are heretics, who are the only
persons who are welcomed by you: for our profession binds us to wash the feet of
those who come to us, not to discuss their merits. Bring to your remembrance, my
brother, how he whom we speak of had confessed Christ: think of that breast
which was gashed by the scourges: recall to mind the imprisonment he had
endured, the darkness, the exile, the work in the mines, and you will not be
surprised that we welcomed him as a passing guest. Are we to be thought rebels
by you because we give a cup of cold water to the thirsty in the name of Christ?

18. I can tell you of something which may make him still dearer to us, though
more odious to you. A short time ago, the faction of the heretics which was
scattered away from Egypt and Alexandria came to Jerusalem, and wished to make
common cause with him, so that as they suffered together, they might have the
same heresy imputed to them. But lie repelled their advances, he scorned and
cast them from him: he told them that he was not an enemy of the faith and was
not going to take up arms against the Church: that his previous action had been
the result of vexation not of unsoundness in the faith; and that he had sought
only to prove his own innocence, not to attack that of others. You profess to
consider an imperial rescript upsetting an episcopal decree to be an impiety.
That is a matter for the responsibility of the man who obtained it. But what is
your opinion of men who, when they have been themselves condemned, haunt the
palaces of the great, and in a serried column make an attack on a single man who
represents the faith of Christ? However, as to my own communion with the Pope
Theophilus, I will call no other witness than the very man whom you pretend that
I injured.33 His letters were always addressed to me, as you well know, even at
the time when yon prevented their being forwarded to me, and when you used daily
to send letter carriers to him repeating to him with vehemence that his opponent
was my most intimate friend, and telling the same falsehoods which you now
shamelessly write, so that you might stir up his hatred against me and that his
grief at the supposed injury done him might issue in oppression against me in
matters of faith. But he, being a prudent man and a man of apostolical wisdom,
came through time and experience to understand both our loyalty to him and your
plots against us. If, as you declare, my followers stirred up a plot against you
at Rome and stole your uncorrected manuscripts while you were asleep; who was it
that stirred up the pope Theophilus against the public enemy in Egypt? Who
obtained the decrees of the princes against them, and the consent of the whole
of this quarter of the world? Yet you boast that you from your youth were the
hearer and disciple of Theophilus, although he, before he became a bishop,
through his native modesty, never taught in public, and you, after he became a
Bishop, were never at Alexandria. Yet you dare, in order to deal a blow at me,
to say "I do not accuse, or change, my masters." If that were true it would in
my opinion throw a grave suspicion on your Christian standing. As for myself,
you have no right to charge me with condemning my former teachers: but I stand
in awe of those words of Isaiah:34 "Woe unto them that call evil good and good
evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that call bitter sweet
and sweet bitter." But it is you who drink alike the honeywine of your masters
and their poisons, who have fallen away from your true master the Apostle, who
teaches that neither he himself or an angel, if they err in matters of faith,
must not be followed.

19. You allude to Vigilantius. What dream this is that you have dreamed about
him I do not know. Where have I said that he was defiled by communion with
heretics at Alexandria? Tell me the book, produce the letter: but you will find
absolutely no such statement. Yet with your wonted carelessness of statement or
rather impudence of lying, which makes you imagine that every one will believe
what you say, you add: "When you quoted a text of Scripture against him in so
insulting a way that I do not dare to repeat it with my own mouth." You do not
dare to repeat it because you can make the charge seem worse by keeping silence;
and, because your accusation has no facts to rest upon, you simulate modesty, so
that the reader may imagine that you are acting from consideration towards me,
although your lies show that you do not consider your own soul. What is this
text of Scripture which is too shameful to proceed out of that most shameless
month of yours? What shameful thing, indeed, can you mention in the sacred
books? If you are ashamed to speak, at any rate you can write it down, and then
I shall be convinced of wantonness by my own words. I might be silent on all
other points, and I should still prove by this single passage how brazen is your
effrontery. You know how little I fear your impeachment. If you produce the
evidence with which you threaten me, all the blame which now rests on you will
rest on me. I gave my reply to you when I dealt with Vigilantius; for he brought
the same charges against the which you bring first in the guise of friendly
eulogy, afterwards in that of hostile accusation. I am aware who it was that
stirred up his ravings against me; I know your plots and vices; I am not
ignorant of his simplicity which is proclaimed by every one. Through his folly
your hatred against me found an outlet for its fury; and, if I wrote a letter to
suppress it, so that you should not be thought to be the only one who possesses
a literary cudgel, that does not justify you in inventing shameful expressions
which you can find in no part of my writings whatever. You must accept and
confess the fact that the same document which answered his madness aroused also
your calumnies.

20. In the matter of the letter of the pope Anastasius, you seem to have come on
a slippery place; you walk unsteadily, and do not see where to plant your feet.
At one moment you say that it must have been written by me; at another that it
ought to have been transmitted to you by him to whom it was sent. Then again you
charge the writer with injustice; or you protest that it matters nothing to yon
whether he wrote it or not, since you hold his predecessor's testimonial, and,
while Rome was begging you to give her the honor of your presence, you disdained
her through love of your own little town. If you have any suspicion that the
letter was forged by me, why do you not ask for it in the chartulary of the
Roman See and then, when you discover that it was not written by the bishop,
hold me manifestly guilty of the crime? You would then instead of trying to bind
me with cobwebs, hold me fast bound in a net of strong cords. But if it is as
written by the Bishop of Rome, it is an act of folly on your part to ask for a
copy of the letter from one to whom it was not sent, and not from him who sent
it, and to send to the East for evidence the source of which you have in your
own country. You had better go to Rome and expostulate with him as to the
reproach which he has directed against you when you were both absent and
innocent. You might first point out that he had refused to accept your
exposition of faith, which, as you say, all Italy has approved, and that he made
no use of your literary cudgel against the dogs you spoke of. Next, you might
complain that he had sent to the East a letter aimed at you which branded you
with the mark of heresy, and said that by your translation of Origen's books
Peri 'Arxwn the Roman church which had received the work in its simplicity was
in danger of losing the sincerity of faith which it had learned from the
Apostle; and that he had raised yet more ill will against you by daring to
condemn this very book, though it was fortified by the attestation of your
Preface. It is no light thing that the pontiff of so great a city should have
fastened this charge upon you or have rashly taken it up when made by another.
You should go about the streets vociferating and crying over and over again, "It
is not my book, or, if it is, the uncorrected sheets were stolen by Eusebius. I
published it differently, indeed I did not publish it at all; I gave it to
nobody, or at all events to few; and my enemy was so unscrupulous and my friends
so negligent, that all the copies alike were falsified by him." This, my dearest
brother, is what you ought to have done, not to turn your back upon him and to
direct the arrows of your abuse across the sea against me; for how can it cure
your wounds that I should be wounded? Does it comfort a man who is stricken for
death to see his friend dying with him?

21. You produce a letter of Siricius35 who now sleeps in Christ, and the letter
of the living Anastasius you despise. What injury you ask, can it do you that he
should have written (or perhaps not written at all) when you knew nothing of it?
If he did write, still it is enough for you that yon have the witness of the
whole world in your favor, and that no one thinks it possible that the bishop of
so great a city could have done an injury to an innocent man, or even to one who
was simply absent. You speak of yourself as innocent, though your translation
made all Rome shudder; you say you were absent, but it is only because you dare
not reply when you are accused. And you so shrink from the judgment of the city
of Rome that you prefer to subject yourself to an invasion of the barbarians36
than to the opinion of a peaceful city. Suppose that the letter of last year was
forged by me; who then wrote the letters which have lately been received in the
East? Yet in these last the pope Anastasius pays you such compliments that, when
you read them, you will be more inclined to set to work to defend yourself than
to accuse me.

I should like you to consider how inevitable is the wisdom which you are
shunning and the Attic Salt and the eloquence of your diction in religious
writing. You are attacked by others, you are pierced through by their
condemnation, yet it is against me that you toss yourself about in your fury,
and say: "I could unfold a tale as to the manner of your departure from Rome; as
to the opinions expressed about you at the time, and written about you
afterwards, as to your oath, the place where you embarked, the pious manner in
which you avoided committing perjury; all this I could enlarge upon, but I have
determined to keep back more than I relate." These are specimens of your
pleasant speeches. And if after this I say anything sharp in answer to you
threaten me with immediate proscription and with the sword. You are a most
eloquent person, and have all the tricks of rhetoric; you pretend to be passing
over things which you really reveal, so that what you cannot prove by an open
charge, you may make into a crime by seeming to put it aside. All this is your
simplicity; this is what you mean by sparing your friend and reserving your
statements for the judicial tribunal; you spare me by heaping up a mass of
charge against me.

22. If any one wishes to hear the arrangements for my journey from Rome, they
were these. In the month of August,37 when the etesian winds were blowing,
accompanied by the reverend presbyter Vincentius and my young brother, and other
monks who are now living at Jerusalem, I went on board ship at the port of Rome,
choosing my own time, and with a very large body of the saints attending me, I
arrived at Rhegium. I stood for a while on the shore of Scylla, and heard the
old stories of the rapid voyage of the versatile Ulysses, of the songs of the
sirens and the insatiable whirlpool of Charybdis. The inhabitants of that spot
told me many tales, and gave me the advice that I should sail not for the
columns of Proteus but for the port where Jonah landed, because the former of
those was the course suited for men who were hurried and flying, but the latter
was best for a man who was imprisoned; but I preferred to take the course by
Malea and the Cyclades to Cyprus. There I was received by the venerable bishop
Epiphanius, of whose testimony to you boast. I came to Antioch, where I enjoyed
the communion of Paulinius the pontiff and confessor and was set forward by him
on my journey to Jerusalem, which I entered in the middle of winter and in
severe cold. I saw there many wonderful things, and verified by the judgment of
my own eyes things which had before come to my ears by report. Thence I made my
way to Egypt. I saw the monasteries of Nitria, and perceived the snakes38 which
lurked among the choirs of the monks. Then making haste I at once returned to
Bethlehem, which is now my home, and there poured my perfume upon the manger and
cradle of the Saviour. I saw also the lake of ill-omen. Nor did I give myself to
ease and inertness, but I learned many things which I did not know before. As to
what judgment was formed of me at Rome, or what was written afterwards, you are
quite welcome to speak out, especially since you have writings to trust to; for
I am not to be tried by your words which you at your will either veil in enigma
or blurt out with open falsehood, but by the documents of the church. You may
see how little I am afraid of you. If you can produce against me a single record
of the Bishop of Rome or of any other church, I will confess myself to be
chargeable with all the iniquities which I find assigned to you. It would be
easy for me to tell of the circumstances of your departure, your age, the date
of sailing, the places in which you lived, the company you kept. But far be it
from me to do what I blame you for doing, and in a discussion between churchmen,
to make up a story worthy of the ravings of quarrelling hags. Let this word be
enough for your wisdom to remember. Do not adopt a method with another which can
at once be retorted on yourself.

23. As regards our reverend friend Epiphanius, this is strange shuffling of
yours, when you say that it was impossible for him to have written against you
after his giving you the kiss and joining with you in prayer. It is as if you
were to contend that he would not be dead if a short time before he had been
alive, or as if it were not equally certain that he had first reproved you and
then, after the kiss of peace, excommunicated you. "They went out from us," it
is said,39 "but they were not of us; otherwise they would no doubt have
continued with us." The apostle bids us avoid a heretic after first and second
admonition: of course this implies that he was a member of the flock of the
church before he was avoided or condemned. I confess I cannot restrain my
laughter when, at the prompting of some clever person, you strike up a hymn in
honour of Epiphanius. Why, this is the `silly old man,' the `anthropomorphite,'
this is the man who boasted in your presence of the six thousand books of Origen
that he had read, who `thinks himself entrusted with the preaching of the Gospel
against Origen among all nations in their own tongue' who `will not let others
read Origen for fear they should discover what he has stolen from him.' Read
what he has written, and the letter, or rather letters, one of which I will
adduce as a testimonial to your orthodoxy, so that it may be seen how worthy he
is of your present praise.40 "May God set you free, my brother, and the holy
people of Christ which is entrusted to you, and all the brethren who are with
you, and especially the Presbyter Rufinus, from the heresy of Origen, and all
other heresies, and from the perdition which they bring. For if many heresies
have been condemned by the Church on account of one word or of two, which are
contrary to the faith, how much more must that man be counted a heretic who has
invented so many perverse things, so many false doctrines! He stands forth as
the enemy of God and of the church." This is the testimony which this saintly
man bears to you. This is the garland of praise which he gives you to parade in.
Thus runs the letter which your golden coins extracted from the chamber of our
brother Eusebius, so that you might calumniate the translator of it, and might
fix upon me the guilt of a most manifest crime-that of rendering a Greek word as
`dearest' which ought to have been `honourable!' But what is all this to you who
can control all events by your prudent methods, and can trim your path between
different possibilities, first saying, if you can find any one to believe you,
that neither Anastasius nor Epiphanius ever wrote a line against you; and,
secondly, when their actual letters cry out against you, and break down your
audacious effrontery, despising the judgment of them both, and say it does not
matter to you whether they wrote or not, since it was impossible for them to
write against an innocent and an absent man.

Then again, you have no right to speak evil of that saintly man, as you do when
you say "that it may be seen that he gave me peace with his words and his kiss,
but kept evil and deceit in his heart"-for this is your reasoning, and it is
thus that you defend yourself. That this is the letter of Epiphanius and that it
is hostile to you, all the world knows: and that it came in its genuine form
into your haads we can prove; and it is therefore an astounding shame or rather
utter shamelessness in you to deny what you cannot doubt to be true. What! Is
Epiphanius to be befouled with the imputation that he gave you the sign of peace
but had deceit in his heart? Is it not much truer to believe that he first
admonished you because he wished to save you from error and bring you back to
the right way; and that therefore he did not reject your Judas kiss, wishing to
break down by his forbearance the betrayer of the faith,-but that afterwards
when he found that all his toil was fruitless, and that the leopard could not
change its spots nor the Ethiopian his skin, he proclaimed in his letter what
had before been only a suspicion in his mind?

24. It is somewhat the same argument which you use against the pope Anastasius,
namely, that, since you hold the letters of the bishop Siricius, it was
impossible that he should write against you. I am afraid you suspect that some
injury has been done you. I cannot understand how a man of your acuteness and
capacity can condescend to such nonsense; you suppose that your readers are
foolish, but you shew that you are foolish yourself. Then after this
extraordinary argumentation, you subjoin this little sentence: "Far be such
conduct from these reverend persons. It is from your school that such actions
proceed. You gave us all the signs of peace at our departure, and then threw
missiles charged with venom from behind our backs." In this clause or rather
declamatory speech, you intended, no doubt, to I shew your rhetorical skill. It
is true we gave you the signs of peace, but not to embrace heresy; we joined
hands, we accompanied you as you set forth on your journey, on the understanding
that you were catholic not that we were heretical. But I want to learn what
these poisoned missiles are which you complain that I threw from behind your
back. I sent the presbyters, Vincentius, Paulinianus, Eusebius, Rufinus. Of
these, Vincentius went to Rome long before you Paulinianus and Eusebius set out
a year after you had sailed; Rufinus two years after, for the cause of Claudius;
all of them either for private reasons, or because another was in peril of his
life. Was it possible for me to know that when you entered Rome, a nobleman had
dreamed that a ship full of merchandise was entering with full blown sails? or
that all questions about fate were being solved by a solution which should not
itself be fatuous? or that you were translating the book of Eusebius as if it
were Pamphilus'? or that you were putting your own cover upon Origen's poisoned
dish by lending your majestic eloquence to this translation of his notorious
work Peri 'Arxw? This is a new way of calumniating a man. We sent out the
accusers before you had committed the crime. It was not, I repeat, it was not by
our plan, but by the providence of God, that these men, who were sent out for
another reason, came to fight against the rising heresy. They were sent, like
Joseph, to relieve the coming famine by the fervour of their faith.

25. To what point will not audacity burst forth when once it is freed from
restraints? He has imputed to himself the charge made against another so that we
may be thought to have invented it. I made a charge against some one unnamed,
and he takes it as spoken against himself; he purges himself from another man's
sins, being only sure of his own innocence. For he takes his oath that he did
not write the letter that passed under my name to the African bishops, in which
I am made to confess that I had been induced by Jewish influence to make false
translations of the Scriptures; and he sends me writings which contain all these
things which he declares to be unknown to him. It is remarkable to know how his
subtlety has coincided with another man's malice, so that the lies which this
other told in Africa, he in accord with him declared to be true; and also how
that elegant style of his could be imitated by some chance and unskilled person.
You alone have the privilege of translating the venom of the heretics, and of
making all nations drink a draught From the cup of Babylon. You may correct the
Latin Scriptures from the Greek. and may deliver to the Churches to read
something different from what they received from the Apostles; but I am not to
be allowed to go behind the Septuagint version which I translated after strict
correction for the men of my native tongue a great many years ago, and, for the
confutation of the Jews, to translate the actual copies of the Scriptures which
they confess to be the truest, so that when a dispute arises between them and
the Christians, they may have no place of retreat and subterfuge, but may be
smitten most effectually with their own spear. I have written pretty fully on
this point if I rightly remember, in many other places, especially in the end of
my second book; and I have checked your popularity-hunting, with which you seek
to arouse ill will against me among the innocent and the inexperienced, by a
clear statement of fact. To that I think it enough to refer the reader.

26. I think it a point which should not be passed over, that you have no right
to complain that the falsifier of your papers. holds in my esteem the glorious
position of a confessor, since you who are guilty of this very crime are called
a martyr and all apostle by all the partisans of Origen, for that exile and
imprisonment of yours at Alexandria. On your alleged inexperience in Latin
composition I have answered you above. But, since you repeat the same things,
and, as if forgetful of your former defence, again remind me that I ought to
know that you have been occupied for thirty years in devouring Greek books, and
therefore do not know Latin, I would have you observe that it is not a few words
of yours with which I find fault, though indeed all your writing is worthy of
being destroyed. What I wished to do was to shew your followers, whom you have
taken so much pains in teaching to know nothing, to understand what amount of
modesty there is in a man who teaches what he does not know, who writes what he
is ignorant of, so that they may expect to find the same wisdom in his opinions.
As to what you add "That it is not faults of words which are offensive, but
sins, such as lying, calumny, disparagement, false witness, and all evil
speaking, and that the mouth which speaketh lies kills the soul," and your
deprecation, "Let not that ill-savour reach my nostrils;" I would believe what
you say, were it not that I discover facts inconsistent with this. It is as if a
fuller or a tanner in speaking to a dealer in pigments should warn him that he
had better hold his nose as he passed their shops. I will do what you recommend;
I will stop my nose, so that it may not be put to the torture by the delightful
odour of your truth-speaking and your benedictions.

27. In reference to your alternate praise and disparagement of me, you argue
with great acuteness that you have the same right to speak good and evil of me
that I have to find fault with Origen and Didymus whom I once praised. I must
instruct you, then, wisest of men and chief of Roman dialecticians, that there
is no fault of logic in praising a than in certain respects while you blame him
in others, bat only in approving and disapproving one and the same thing. I will
take all example, so that, though you may not understand, the wise reader may
join me in understanding the point. In the case of Tertullian we praise his
great talent. but we condemn his heresy. In that of Origen we admire his
knowledge of the Scriptures, but nevertheless we do not accept his false
doctrine. As to Didymus, however, we extol both his powers of memory, and the
purity of his faith in the Trinity, while on the other point in which he erred
in trusting to Origen we withdraw from him. The vices of our teachers are not to
be imitated, their virtues are. There was a man at Rome who had an African, a
very learned man, as his grammar teacher; and he thought that he was rising to
an equality with his teacher because he copied his strident voice and his faulty
pronunciation. You in your Preface to the Peri 'Arxwn speak of me as your
brother and call me your most eloquent colleague, and proclaim my soundness in
the faith. From these three points you cannot draw back; carp at me on all other
points as you please, so long as you do not openly contradict this testimony
which you bear to me; for in calling me friend and colleague, you confess me
worthy of your friendship; when you proclaim me an eloquent man, you cannot go
on accusing me of ignorance; and when you confess that I am in all points a
catholic, you cannot fix on me the guilt of heresy. Beyond these three points
you may charge me with anything you like without openly contradicting yourself.
From all this calculation the net result is that you are wrong in blaming in me
what you formerly praised; but that I am not in fault when, in the case of the
same men, I praise what is laudable and blame what is censurable.

28. You pass on to the origin of souls, and at great length exclaim against the
smoke which you say I raise. You want to be allowed to express ignorance on a
point on which you advisedly dissemble your knowledge; and therefore begin
questioning me about angels and archangels; as to the mode of their existence,
the place and nature of their abodes, the differences, if there be any, existing
between them; and then as to the course of the sun, the waxing and waning of the
moon, the character and movements of the stars. I wonder that you did not set
down the whole of the lines:41 Whence come the earthquakes, whence the
high-swoll'n seas Breaking their bounds, then sinking back to rest; The Sun's
eclipse, the labours of the moon; The race of men and beasts, the storm, the
fire, Arcturus' rainy Hyads, and the Bears:

Why haste the winter's suns to bathe themselves Beneath the wave, what stays its
lingering nights.

Then, leaving things in heaven, and condescending to those on earth, you
philosophize on minor points. You say: "Tell us what are the causes of the
fountains, and of the wind; what makes the hail and the showers; why the sea is
salt, the rivers sweet; what account is to be given of clouds and storms,
thunderbolts, and thunder and lightning." You mean that if do not know all this,
you are entitled to say you know nothing about the origin of souls. You wish to
balance your ignorance on a single point by mine on many. But do not you, who in
page after page stir up what you call my smoke, understand that I can see your
mists and whirlwinds? You wish to be thought a than of extensive knowledge, and
among the disciples of Calpurnius42 to enjoy a great reputation for wisdom, and
therefore you raise up tile whole physical world in front of me, as if Socrates
had said in vain when he passed over to the study of Ethics: "What is above us
is nothing to us." So then, if I cannot tell you why the ant, which is such a
little creature, whose body is a mere point, has six feet, whereas an elephant
with its vast bulk has only four to walk on; why serpents and snakes glide along
on their chests and bellies; why the worm which is commonly called the millipede
has such a swarming array of feet; I am prohibited from knowing anything about
the origin of souls! You ask me what I know about souls, so that, when I make
any statement about them, you may at once attack it. And if I say that the
church's doctrine is that God forms souls every day, and sends them into the
bodies of those who are born, you will at once bring out the snares your master
invented, and ask, Where is God's justice if he grants souls to those who are
born of adultery or incest? Is he not an accessory to men's sins, if he creates
souls for the adulterers who make the bodies? as if, when you hear that seed
corn had been stolen, you are to suppose the fault to lie in the nature of the
corn, and not in the man who stole the wheat; and that therefore the earth had
no business to nourish the seed in its bosom, because the hands of the sower who
cast them in were unclean. Hence comes also your mysterious question, Why do
infants die? since it is because of their sins, as you. hold, that they received
bodies. There exists a treatise of Didymus addressed to you, in which he meets
this inquiry of yours, with the answer, that they had not sinned much, and
therefore it was enough punishment for them just to have touched their bodily
prisons. He, who was your master and mine also, when you asked this question,
wrote at my request three books of comments on the prophet Hosea, and dedicated
them to me. This shows what parts of his teaching we respectively accepted.

29. You press me to give my opinions about the nature of things. If there were
room, I could repeat to you the views of Lucretius who follows Epicurus, or
those of Aristotle as taught by the Peripatetics, or of Plato and Zeno by the
Academics and the Stoics. Passing to the church, where we have the rule of
truth, the books of Genesis and the Prophets anti Ecclesiastes, give us much
information on questions of this kind. But if we profess ignorance about all
these things, as also about the origin of souls, you ought in your Apology to
acknowledge your ignorance of all alike, and to ask your calumniators why they
had the impudence to force you to reply on this single point when they
themselves know nothing of all those great matters. But Oh! how vast was the
wealth contained in that trireme43 which had come full of all the wares of Egypt
and the East to enrich the poverty of the city of Rome.

44 "Thou art that hero, well-nam'd Maximus, Thou who alone by writing sav'st the
state."

Unless you had come from the East, that very learned man would be still sticking
fast among the mathematici,45 and all Christians would still be ignorant of what
might be said against fatalism. You have a right to ply me with questions about
astrology and the cause of the sky and the stars, when you brought to land a
ship full of such wares as these. I acknowledge my poverty; I have not grown
rich to this extent in the East like you. You learned in your long sojourn under
the shadow of the Pharos what Rome never knew: Egypt instructed you in lore
which Italy did not possess till now.

30. Your Apology says that there are three opinions as to the origin of souls:
one held by Origen, a second by Tertullian and Lactantius (as to Lactantius what
you say is manifestly false), a third by us simple and foolish men, who do not
see that, if our opinion is true, God is thereby shewn to be unjust. After this
you say that you do not know what is the truth. I say, then, tell me, whether
you think that outside of these three opinions any truth can be found so that
all these three may be false; or whether you think one of these three is true.
If there is some other possibility, why do you confine the liberty of discussion
within a close-drawn line? and why do you put forward the views which are false
and keep silence about the true? But if one of the three is true and the two
others false, why do you include false and true in one assertion of ignorance?
Perhaps you pretend not to know which is true in order that it may be safe for
you, whenever you may please, to defend the false. This is the smoke, these are
the mists, with which you try to keep away the light from men's eyes. You are
the Aristippus46 of our day: you bring your ship into the port of Rome full of
merchandize of all kinds; you set your professorial chair on high, and represent
to us Hermagoras47 and Gorgias48 of Leontinum: only, you were in such a hurry to
set sail that you left one little piece of goods, one little question, forgotten
in the East. And you cry out with reiteration that you learned both at Aquileia
and at Alexandria that God is the creator of both our bodies and our souls. This
then, forsooth, is the pressing question, whether our souls were created by God
or by the devil, and not whether the opinion of Origen is true that our souls
existed before our bodies and committed some sin because of which they have been
tied to these gross bodies; or whether, again, they slept like dormice in a
state of torpor and of slumber. Every one is asking this question, but you say
nothing about it; nobody asks the other, but to that you direct your answer.

31. Another part of my `smoke' which you frequently laugh at is my pretence, as
you say, to know what I do not know, and the parade I make of great teachers to
deceive the common and ignorant people. You, of course, are a man not of smoke
but of flame, or rather of lightning; you fulminate when you speak; you cannot
contain the flames which have been conceived within your mouth, and like
Barchochebas,49 the leader of the revolt of the Jews, who used to hold in his
month a lighted straw and blow it out so as to appear to be breathing forth
flame: so you also, like a second Salmoneus,50 brighten the whole path on which
you tread, and reproach us as mere men of smoke, to whom perhaps the words might
be applied,51 "Thou touchest the hills and they smoke." You do not understand
the allusion of the Prophet52 when he speaks of the smoke of the locusts; it is
no doubt the beauty of your eyes which makes it impossible for you to bear the
pungency of our smoke.

32. As to your charge of perjury, since you refer me to your book; and since I
have made my reply to you and Calpurnius53 in the previous books, it will be
sufficient here to observe that you exact from me in my sleep what you have
never yourself fulfilled in your waking hours. It seems that I am guilty of a
great crime because I have told girls and virgins of Christ, that they had
better not read secular works, and that I once promised when warned in a dream
not to read them. But your ship which was announced by revelation to the city of
Rome, promises one thing and effects another. It came to do away with the puzzle
of the mathematici: what it does is to do away with the faith of Christians. It
had made its run with sails full set over the Ionian and Aegean, the Adriatic
and Tyrrhenian seas, only to make shipwreck in the Roman port. Are you not
ashamed of hunting up nonsense of this kind and putting me to the trouble of
bringing up similar things against you? Suppose that some one had seen a dream
about you such as might make you vainglorious; it would have been modest as well
as wise in you not to seem to know of it, instead of boasting of other people's
dreams as a serious testimony to yourself. What a difference there is between
your dream and mine! Mine tells how I was humbled and repressed; yours boasts
over and over again how you were praised. You cannot say, It matters nothing to
me what another man dreamed, for in those most enlightening books of yours you
tell usthat this was the motive which led you to make the translation; you could
not bear that an eminent man should have dreamed in vain. This is all your
endeavour. If you can make me out guilty of perjury, you think you will be
deemed no heretic.

33. I now come to the most serious charge of all, that in which you accuse me of
having been unfaithful after the restoration of our friendship. I confess that,
of all the reproaches which you bring against me or threaten me with, there is
none which I would so much deprecate as that of fraud, deceit and breach of
faith. To sin is human, to lay snares is diabolical. What! Was it for this that
I joined hands with you over the slain lamb in the Church of the Resurrection,
that I might `steal your manuscripts at Rome'? or that I might `send out my dogs
to gnaw away your papers before they were corrected'? Can any one believe that
we made ready the accusers before you had committed the crime? Is it supposed
that we knew what plans you were meditating in your heart? or what another man
had been dreaming? or how the Greek proverb was having its fulfilment in your
case, "the pig teaches Minerva"? If I sent Eusebius to bark against you, who
then stirred up the passion of Aterbius and others against you? Is it not the
fact that he thought that I also was a heretic because of my friendship with
you? And, when I had given him satisfaction as to the heresies of Origen, you
shut yourself up at home, and never dared to meet him, for fear you should have
to condemn what you wished not to condemn, or by openly resisting him should
subject yourself to the reproach of heresy. Do you think that be cannot be
called as a witness against you because he is your accuser? Before ever the
reverend bishop Epiphanius came to Jerusalem, and gave you the signs of peace by
word and kiss, `yet having evil thoughts and guile in his heart'; before I
translated for him that letter54 which was such a reproof to you, and in which
he wrote you down a heretic though he had before approved you as orthodox;
Aterbius was barking against you at Jerusalem, and, if he had not speedily taken
himself off, would have felt not your literary cudgel but the stick you flourish
in your right hand to drive the dogs away.55

34. "But why," you ask, "did you accept my manuscripts which had been falsified?
and why, when I had translated the Peri 'Arxwn did you dare to put your pen to
the same work? If I had erred, as any man may, ought you not to summon me to
reply by a private letter, and to speak smoothly to me, as I am speaking
smoothly in my present letter?" My whole fault is this that, when accusations
were brought against me in the guise of disingenuous praise, I tried to purge
myself from them, and this without invidiously introducing your name. I wished
to refer to many persons a charge which you alone had brought, not so as to
retort the charge of heresy upon you, but to repel it from myself. Could I know
that you would be angry if I wrote against the heretics? You had said that you
had taken away the heretical passages from the works of Origen. I therefore
turned my attacks not upon you but upon the heretics, for I did not believe that
you were a favourer of heresy. Pardon me, if I did this with too great
vehemence. I thought that I should give you pleasure. You say that it was by the
dishonest tricks of those who acted for me that your manuscripts were brought
out before the public, when they were kept secretly in your chamber, or were in
possession only of the man who had desired to have the translation made for him.
But how is this reconcilable with your former statement that either no one or
very few had them? If they were kept secret in your chamber, how could they be
in the possession of the man who had desired to have the translation made for
him? If the one man for whom the manuscripts had been written had obtained them
in order to conceal them, then they were not kept secret in your chamber, and
they were not in the hands of those few who, as you now declare, possessed them.
You accuse us of having stolen them away; and then again you reproach us with
having bought them for a great sum of money and an immense bribe. In a single
matter, and in one little letter, what a tissue of various and discordant
falsehoods! You have full liberty for accusation, but I have none for defence.
When you bring a charge, you think nothing about friendship. When I begin to
reply, then your mind is fall of the rights of friendship. Let me ask you: Did
you write these manuscripts for concealment or for publication? If for
concealment, why were they written? If for publication, why did you conceal
them?

35. But my fault, you will say, was this, that I did not restrain your accusers
who were my friends. Why, I had enough to do to answer their accusations against
myself; for they charged me with hypocrisy,56 as I could shew by producing their
letters, because I kept silence when I knew you to be a heretic; and because by
incautiously maintaining peace with you, I fostered the intestine wars of the
Church. You call them my disciples; they suspect me of being your
fellow-disciple; and, because I was somewhat sparing in my rejection of your
praises, they think me to be initiated, along with you, into the mysteries of
heresy. This was the service your Prologue did me; you injured me more by
appearing as my friend than you would had you shewn yourself my enemy. They had
persuaded themselves once for all (whether rightly or wrongly is their business)
that you were a heretic. If I should determine to defend you, I should only
succeed in getting myself accused by them along with you. They cast in my teeth
your laudation of me, which they suppose to have been written not in craft but
sincerity; and they vehemently reproach me with the very things which you always
praised in me. What am I to do? To turn my disciples into my accusers for your
sake? To receive on my own head the weapons which were hurled against my friend?

36. In the matter of the books Peri 'Arxwn, I have even a claim upon your
gratitude. You say that you cut off anything that was offensive and replaced it
by what was better. I have represented things just as they stood in the Greek.
By this means both things are made to appear, your faith and the heresy of him
whom you translated. The leading Christians of Rome wrote to me: Answer your
accuser; if you keep silence, you will be held to have assented to his charges.
All of them unanimously demanded that I should bring to light the subtle errors
of Origen, and make known the poison of the heretics to the ears of the Romans
to put them on their guard. How can this be an injury to you? Have you a
monopoly of the translation of these books? Are there no others who take part in
this work? When you translated parts of the Septuagint, did you mean to prohibit
all others from translating it after your version had been published? Why, I
also have translated many books from the Greek. You have full power to make a
second translation of them at your pleasure; for both the good and the bad in
them must be laid to the charge of their author. And this would hold in your
case also, had you not said that you had cut out the heretical parts and
translated only what was positively good. This is a difficulty which you have
made for yourself, and which cannot be solved, except by confessing that you
have erred as all men err, and condemning your former opinion.

37. But what defence can you make in reference to the Apology which you have
written for the works of Origen, or rather in reference to the book of Eusebius,
though you, have altered much, and translated the work of a heretic under the
title of a martyr. yet you have set down still more which is incompatible with
the faith of the church. You as well as I turn Latin books into Greek; can you
prohibit me from giving the works of a foreigner to my own people? If I had made
my answer in the case of some other work of yours in which you had not attacked
me, it might have been thought that, in translating what you had already
translated, I was acting in hostility to you, and wishing to prove you
inaccurate or untrustworthy. But this is a new kind of complaint, when you take
it amiss that an answer is made you on a point on which you have accused me. All
Rome was said to have been upset by your translation; every one was demanding of
me a remedy for this; not that I was of any account, but that those who asked
this thought me so. You say that you who had made the translation were my
friend. But what would you have had me do? Ought we to obey God or man? To guard
our master's property or to conceal the theft of a fellow-servant? Can I not be
at peace with you unless I join with you in committing acts which bring
reproach? If you had not mentioned my name, if you had not tricked me out in
your flatteries, I might have had some way of escape, and have made many excuses
for not translating what had already been translated. But you, my friend, have
compelled me to waste a good many days on this work, and to bring out before the
public eye what should have been engulfed in Charybdis; yet still, though I had
been injured, I observed the laws of friendship, and as far as possible defended
myself without accusing you. It is a too suspicious and complaining temper which
you shew when you take home to yourself as a reproach what was spoken against
the heretics. If it is impossible to be your friend unless I am the friend of
heretics, I shall more easily put up with your enmity than with their
friendship.

38. You imagine that I have contrived yet another piece of falsehood, namely,
that I have composed a letter to you in my own name, pretending that it was
written long ago, in which I make myself appear kindly and courteous; but which
you never received. The truth can easily be ascertained. Many persons at Rome
have had copies of this letter for the last three years; but they refused to
send it to you knowing that you were throwing out insinuations against my
reputation, and making up stories of the most shameful kind and unworthy of our
Christian profession. I wrote in ignorance of all this, as to a friend; but they
would not transmit the letter to an enemy, such as they knew you to be, thus
sparing me the effects of my mistakes and you the reproaches of your conscience.
You next bring arguments to shew that, if I had written such a letter, I had no
right to write another containing many reproaches against you. But here is the
error which pervades all that you say, and of which I have a right to complain;
whatever I say against the heretics you imagine to be said against you. What! Am
I refusing you bread because I give the heretics a stone to crush their brains?
But, in order to justify your disbelief in my letter, you are obliged to make
out that of pope Anastasius rests upon a similar fraud.On this point I have
answered you before. If you really suspect that it is not his writing, you have
the means of convicting me of the forgery. But if it is his writing, as his
letters of the present year also written against you prove, you will in vain use
your false reasonings to prove my letter false, since I can shew from his
genuine letter that mine also is genuine.

39. In order to parry the charge of falsehood, it is your humour to become quite
exacting. You are not to be called to produce the six thousand books of Origen,
of which you speak; but you expect me to be acquainted with all the records of
Pythagoras. What truth is there in all the boastful language, which you blurted
out from your inflated cheeks, declaring that you had corrected the Peri 'Arxwn
by introducing words which you had read in other books of Origen, and thus had
not put in other men's words but restored his own? Out of all this forest of his
works you cannot produce a single bush or sucker. You accuse me of raising up
smoke and mist. Here you have smoke and mist indeed. You know that I have
dissipated and done away with them; but, though your neck is broken, you do not
bow it down, but, with an impudence which exceeds even your ignorance, you say
that I am denying what is quite evident, so as to excuse yourself, after
promising mountains of gold, for not producing even a leatherlike farthing from
your treasury. I acknowledge that your animosity against me rests on good
grounds, and that your rage and passion is genuine; for, unless I made
persistent demands for what does not exist, you would be thought to have what
you have not. You ask me for the books of Pythagoras. But who has informed you
that any books of his are extant? It is true that in my letter which you
criticize these words occur: "Suppose that I erred in youth, and that, having
been trained in profane literature, I at the beginning of my Christian course
had no sufficient doctrinal knowledge, and that I attributed to the Apostles
things which I had read in Pythagoras or Plato or Empedocles;" but I was
speaking not of their books but of their tenets, with which I was able to
acquaint myself through Cicero, Brutus, and Seneca. Read the short oration for57
Vatinius, and others in which mention is made of secret societies. Turn over
Cicero's dialogues. Search through the coast of Italy which used to be called
Magna Graecia, and you will find there various doctrines of Pythagoras inscribed
on brass on their public monuments. Whose are those Golden Rules? They are
Pythagoras's; and in these all his principles are contained in a summary form.
Iamblicus58 wrote a commentary upon them, following in this, at least partly,
Moderatus a man of great eloquence, and Archippus and Lysides who were disciples
of Pythagoras. Of these, Archippus and Lysides held schools in Greece, that is,
in Thebes; they retained so fully the precepts of their teacher, that they made
use of their memory instead of books. One of these precepts is: "We must cast
away by any contrivance, and cut out by fire and sword and contrivances of all
kinds, disease from the body, ignorance from the soul, luxury from the belly,
sedition from the state, discord from the family, excess from all things
alike."59 There are other precepts of Pythagoras, such as these. "Friends have
all things in common." "A friend is a second self." "Two moments are specially
to be observed, morning and evening: that is, things which we are going to do,
and things which we have done." "Next to God we must worship truth, for this
alone makes men akin to God." There are also enigmas which Aristotle has
collated with much diligence in his works: "Never go beyond the Stater," that
is, "Do not transgress the rule of justice;" "Never stir the fire with the
sword," that is, "Do not provoke a man when he is angry and excited with hard
words." "We must not touch the crown," that is "We must maintain the laws of the
state." "Do not eat out your heart," that is, "Cast away sorrow from your mind."
"When you have started, do not returns" that is, "After death do not regret this
life." "Do not walk on the public road," that is, "Do not follow the errors of
the multitude." "Never admit a swallow into the family," that is, "Do not admit
chatterers and talkative persons under the same roof with you." "Put fresh
burdens on the burdened; put none on those who lay them down;" that is, "When
men are on the road to virtue, ply them with fresh precepts; when they abandon
themselves to idleness, leave them alone." I said I had read the doctrines of
the Pythagoreans. Let me tell you that Pythagoras was the first to discover the
immortality of the soul and its transmigration from one body to another. To this
view Virgil gives his adherence in the sixth book of the Aeneid in these
words:60 These, when the wheel full thousand years has turned, God calls, a long
sad line, in Lethe's stream To drown the past, and long once more to see The
skies above, and to the flesh return.

40. Pythagoras taught, accordingly, that he had himself been originally
Euphorbus, and then Callides, thirdly Hermotimus, fourthly Pyrrhus, and lastly
Pythagoras; and that those things which had existed, after certain revolutions
of time, came into being again; so that nothing in the world should be thought
of as new. He said that true philosophy was a meditation on death; that its
daily struggle was to draw forth the soul from the prison of the body into
liberty: that our learning was recollection, and many other things which Plato
works out in his dialogues, especially in the Phaedo and Timaeus. For Plato,
after having formed the Academy and gained innumerable disciples, felt that his
philosophy was deficient on many points, and therefore went to Magna Graecia,
and there learned the doctrines of Pythagoras from Archytas of Tarentum and
Timaeus of Locris: and this system he embodied in the elegant form and style
which he had learned from Socrates. The whole of this, as we can prove, Origen
carried over into his book Peri 'Arxwn, only changing the name. What mistake,
then, was I making, when I said that in my youth I had imputed to the Apostles
ideas which I had found in Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles? I did not speak, as
you calumniously pretend, of what I had read in the books of Pythagoras, Plato
and Empedocles, but of what I had read as having existed in their writings, that
is, what other men's writings shewed me to have existed in them. This mode of
speaking is quite common. I might say, for instance "The opinions which I read
in Socrates I believed to be true," meaning what I read as his opinions in Plato
and others of the Socratic school, though Socrates himself wrote no books. So I
might say, I wished to imitate the deeds which I had read of in Alexander and
Scipio,61 not meaning that they described their own deeds, but that I had read
in other men's works of the deeds which I admired as done by them. Therefore,
though I may not be able to inform you of any records of Pythagoras himself as
being extant, and proved by the attestation of his son or daughter or others of
his disciples, yet you cannot hold me guilty of falsehood, because I said not
that I had read his books, but his doctrines. You are quite mistaken if you
thought to make this a screen for your falsehood, and to maintain that because I
cannot produce any book written by Pythagoras, you have a right to assert that
six thousand books of Origen have been lost.

41. I come now to your Epilogue, (that is to the revilings which you pour upon
me,) in which you exhort me to repentance, and threaten me with destruction
unless I am converted, that is, unless I keep silence under your accusations.
And this scandal, you say, will recoil upon my own head, because it is I who by
replying have provoked you to the madness of writing when yon are a man of
extreme gentleness and of a meekness worthy of Moses. You declare that you are
aware of crimes which I confessed to you alone when you were my most intimate
friend, and that yon will bring these before the public; that I shall be painted
in my own colours; and that I ought to remember that I am lying at your feet,
otherwise you might cut off my head with the sword of your mouth. And, after
many such thing, in which you toss yourself about like a madman, you draw
yourself up and say that you wish for peace, but still with the intimation that
I am to keep quiet for the future, that is that I am not to write against the
heretics, nor to answer any accusation made by you; if I do this, I shall be
your good brother and colleague, and a most eloquent person, and your friend and
companion; and, what is still more, you will pronounce all the translations I
have made from Origen to be orthodox. But, if I titter a word or move a step, I
shall at once be unsound and a heretic, and unworthy of all connexion with you.
This is the way you trumpet forth my praises, this is the way you exhort me to
peace. You do not grant me liberty for a groan or a tear in my grief.

42. It would be possible for me also to paint you in your own colours, and to
meet your insanity with a similar rage; to say what I know and add what I do not
know; and with a license like yours, or rather fury and madness, to keep up
things false and true alike, till I was ashamed to speak and you to hear: and to
upbraid you in such a way as would condemn either the accused or the accuser; to
force myself on the reader by mere effrontery, make him believe that what I
wrote unscrupulously I wrote truly. But far be it from the practice of
Christians while offering up their lives to seek the life of others, and to
become homicides not with the sword but the will. This may agree with your
gentleness and innocence; for you can draw forth from the dung heap within your
breast alike the odour of roses and the stench of corpses; and, contrary to the
precept of the Prophet, call that bitter which once you had praised as sweet.
But it is not necessary for us, in treating of Christian topics, to throw out
accusations which ought to be brought before the law courts. You shall hear
nothing more from me than the vulgar saying: "When you have said what you like,
you shall bear what you do not like." Or if the coarse proverb seems to you too
vulgar, and, being a man of culture, you prefer the words of philosophers or
poets, take from me the words of Homer.62 "What words thou speakest, thou the
like shalt hear."

One thing I should like to learn from one of such eminent sanctity and
fastidiousness, (whose holiness is such that in the presence of your very
handkerchiefs and aprons the devils cry out); whom do you take for your model in
your writings? Has any one of the catholic writers, in a controversy of
opinions, imputed moral offences to the man with whom he is arguing? Have your
masters taught you to do this? Is this the system in which you have been
trained, that, when you cannot answer a man, you should take off his head? that
when you cannot silence a man's tongue, you should cut it out? You have nothing
much to boast of, for you are doing only what the scorpions and cantharides do.
This is what Fulvia63 did to Cicero and Herodias to John. They could not bear to
hear the truth, and therefore they pierced the tongue that spoke truth with the
pin that parted their hair. The duty of dogs is to bark in their masters'
service; why may I not bark in the service of Christ? Many have written against
Marcion orValentinus, Arius or Eunomius. By which of them was any accusation
brought of immoral conduct? Did they not in each case bring their whole effort
to bear upon the refutation of the heresy? It is the machination of the
heretics, that is of your masters, when convicted of betrayal of the faith, to
betake themselves to evil speaking. So Eustathius64 the Bishop of Antioch was
made into a father unawares. So Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria cut off a third
hand of Arsenius; for, when he appeared65 alive after having been supposed to be
dead, he was found to have two. Such things also now are falsely charged against
the Bishop of the same church, and the true faith is assailed by gold, which
constitutes the power of yourself and your friends. But I need pot speak of
controversy with heretics, who, though they are really without, yet call
themselves Christians. How many of our writers have contended with those most
impious men, Celsus and Porphyry! but which of them has left the cause he was
engaged in to busy himself with the imputation of crime to his adversary, such
as ought to be set down not in church-writings but in the calendar of the judge?
For what advantage have you gained if you establish a man's criminality but tail
in your argument? It is quite unnecessary that in bringing an accusation you
should risk your own head. If your object is revenge, you can hire an
executioner, and satisfy your desire. You pretend to dread a scandal, and yet
you are ready to kill a man who was once your brother, whom you now accuse, and
whom you always treat as an enemy. Yet I wonder how a man like you, who knows
what he is about, should be so blinded by madness as to wish to confer a benefit
upon me by drawing forth my soul out of prison,66 and should not suffer it to
remain with you in the darkness of this world.

43. If you wish me to keep silence, cease from accusing me. Lily down your
sword, and I will throw away my shield. To one thing only I cannot consent; that
is, to spare the heretics, and not to vindicate my orthodoxy. If that is the
cause of discord between us, I can submit to death, but not to silence. It would
have been right to go through the whole of the Scriptures for answers to your
ravings, and, like David playing on his harp, to take the divine words to calm
your raging breast. But I will content myself with a few statements from a
single hook; I will oppose Wisdom to folly; for I hope if you despise the words
of men you will not think lightly of the word of God. Listen, then, to that
which Solomon the wise says about you and all who are addicted to evil speaking
and contumely:

"Foolish men, while they desire injuries, become impious and hate wisdom.67
Devise not evil against thy friend. Be not angry with a man without a cause. The
impious exalt contumely.68 Remove from thee the evil mouth, keep far from thee
the wicked lips, the eyes of him that speaketh evil, the tongue of the unjust,
the hands which shed the blood of the just,69 the heart that deviseth evil
thoughts, and the feet which hasten to do evil. He that resteth upon falsehood
feedeth the winds, and followeth the flying birds. For he hath left the ways of
his own vineyard, and hath made the wheels of his tillage to err. He walketh
through the dry and desert places, and with his hands he gathereth barrenness.70
The mouth of the froward is near to destruction, and71 he who uttereth evil
words is the chief of fools. Every simple man is a soul that is blessed; but a
violent man is dishonourable.72 By the fault of his lips the sinner falleth into
a snare.73 All the ways of a fool are right in his own eyes.74 The fool showeth
his anger on that very day.75 Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.76 He
that keepeth his lips guardeth his own soul; but he that is rash with his lips
shall be a terror to himself.77 The evil man in his violence doeth evil things,
and the fool spreadeth out his folly.78 Seek for wisdom among the evil and thou
shall not find it.79 The rash man shall eat of the fruit of his own ways.80 The
wise man by taking heed avoideth the evil; but the fool is confident, and joins
himself to it.81 A long-suffering man is strong in his wisdom; the man of little
mind is very unwise.82 He who oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker.83 The
tongue of the wise knoweth good things, but the mouth of fools speaketh evil.84
A quarrelsome man preferreth strife, and every one that lifteth up his heart is
unclean before God.85 Though hand join with hand unjustly, they shall not be
unpunished.86 He that loveth life must be sparing to his mouth.87 Insolence
goeth before bruising, and evil thoughts before a fall.88 He who closeth his
eyes speaketh perverse things, and provoketh all evil with his lips.89 The lips
of a fool lead him into evil, and the foolhardy speech calleth down death. The
man of evil counsel shall suffer much loss.90 Better is a poor man who is just
than a rich man that speaketh lies.91 It is a glory to a man to turn away from
evil words; but he that is foolish bindeth himself therewith.92 Love not
detraction, lest thou be rooted out.93 The bread of lying is sweet to a man, but
afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.94 He that gaineth treasures
with a lying tongue followeth vanity, and shall come into the snares of death.95
Say thou nought in the ear of a fool, lest haply the wise mock at thy words.96
The bludgeon and the sword and the arrow are hurtful things;97 so is the man who
beareth false witness against his friend.98 As the birds and the sparrows fly
away, so the curse shall be vain and shall not overtake him.99 Answer not an
unwise man according to his lack of wisdom, lest thou become like unto him; but
answer a fool according to his folly, lest he appear to himself to be wise.100
He who layeth wait for his friends when he is discovered saith, I did it in
sport.101 A faggot for the coals, and wood for the fire, and a man of evil words
for the tumult of strife.102 If thine enemy ask thee aught, sparingly but with a
loud voice,103 consent thou not to him, for there are seven degrees of
wickedness in his heart.104 The stone is heavy, and the sand hard to be borne;
but the anger of a fool is heavier than either; indignation is cruel, anger is
sharp, and envy is impatient.105 The impious man speaketh against the poor; and
he that trusteth in the audacity of his heart is most foolish.106 The unwise man
putteth forth all his anger, but the wise dealeth it out in parts.107 An evil
son-his teeth are swords, and his grinders are as harrows, to consume the weak
from off the earth, and the poor from among men."

Such are the lessons in which I have been trained and therefore I was unwilling
to return bite for bite, and to attack you by wayof retaliation; and I thought
it better to exorcise the madness of one who was raving, and to pour in the
antidote of a single book into his poisoned breast. But I fear I shall have no
success, and that I shall be compelled to sing the song of David, and to take
his words for my only consolation:108

"The wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray even from the belly.
They have spoken lies. Their madness is like the madness of the serpent; like
the deaf adder which stoppeth her ears, which will not hear the voice of the
charmers, and of the magician wisely enchanting. God shall break their teeth in
their mouth; the Lord shall break the great teeth of the lions. They shall come
to nothing, like water that runneth away. He bendeth his bow until they be
brought low. Like wax that melteth, they shall be carried away; the fire hath
fallen upon them and they have not seen the sun." And again:109

"The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance upon the impious; he
shall wash his hands in the blood of the sinner. And man shall say, Verily,
there is a reward for the righteous; verily, there is a God that judgeth those
that are on the earth."

44. In the end of your letter you say: "I hope that you love peace." To this I
will answer in a few words: If you desire peace, lay down your arms. I can be at
peace with one who shews kindness; I do not fear one who threatens me. Let us be
at one in faith, and peace will follow immediately.

-------- 1: That is, private letter, now lost, which was two books of Rufinus' Apology.

2: Prov. xiv, 3.

3: Pride A. V. and Vulgate.

4: Prov. xviii. 2, as in Vulgate version.

5: Is. xxxii, 5. The words are not those of the of the A. V.

6: Mark ix, 42.

7: Matt. xviii, 7.

8: Luke vi, 45.

9: Rom. xii, 19, Rom. xii, 20.

10: John xviii, 23.

11: Gal. ii, 2.

12: When she lost her daughter Proserpine and lamented her throughout the world.

13: In the two first books of the Apology.

14: Kings of Lydia and Persia notorious for their wealth.

15: Kings of Lydia and Persia notorious for their wealth.

16: Father of Tarquinius Priscus, said to have been a wealthy immigrant from
Corinth.

17: The triumvir: surnamed the Rich: murdered in Persia b.c. 52.

18: Jove was said to have seduced Danaë by changing himself into a shower of
gold.

19: Jerome often taunts Rufinus with being rich and luxurious. See Letter cxxv,
18.

20: Necessarius. This no doubt applies to Eusebius of Cremona or to Paulinian,
Jerome's brother, (Jer Ap. 1, 21, 28.) See Ruf. Ap. i, 19, where a similar
charge is made.

21: Quoted from Rufinus' letter to Jerome, now lost.

22: That is in Origen's IIeri 'Arxwn .

23: Five tongued.

24: Amasium, sweetheart; namely, Origen.

25: Jas. iii, 2.

26: Ezek. xiii, 4.

27: Theophilus of Alexandria - Anastasius of Rome.

28: non ridiculosa ut tu scribis sed ridicula. Jerome seems to object to
ridiculosus as bad Latin.

29: Equuleus, the little horse, an instrument of torture.

30: For the years 401 and 402. See Jerome Letters 96 and 98.

31: lsidore, the Origenist monk who was sent to inquire into the quarrel between
Jerome and John of Jerusalem. His letter written to John and Rufinus prejudging
the case, was brought by mistake to Jerome's friend Vincentius. See Jerome
Against John of Jerusalem c. 37.

32: Perhaps both Paul and Jerome.

33: Theophilus himself.

34: Is v, 20.

35: Bishop of Rome in succession to Damasus. (a.d. 385-398) and succeeded by
Anastasius.

36: The Goths under Alaric passed through Aquileia to invade Italy in 401.

37: a.d. 385.

38: He means Origenistic heresies; but there is no trace in his early works of
this detection of heresy.

39: 1 John ii, 19.

40: From Epiphanius' letter to John, Bishop of translated by Jerome (Jer. Ep. 51
c. 6).

41: Virgil Georg, ii, 473, Aen. i. 746.

42: A Latin rhetorician of the time of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. Some of his
exercises are still extant.

43: In Macarius' dream, see Ruf. Apol. i, 11.

44:

45: Astrologers or magicians.

46: Of Cyrene. A disciple of Socrates, founder of the Cyrenaic sect, the
precursors of the Epicureans.

47: Rhetorician of Rhodes.

48: Statesman and Sophist, came to Athens on a mission b.c. 327, and settled
there.

49: Son of a Star; the leader of the Jewish revolt against Hadrian, a.d. 132-5.

50: King of Elis whom Jove destroyed for imitating thunder and lightning by his
chariot and brazen bridge and torches.

51: Ps. civ. 52.

52: Supposed to refer to Rev. ix, 7, Rev. ix, 17.

53: Possibly a nick-name for one of Rufinus' friends: or `to you even when you
pose as Calpurnius. 0' See above c. 28, note.

54: Jerome Letter li., Epiphanius to John of Jerusalem.

55: See Ruf. Apol. to Anastasius, 1.

56: See the end of the letter of Pammachius and Oceanus; Jerome Letter lxxxiii.

57: In the oration against Vatinius mention is made of his made of his boasting
himself to be a Pythagorean.

58: Neo-Platonist of Alexandria, 4th century.

59: This is given by Jerome both in Greek and Latin.

60: Virg. Aen. 748-51.

61: Gesta quae in Alexandro et Scipione legeram. The Latin construction will
bear Jerome's meaning, but cannot be exactly or elegantly rendered in English.

62: Iliad. xx. 250.

63: Anthony's wife who had Cicero's head brought to her, and bored through the
tongue with a golden bodkin.

64: Eustathius was deposed at the instigation of Eusebius the Arian bishop of
Nicomedia, who brought charges both of Sabellianism and of immorality against
him. Socrates, Eccl. Hist. i. 24.

65: At the Synod at Tyre in 335. See Socrates Eccl. Hist. i. 29.

66: This expression was used by the Origenists of death. This life was a prison
house into which souls had fallen; Jerome imputes this opinion to Rufinus, and
Rufinus to him. See Ruf, Apol. i. 26.

67: Prov. iii. 29, 30. These quotations are from the LXX. version.

68: iv, 24.

69: vi, 18.

70: x, 14.

71: x, 18.

72: xii, 13.

73: xii, 15.

74: xii, 16.

75: xii, 22.

76: xiii, 3.

77: xiii, 16.

78: xiv, 6.

79: xiv, 14.

80: xiv, 16.

81: xiv, 29.

82: xiv, 31.

83: xv, 12.

84: xv, 18.

85: vi, 5.

86: vi, 17.

87: vi, 18.

88: vi, 30.

89: xvii, 6, 7.

90: xix, 1.

91: xx, 3.

92: xx, 13.

93: Prov. xx, 17.

94: xxi, 6.

95: xxiii, 9.

96: xxv, 18.

97: xxv, 18.

98: xxvi, 2.

99: xxvi, 4, 5.

100: xxvi, 19.

101: xxvii, 21.

102: xxvii, 14.

103: xxvi, 24.

104: xxvii, 3, 4.

105: xxviii, 25, 26.

106: xxix, 11.

107: xxx, 14.

108: Ps. lviii, 3-8.

109: Ps. lviii. 10, Ps. lviii. 11.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 5: PREFACE TO BOOK 3 OF ON THE FIRST PRINCIPLES
========================================================================

Preface to Book III. Of the Peri Æarcwn.

Preface to Book III. Of the Peri 'arxwn.

Rufinus had now come to Rome. The translation of B. III. and IV. had been made
probably at Pinetum early in 398. He was already aware of the strong, feelings
aroused by his Translation of B. I. and II., and he complains that parts of his
work were obtained by Jerome's friends while still uncorrected, and used to his
discredit (Apol. i, 18-21, ii, 44); but he continued the work, prefixing to it
the following Preface as his justification.

Reader, remember me in your sacred moments of prayer, that I may be a worthy
follower of the Spirit. It was you, Macarius, by whose instigation, I might say
by whose compulsion, I translated the two first books of the Peri 'Arxwn. I did
it during Lent; and at that time your near presence, my Christian brother, and
your fuller leisure, forced me also into fuller diligence. But now that you are
living at the opposite end of Rome from me, and my taskmaster pays his visits
more seldom, I have taken longer in unfolding the sense of the two last books.
You will remember that in my former preface I gave you warning that some people
would be full of indignation when they found that I had no harm to say of
Origen: and this, as I think you have found, has not been long in coming to
pass. But if those demons who excite men's tongues to evil speaking, have been
already set on fire by that first part of the work, though in it the author had
not yet fully laid bare their devices, what will be the effect of this second
part, in which he is going to disclose all the secret labyrinths through which
they creep into the hearts of men and deceive the hearts of the weak and the
frail? You will see disorder springing up on all sides, and party spirit will be
raised, and an outcry will spread all through the town, and Origen will be
summoned to the bar and condemned for his attempt to dispel the darkness of
ignorance by the light of the Gospel's lamp. But all this will matter very
little to those who are endeavouring to hold fast the sound form of the catholic
faith while exercising their minds in the study of divine things.

I think it necessary, however, to remind you of the principle which I acted upon
in reference to the former books, and which I have observed in the present case
also, namely, not to set down in my translation things evidently contradictory
to our belief and to the author's opinions as elsewhere expressed, but to pass
them over as not genuine but inserted by others. On the other hand I have not,
either in the former books or in these, omitted the novel opinions which he has
expressed about the formation of the reasonable creation, considering that it is
not in such things that the faith mainly consists, but that what he is aiming at
is merely knowledge and the exercise of the faculties, and that possibly there
may be certain heresies which may have to be answered in this way. Only, in
cases where he may have chosen to repeat in these later books what he had said
before in the earlier, I have thought it expedient to cut out certain portions
for the sake of brevity.

Those whose object in reading these books is to gain knowledge, not to disparage
their author, would do well to seek the aid of men more skilled than themselves
in interpreting them. For it is an absurd thing to get grammarians to explain to
us the fictions of the poets' writings and the laughable stories of the
comedians, and yet to think that books which speak of God and the celestial
powers, and the whole universe, and which discuss all the errors of pagan
philosophy and of heretical pravity are things which any one can understand
without a teacher to explain them. In this way it comes to pass that men prefer
to remain in ignorance and to pronounce rash judgments on things which are
difficult and obscure rather than to gain an understanding of them by diligent
study.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 6: PREFACE TO ORIGEN'S HOMILIES ON NUMBERS
========================================================================

Preface to Origen's Homilies on Numbers Addressed to Ursacius.1 Written in 410.2
Preface to Origen's Homilies on Numbers Addressed to Ursacius.1 Written in 410.2

------------ My dear brother, I might rightly address you in the words of the blessed master, "You do well, dearest Donatus, in reminding me of this;" for I well remember my promise that I would collect all that Adamantius wrote in his old age on the Law of Moses, and translate it into Latin for the use of our people. But, as he says, the season was not seasonable for the fulfilment of my promise, but was full of storm and confusion. How can the pen move freely when a man is in fear of the missiles of the enemy, when he has before his eyes the devastation of cities and country, when he has to fly from dangers of the sea, and there is no safety even in exile? As you yourself saw, the Barbarian was within sight of us; he had set fire to the city of Rhegium, and our only protection against him was the very narrow sea which separates the soil of Italy from Sicily. In such a position, what leisure could there be for writing, and especially for translating, a work in which one's duty is not to develop one's own opinions but to express those of another? However, when there was a quiet night, and our minds were relieved from the fear of an attack by the enemy, and we got at least some little leisure for thought, I setto work, as a solace from our troubles, and to relieve the burden of our pilgrimage, together into one and arrange all that Origen had written on the book of Numbers, whether in the way of homilies or in writings such as are called Excerpts,3 and to translate them into the Roman tongue. You urged me to do this, Ursacius, and aided me with all your might, indeed, so eager were you, that you thought the youth who acted as secretary too slow in the execution of his office. I wish, however, to point out to you, my brother, that the object of this method of studying scripture is not to deal with each clause separately, as you find done in commentaries, but to open up a path for the understanding, so that the reader may not be made negligent, but as it is written may "stir up his own spirit" and draw out the meaning, and, when he has heard the good word, may add to it by his own wisdom. In this way I have tried to give all the expositions which you desired; and now of all the writings that I have found upon the Law the short comments upon Deuteronomy alone are wanting; these, if God so will, and if he restores my eye-sight, I hope to add to the body of the work. Indeed, my very loving son Pinianus, whose truly Christian company I have joined in their flight because of my delight in their chaste conversation, requires yet other tasks from me. But do you and he join your prayers that the Lord may be present with us, and may give peace in our time, and shew mercy to those who are in trouble, and make our work fruitful for the edification of the reader.parparpar 1: Nothing more is known of Ursacius than is to be gathered from the mention of him here.

2: The date is fixed by the burning of Rhegium by Alaric, who intended to invade
Sicily, but his transports were scattered by a storm and he himself died soon
after. See Gibbon ch. xxxi.

3: Apparently a longer style of note.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: PREFACE TO THE COMMENTARY ON THE BENEDICTIONS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS  BOOK 2
========================================================================

Preface to Book II.

Paulinus to His Brother Rufinus, All Good Wishes.

Rufinus to His Brother Paulinus, the Man of God, with All Good Wishes.

Preface to Book II.

Rufinus, as we see by his Preface to the former book, considered it
unsatisfactory to expound the Blessing upon Judah apart from those on his
brethren. Paulinus therefore, taking the occasion of their common friend
Cerealis' journey to Rome, sends the following letter to induce Rufinus to
expound the remaining Benedictions.

Paulinus to His Brother Rufinus, All Good Wishes.

1. Although our son Cerealis declared to me that it was uncertain whether, in
returning as he now does to St. Peter,1 he would be ahle to visit you, yet it
appears to me that it would be blamable in me and vexatious to you were I not to
write to you by him in whom you have a part as well as I. It seems to me
preferable to lose some letter paper by his not visiting you rather than to lose
credit with you as I think I should do by his visiting you without it: and
therefore I have entrusted trusted this letter, I will not say to chance, but to
faith: for I believe that the Lord will direct to you the way both of our son
and of my letter; since to those who long for good all will turn to good; and
indeed he longs for you as you ought to be longed for by one who understands the
good he may gain from your society. I believe that this longing of his in a good
matter will not be lost, according to his faith and piety: and therefore I have
confidence that he will reach you and abide with you, and that I shall see the
saving help of the Lord doubled towards you, since in him you will have the
accession of a good son and pupil and assistant, and he will find in you a
father and teacher of all good things given to him from the Lord, who will add
to the efficacy and power of his prayers the strength of spiritual grace. As to
myself, though I have the assurance that when you return to the East you will be
unwilling to depart without visiting me, yet my sins make me fear that the
daughter of Babylon, may turn you away from me. I pray therefore with earnest
longings to the Lord that he would give me not according to my deserts but
according to my desire and may direct your course to me in the way of peace; for
such as do not walk in that way are reprobate and condemned and incapable of
truly longing for your presence.

2. But now for the business part of my letter. I charge you, with the
importunity, with which I am in the habit of knocking at your door even in the
middle of the night, being driven by fear of a refusal to the modest attitude of
a supplicant, to show ne kindness once more, and to expound the Benedictions on
the twelve Patriarchs. You have already made a beginning with the prophecy
relating to Judah, and have given, according to the precept, a threefold
interpretation of it. I now beg you to expound the prophecy as it relates to
each of the sons of Judah: so that I may myself become possessed of the truth by
your means, and may also gain through your help the favor and the praise which
will accrue to me; for I shall thus be able to make answer to those who have
thought well to consult me on the difficulties of this passage of Scripture not
with foolish words drawn from my own understanding but with divine truth flowing
from your inspiration.

------------

Rufinus, though at this time busy with his larger works the translations of
Pamphilus' defence of Origen, and Origen's peri 'Arxn, and, though about to set
out for Rome, lost no time in composing the work which Paulinus demanded, and
sent it him with the following letter.

Rufinus to His Brother Paulinus, the Man of God, with All Good Wishes.

I. Though our common son Cerealis did not visit me, he felt what pain he would
cause me if he delayed my reception of your letter, and forwarded it to me. In
reading it I felt, as usual, a continual increase in my yearning towards you:
but I found towards its close a request from which I have frequently begged you
to excuse me-I mean the request which you make that I should write something in
answer to your questions as to the interpretation of passages of Scripture. I
thought that I should lead you to desist from these questions by the writings I
have once and again sent you, which have given evidence of my ignorance and of
the roughness of my speech.

2. But since you still are not weary of commanding me, I have at once, to the
best of my powers, added to what I had written at your desire on the Benediction
of Judah the comments on the remaining eleven patriarchs. I acted like the man
in the parable of the two sons. I thought that I should thus best fulfil the
father's will: and though when he ordered me to go into the vineyard I had said
I will not go, yet after a while I went. If, as I grant, there is some rashness
in the fact that with so little capacity we attempt such a great task, I would
say, with submission to you, that this must be most justly imputed to you,
since, through your excessive love for me you do not see that my measure of
knowledge, as of other virtues, is but slight. I wrote this work in the days of
Lent, while I was staying in the monastery of Pinetum, and I wrote it for you.
But I found it impossible to conceal this poor work from the brethren who were
there: and they, considering that a thing which had been honoured by your
approval must be of great importance, extorted from me the permission to copy it
for themselves. Thus, while you demand from me food for yourself you give
refreshment to others also. Farewell, and be in peace, my most loving brother,
most true worshipper of God, and an Israelite in whom there is no guile. I
entreat you who are so full of the grace of God to hold me still in remembrance.

1: That is to Rome.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: PREFACE TO THE COMMENTARY ON THE BENEDICTIONS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS 
========================================================================

Preface to the Commentary on the Benedictions of the Twelve Patriarchs Paulinus
to His Brother Rufinus, All Best Wishes.1 The Answer of Rufinus Forms the
Preface to His Exposition of the Benedictions.

Preface to the Commentary on the Benedictions of the Twelve Patriarchs

Rufinus had arrived with Melania, in Italy, in the spring of 397, after a stay
in the East of some 25 years. They had visited Paulinus at Nola, and had been
entertained by him with the highest honours. Melania probably remained in
Campania, where she had property, engaged in family affairs; but Rufinus set out
for Rome. He stopped, however, for some months at the monastery of Pinetum near
Terracina, with his friend Urseius the Abbot.

His work on Jacob's Benedictions on his sons in Gen. xlix was occasioned by the
following letter from Paulinus, who alludes to it in writing to Sulpicius
Severus (Ep. xxviii). "I have written a short note to the Presbyter Rufinus, the
companion of the saintly Melania in her spiritual journey, a truly holy and
truly learned man, and one united with me on this account in the closest
affection." The work itself, being an Exposition ot Scripture, is not given, but
only the Preface.

Paulinus to His Brother Rufinus, All Best Wishes.1

1. Even a short letter from one so likeminded as yourself is a great
refreshment, like the dew which revives a thirsty field when the rivers are low.
But while I confess that I have been refreshed by this letter which, though
short, is still from you, and is sent by the servant of our common children, yet
I have been troubled at hearing that all at once through the disquiet of your
anxiety and the uncertainty caused hy delay, you have determined that you must
go to Rome. May the Lord grant you to receive joy in the Lord from what we are
doing: so that, as now we share in your anxiety, so we may rejoice in your joy,
and that we may still have some beginnings of hope that we may enjoy your
presence, when you begin to see clearly your way and the will of the Lord
concerning you.

2. You are kind enough, with that affection which makes you love me as yourself,
to desire that I should take up more seriously the study of Greek literature. I
acknowledge the kindness which dictates this wish; but I am unable to give it
effect, unless, through God's blessing on my earnest desires, I should have the
happiness of your company for a longer time. How can I gain any proficiency in a
foreign tongue in the absence of him who might teach me what I do not know? I
think that, in the matter of the translation of St. Clement,2 besides the other
defects of my abilities, you noticed this especially as showing the weakness
caused by my want of practice, that where I had been unable to understand the
words or to express them accurately, I have translated them according to my idea
of their drift, or, to speak more truly, set down what I thought ought to be
there. All the more therefore do I need that, through God's mercy, I may have
your company in fuller measure; for that will be like wealth to the poor or like
gathering the crumbs which fall from the rich man's table with the eager
appetite of the bondman's heart.

3. At the moment when I was writing these words my eye fell upon a passage of
Scripture, occurring in a portion which I had set down for reading, namely that
in which Judah is blessed by Jacob; and I determined after a time to knock at
the door of your mind, for which the Lord had given me this most timely
occasion. I beg you, if you love me, or rather because you love me so greatly,
to write and say how you understand this blessing of the Patriarchs; and, if
there are some things in it which are worth knowing but hard to understand,
impart to me also the knowledge of them; especially of that passage which says:
"Binding his colt to the vine and his ass's3 colt to the haircloth."4 Tell me
what is the colt and the ass's colt, and why his colt is to be bound to the
vine, but the ass's colt to the hair cloth. The Answer of Rufinus Forms the
Preface to His Exposition of the Benedictions.

1. The more I excuse myself to you, and the more I assert that I am unable to
respond to your inquiries, the more instant you become in your requests, and the
harder become your demands: you treat me as you would an ox whose laziness you
have discovered, and prick his flanks and back as he stops and turns back with
goads of ever increasing sharpness. I must point out to you, therefore, that,
even if I am able to bow my neck low so as just to drag the heavy yoke which you
lay upon me, yet I have no chance of bursting at a rapid pace into the open and
wide-spreading plains through a form of speech which flows at large and pours
itself forth over far-extending space. Bear with me therefore if my resolution
has been but tardily fulfilled, and if I come up only at a feeble pace to the
point to which you call me.

2. You ask me how the passage in Genesis is to be understood in which Israel the
father of the patriarchs is represented as predicting what he saw would happen
to each of his sons, and says of Judah, amongst other things: "Binding his colt
to the vine, and his ass's colt to the tendril of the vine." You write it "and
his ass's colt to the haircloth" (cilicium); but in the Greek it stands: kai th
eliki ton pwlon thj onou autou. The Greeks call by the name elika (twist) not
the sprigs of the vine (as our copies have it) but those sickle-like shoots5 by
which it supports itself on branches of trees or poles or the supports of the
kind which I think the farmers call goatikins;6 so that the vine is made safe by
these clinging shoots from all danger of falling, and the tendril can either
become loaded with grapes or grow out in unfettered length. I think therefore
that this very word (helici), like some others, must have been set down a long
time ago in the Latin versions, and that it was afterwards supposed by
unintelligent copyists that by helici, hair-cloth (cilicium) must be meant.

3. It is easy in this way to emend the mistakes of the translation; but it is
not so easy to find out the meaning of the expression itself unless we take into
consideration the whole passage. But the treatment of this passage would be
placed in a fuller and clearer light if we could go back to the beginning of the
whole of these Benedictions. But this implies no small amount of leisure and of
time; or, to speak in a more Christian sense, it demands a mind illuminated by
the Holy Spirit. My talent is but slight, and there are many demands on my time;
and my friends are urging me to comply with their requests about Origen.7 But,
so far as these circumstances admit, and so great a matter can be treated with
brevity, I will state at once what appears to me the true meaning of this
passage, for the love with which you bid me trust you in everything, and without
prejudice to the judgment of others, who may have something better to say about
it.

1:

2: That is, the Recognitions. See the Preface to Rufinus' Translation in this
volume, with the explanatory note prefixed to it.

3: Gen. xlix, ii.

4: This is a mistaken reading (though said by Vallarsi to be accepted by both
Ambrose and Augustin), Cilicium for eliki . Rufinus adopts the latter. "Binding
his ass's colt to the tendril of the vine."

5: The word in the text rucinnulos is unknown in Latin. The most likely
conjecture as to the right reading is ruscarias quibus (that is ruscarias
falculas - sickles for weeding out butcher's broom, as mentioned by Cato and
Varro).

6: Capreolos. Properly little goats, thus used for the props, the fork of which
resembled the horns of the goat. The word is also used for the tendrils of the
vine, and is by some derived from capio.

7: That is about the translation of the IIeri 'Arxwn . See the Preface to this
further on.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION OF THE SAYINGS OF XYSTUS
========================================================================

Preface to the Translation of the Sayings of Xystus Composed at Aquileia About
the Year 307 a.d.

Preface to the Translation of the Sayings of Xystus Composed at Aquileia About
the Year 307 a.d.

(For the questions relating to Xystus see the Prolegomena, p. 412.)

------------ Rufinus TO Apronianus, His Own Friend

I know that, just as the sheep come gladly when their own shepherd calls them,
so in matters of religion men attend most gladly to the admonitions of a teacher
who speaks their own language: and therefore, my very dear Apronianus, when that
pious lady who is my daughter but now your sister in Christ, had laid her
commands on me to compose for her a treatise of such a nature that its
understanding should not require any great, effort, I translated into Latin in a
very open and plain style the work of Xystus, who is said to be the same man who
at Rome is called Sixtus, and who gained the glory of being both bishop and
martyr. I think that, when she reads this, she will find it expressed with such
brevity that a vast meaning is unfolded in each several line, with such power
that a sentence only a line long would suffice for a whole life's training, and
yet with such simplicity that one who looked over the shoulder of a girl as she
read it might question whether I were not quite weak in intellect. And the whole
work is so concise that it would be possible for her never to let go of it. The
entire book would hardly be bigger than the finger ring of one of our ancestors.
And indeed it seems but right that one who has learnt through the word of God to
count as dross the ornaments of the world should now receive at my hands by way
of ornament a necklace of the word and of wisdom. For the present let this
little book serve for a ring and be kept constantly in the hands: but it will
not be long before it will penetrate into the treasure house and be wholly laid
up in the heart, and bring forth from its innermost chamber the germs of
instruction and of a participation in all good works. I have added further a few
choice sayings addressed by a pious father to his son, but all so succinct that
the whole of this. little work may rightly be called in Greek the Enchiridion1
or in Latin the Annulus.2 1: A thing held in the hand.

2: A ring.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATIONS OF ORIGEN'S BOOKS ON THE FIRST PRINCIPLES
========================================================================

Preface to the Translations of Origen's Books Peri; Æarcw`n.

Addressed to Macarius, at Pinetum, a.d. 397.

Preface to the Translations of Origen's Books Peri\ 'arxw=n.

------------ Addressed to Macarius, at Pinetum, a.d. 397.

------------

The Translation of the two first Books of the Peri 'Arxwn was issued soon after,
or contemporaneously with the Apology of Pamphilus. The Preface to them was
intended to remove prejudices by showing that Jerome (who though not named is
clearly described) had been Rufinus' precursor in translating Origen. The
compliments paid to Jerome were no doubt sincere: but the use made of his
previous action can hardly be justified. Rufinus knew well that Jerome's view of
Origen had to some extent altered, that a disagreeable controversy had sprung up
at Jerusalem about him, in which he and Jerome had taken opposite sides: and
that the animosity aroused by this had with the greatest difficulty been
allayed, and a reconciliation effected at the moment when he had quitted
Palestine. This Preface with the Translation of the Peri\ 'Arxw=n was the most
immediate cause of the violent controversy and the final estrangement between
Rufinus and Jerome.

I am aware that a great many of our brethren were incited by their longing for
Scriptural knowledge to demand from various men who were versed in Greek
literature that they would give the works of Origen to men who used the Latin
tongue, and thus make him a Roman. Among these was that brother and associate of
mine to whom this request was made by bishop Damasus, and who when he translated
the two homilies on the Song of Songs from Greek into Latin prefixed to the work
a preface1 so full of beauty and so magnificent that he awoke in every one the
desire of reading Origen and eagerly investigating his works. He said that to
the soul of that great man the words might well be applied:2 "The King has
brought me into his chamber": and he declared that Origen in his other books had
surpassed all other men, but in this had surpassed himself. What he promises in
this Preface is, indeed, that he will give to Roman ears not only these books
but many others of Origen. But I find that he is so enamoured of his own style
that he pursues a still more ambitious object, namely, that he should be the
creator of the book, not merely its translator. I am then following out a task
begun by him and commended by his example; but it is out of my power to set
forth the words of this great man with a force and an eloquence like his: and I
have therefore to fear that it may happen through my fault that the man whom he
justly commends as a teacher of the church both in knowledge and in wisdom
second only to the Apostles may be thought to have a far lower rank through my
poverty of language. When I reflected on this I was inclined to keep silence,
and not to assent to the brethren who were constantly adjuring me to make the
translation. But your influence is such, my most faithful brother Macarius, that
even the consciousness of my unfitness is not sufficient to make me resist. I
have therefore yielded to your importunity though it was against my resolution,
so that I might no longer be exposed to the demands of a severe taskmaster; but
I have done so on this condition and on this understanding, that in making the
translation I should follow as far as possible the method of my predecessors,
and especially of him of whom I have already made mention. He, after translating
into Latin above seventy of the books of Origen which he called Homiletics, and
also a certain number of the "Tomes," proceeded to purge and pare away in his
translation all the causes of stumbling which are to be found in the Greek
works; and this he did in such a way that the Latin reader will find nothing in
them which jars with our faith. In his steps, therefore, I follow, not, indeed,
with the power of eloquence which is his, but, as far as may be, in his rules
and method, that is, taking care not to promulgate those things which are found
in the books of Origen to be discrepant and contradictory to one another. The
cause of these variations I have set forth very fully for your information in
the Apology which Pamphilus wrote for the books of Origen, to which I have
appended a very short treatise3 showing by proofs which seem to me quite clear
that his books have been in very many cases falsified by heretical and
ill-disposed persons. This is especially the case with the books which you now
require me to translate, namely, the Peri 'Arxwn, which may be rendered either
Concerning First Principles or Concerning Principalities. These books are in
truth, apart from these questions, exceedingly obscure and difficult; for in
them he discusses matters over which the philosophers have spent their whole
lives without any result. But our Christian thinker has done all that lay in his
power to turn to purposes of sound religion the belief in a creator and the
order of the created world which they had made subservient to their false
religion. Wherever therefore I have found in his books anything contrary to the
truth concerning the Trinity which he has in other places spoken of in a
strictly orthodox sense, I have either omitted it as a foreign and not genuine
expression or set it down in terms agreeing with the rule of faith which we find
him constantly assenting to. There are things, no doubt, which he has developed
in somewhat obscure language, wishing to pass rapidly over them, and as
addressing those who have experience and knowledge of such matters; in these
cases I have made the passage plain by adding words which I had read in other
books of his where the matter was more fully treated. I have done this in the
interest of clearness: but I have put in nothing of my own; I have only given
him back his own words, though taken from other passages. I have explained this
in the Preface, so that those who calumniate us should not think that they had
found in this fresh material for their charges. But let them take heed what they
are about in their perversity and contentiousness. As for me, I have not
undertaken this laborious task (in which I trust that God will be my helper in
answer to your prayers) for the sake of shutting the mouths of calumnious men,
but with the view of supplying material for the increase of real knowledge to
those who desired it. This only I require of every man who undertakes to copy
out these books or to read them, in the sight of God the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost, and adjure him by our faith in the coming kingdom, by the
assurance of the resurrection of the dead, by the eternal fire which is prepared
for the devil and his angels (even as he trusts that he shall not possess as his
eternal inheritance that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and
where their fire will not be quenched and their worm will not die) that he
should neither add nor take away, that he shouldneither insert nor change,
anything in that which is written but that he should compare his copy with that
from which it is copied and correct it critically letter for letter, and that he
should not keep by him a copy which has not received correction or criticism,
lest, if his copy is not thus distinct, the difficulty of the meaning may beget
a still greater obscurity in the mind of the readers.

1: Translated among Jerome's works in this Series.

2: Cant. i, 4.

3: See the Translation in this Volume.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: PREFACE TO THE TWO BOOKS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
========================================================================

Preface to the Two Books of Ecclesiastical History, Added by Rufinus to His
Translation of Eusebius Addressed to Chromatius, Bishop of Aquileia, a.d. 401
Preface to the Two Books of Ecclesiastical History, Added by Rufinus to His
Translation of Eusebius Addressed to Chromatius, Bishop of Aquileia, a.d. 401

(For the occasion of writing, and the date, see Prolegomena, p. 412.)

------------

It is the custom, they say, of skilful physicians, when they perceive that some
epidemic disease is near at hand in one of our cities, to provide some kind of
medicine, whether solid or liquid, which men may use as a preventative to defend
themselves from the destruction which is hanging over them. You have imitated
this method of the doctors, my venerable Father, Chromatius, at the moment when
the gates of Italy were broken through by Alaric the commander of the Goths, and
thus a disease and plague poured in upon us, which made havoc of the fields and
cattle and men throughout the land. You then sought a remedy against the cruelty
and destruction, so that the minds of then which were languishing might be drawn
away from the contagion of the prevailing malady, and might preserve their
balance through an interest in better pursuits. This you have done by enjoining
on me the task of translating into Latin the ecclesiastical history which was
written in the Greek language by that most learned man, Eusebius of Caesarea.
You thought that the mind of those who heard it read to them might be so held
fast by it that, in its eager desire for the knowledge of past events, it might
to some extent become oblivious of their actual sufferings. I tried to excuse
myself from the task, as being, through my weakness unequal to it, and as having
in the lapse of years lost the use of the Latin tongue. But I reflected that
your commands were not to be divaricated from your position in the Apostolic
order. For, at the time when the multitude in the desert were hungering, and the
Lord said to his Apostles, "Give ye them to eat," Philip who was one of them
instead of bringing out the loaves which were hid in the wallet of the Apostles,
said that there was a little lad there who had five loaves and two fishes. He
knew that the exhibition of the divine virtue would be none the less brilliant
if the ministry of some of the little ones were used in its fulfilment. He
modestly excused his action by adding, "What are these among so many?" So that
the divine power might be more conspicuous through the difficult and desperate
circumstances in which it acted. I felt that, since you were a scion of the
Apostolic order, you had possibly acted in remembrance of Philip's example, and
that, when you saw that the time was come for the multitudes to be fed, you had
engaged the services of a little lad who might be able to contribute, twice
told, the five loaves1 which he had received, but who further, to fulfil the
Gospel type, might add two small fishes2 which he had captured by his own
efforts. I have therefore made the attempt to execute what you had ordered,
having the assurance that the deficiency of my inexperience would be excused on
account of the authority of him who gave the command.

I must point out the course I have taken in reference to the tenth book of this
work. As it stands in the Greek, it has little to do with the process of events.
All but a small part of it is taken up with discussions tending to the praise of
particular Bishops, and adds nothing to our knowledge of facts. I have therefore
left out all this superfluous matter; and, whatever in it belonged to genuine
history I have added to the ninth book, with which I have made his history
close. The tenth and eleventh books I have myself compiled, partly froth the
traditions of the former generation, partly from facts within my own memory; and
these I have added to the previous books, like the two fishes to the loaves. If
you bestow your approval and benediction upon them, I shall have a sure
confidence that they will suffice for the multitude. The work as now completed
contains the events from the Ascension of the Saviour to the present time; my
own two books those from the days of Constantine when the persecution came to an
end on to the death of the Emperor Theodosius. The following note occurs at the
end of the ninth book of Rufinus` Latin Version of Eusebius.

Thus far Eusebius has given us the record of the history. As to the subsequent
events, as they have followed on up to the present time, as I have found them
recorded in the writings of the last generation, or so far as they are covered
by my own knowledge, I will add them, obeying, as best I may, in this point also
the commands of our father in God.3 1: That is, the ten books of Eusebius'
History.

2: That is, the two books added by Rufinus.

3: Chromatius.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 12: RUFINUS' APOLOGY IN DEFENCE OF HIMSELF
========================================================================

Rufinus' Apology in Defence of Himself.

Sent to Anastasius, Bishop of the City of Rome Rufinus' Apology in Defence of
Himself.

Sent to Anastasius, Bishop of the City of Rome

This document was called forth by accusations against Rufinus made, soon after
his accession, to Anastasius, who held the Roman see from 498 to 503. The
authority of the Roman Popes at this time was not what it afterwards became, and
it is improbable that Anastasius should have summoned Rufinus, as some suppose
him to have done, from Aquileia, where he was living on confidential terms with
the Bishop Chromatius, to come to Rome to answer a formal accusation or to be
judged by him But since Rome was the centre of information, a Christian would
not wish to be ill-thought of by its Bishop. Those who accused Rufinus were the
friends of Jerome at Rome, especially the noble widow Marcella and the Senator
Pammachius. They had endeavoured to gain some condemnation of Rufinus from
Siricius before his death in November 398; but Siricius befriended Rufinus ("his
simplicity was imposed on," according to Jerome)1 On the election of Anastasius,
however, in 399, they accused Rufinus of having, by his translation of Origen's
Peri 'Arxwn introduced heresy into the Roman church. Jerome thus speaks
Marcella, Ep. cxxvii. 10. "She was the cause of the condemnation of the
heretics: she brought witnesses who had been at a former time under their
instruction, and thus imbued with error and heresy; she showed how many there
were who had been deceived; she had the volumes of the Peri 'Arxwn brought in,
and pointed out the alterations which the Scorpion2 had made in them: till at
last letters were written, and that more than once, summoning the heretics to
come and defend themselves, but they did not dare to come. So great was the
force of conviction brought to bear on them that, to prevent their heresy being
exposed in their presence, they chose to stay away and be condemned." From the
letter of Anastasius to John of Jerusalem about Rufinus we gather that, while he
strongly disapproved the translation of Origen, he left Rufinus himself to his
own conscience, and did not care to know what had become of him. The letter of
Rufinus, though called an Apology, bears no trace of being an answer to a
summons or judgment of the Pontiff, but merely a reply to statements which were
likely to prejudice him in the Pontiff's opinion. The year in which the Apology
was written was 400 a.d.

1. It has been brought to my knowledge that certain persons, in the course of a
controversy which they have been raising in your Holiness' jurisdiction on
matters of faith or on other points, have made mention of my name. I venture to
believe that your Holiness, who have been trained from your infancy in the
strict principles of the Church, has refused to listen to any calumnies which
may have been directed against an absent person, and one who has been favourably
known to you as united with you in the faith and love of God. Nevertheless,
since I hear it reported that my reputation has been attacked, I have thought it
right to make my position clear to your Holiness in writing. It was impossible
for me to do this in person. I have just returned to my family1 after an absence
of nearly 30 years; and it would have been harsh and almost inhuman to come away
again so soon from those whom I had been so late in revisiting. The labour also
of my long journey has left me too weak to begin the journey again. My object in
this letter is not to remove some stain of suspicion from your mind, which I
regard as a holy place, as a kind of divine sanctuary which does not admit any
evil thing. Rather, I desire that the confession I am about to make to you may
be like a stick placed in your hands to drive away any envious persons who may
be barking like dogs against me.

2. My faith, indeed, was sufficiently proved when the heretics persecuted me. I
was at that time sojourning in the church of Alexandria, and underwent
imprisonment and exile which was then the penalty of faithfulness; yet for the
sake of any who may wish to put my faith to the test, or to hear and learn what
it is I will declare it. I believe that the Trinity is of one nature and
godhead, of one and the same power and substance; so that between the Father,
the Son and the Holy Ghost there is no diversity at all, except that the one is
the Father, the second the Son, and the third the Holy Ghost. There is a Trinity
of real and living Persons, a unity of nature and substance.

3. I also confess that the Son of God has in these last days been born of the
Virgin and the Holy Spirit: that he has taken upon him our natural human flesh
and soul; that in this he suffered and was buried and rose again from the dead;
that the flesh in which he rose was that same flesh which had been laid in the
sepulchre; and that in this same flesh, together with the soul, he ascended into
heaven after his resurrection: from whence we look for his coming to judge the
quick and the dead.

4. But, further, as to the resurrection of our own flesh, I believe that it will
be in its integrity and perfection; it will be this very flesh in which we now
live. We do not hold, as is slanderously reported by some men, that another
flesh will rise instead of this; but this very flesh, without the loss of a
single member, without the cutting off of any single part of the body; none
whatever of all its properties will be absent except its corruptibility. It is
this which is promised by the holy Apostle concerning the body: It is sown in
corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in weakness, it is raised
in power; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown a natural
body, it is raised a spiritual body. This is the doctrine which has been handed
down to me by those from whom I received holy baptism in the Church of Aquileia;
and I think that it is the same which the Apostolic See has by long usage handed
down and taught.

5. I affirm, moreover, a judgment to come, in which judgment every man is to
receive the due meed of his bodily life, according to that which he has done,
whether good or evil. And, if in the case of men the reward is to be according
to their works, how much more will this be so in the case of the devil, who is
the universal cause of sin? Of the devil himself our belief is that which is
written in the Gospel, namely, that both he and all his angels, will receive as
their portion the eternal fire, and with him those who do his works, that is,
who become the accusers of their brethren. If then any one denies that the devil
is to be subjected to the eternal fires, may he have his part with him in the
eternal fire, so that he may know by experience the fact which he now denies.

6. I am next informed that some stir has been made on the question of the nature
of the soul. Whether complaints on a matter of this kind ought to be entertained
instead of being put aside, you must yourself decide. If, however, you desire to
know my opinion on the subject, I will state it frankly. I have read a great
many writers on this question, and I find that they express divers opinions.
Some of those whom I have read hold that the soul is infused together with the
material body through the channel2 of the human seed; and of this they give such
proofs as they can. I think that this was the opinion of Tertullian or
Lactantius among the Latins, perhaps also of a few others. Others assert that
God is every day making new souls, and infusing them into the bodies which have
been framed in the womb; while others again believe that the souls were all made
long ago, when God made all things of nothing, and that all that he now does is
to plant out each soul in its body as it seems good to him. This is the opinion
of Origen, and of some others of the Greeks. For myself, I declare in the
presence of God that, after reading each of these opinions, I am up to the
present moment unable to hold any of them as certain and absolute; the
determination of the truth in this question I leave to God and to any to whom it
shall please him to reveal it. My profession on this point is therefore, first,
that these several opinions are those which I have found in books, but,
secondly, that I as yet remain in ignorance on the subject, except so far as
this, that the Church delivers it as an article of faith that God is the creator
of souls as well as of bodies.

7. Now as to another matter. I am told that objections have been raised against
me because, forsooth, at the request of some of my brethren, I translated
certain works of Origen from Greek into Latin. I suppose that every one sees
that it is only through ill will that this is made a matter of blame. For, if
there is any offensive statement in the author, why is this to be twisted into a
fault of the translator? I was asked to exhibit in Latin what stands written in
the Greek text; and I did nothing more than fit the Latin words to the Greek
ideas. If, therefore, there is anything to praise in these ideas, the praise
does not belong to me; and similarly as to anything to which blame may attach. I
admit that I put something of my own into the work; as I stated in my Preface, I
used my own discretion in cutting out not a few passages; but only those as to
which I had come to suspect that the thing had not been so stated by Origen
himself; and the statement appeared to me in these cases to have been inserted
by others, because in other places I had found the author state the matter in a
catholic sense. I entreat you therefore, holy, venerable and saintly father, not
to permit a storm of ill will to be raised against me because of this, nor to
sanction the employment of partisanship and of calumny-weapons which ought never
to be used in the Church of God. Where can simple faith and innocence be safe if
they are not protected in the Church? I am not a defender or a champion of
Origen; nor am I the first who has translated his works. Others before me had
done the very same thing, and I did it, the last of many, at the request of my
brethren. If an order is to be given that such translations are not to be made,
such an order holds good for the future, not the past; but if those are to be
blamed who have made these translations before any such order was given, the
blame must begin with those who took the first step.

8. As for me, I declare in Christ's name that I never held, nor ever will hold,
any other faith but that which I have set forth above, that is, the faith which
is held by the Church of Rome, by that of Alexandria, and by my own church of
Aquileia; and which is also preached at Jerusalem; and if there is any one who
believes otherwise, whoever he may be, let him be Anathema. But those who
through mere ill will and malice engender dissensions and offences among their
brethren, and cause them to stumble, shall give account of it in the day of
judgment.

1: Jerome Letter cxxvii, 9.

2: The Scorpion is Jerome's name for Rufinus, especially after his death. He
means that Rufinus had altered the too palpable expresslons of heresy, so that
the more subtle expressions of it might gain acceptance.

1: Rufinus uses the word "parentes." Jerome in his Apology (ii, 2) scoffs at the
notion that a man of Rufinus' age (about 55) could have parents living, and
supposes that he is making a false suggestion by using the word in the sense in
which it was vulgarly used - that of relations generally, as it is now used in
French.

2: Traducem, properly, the layer, by which the vine is propagated, and hence the
medium through which life is communicated. This is the theory of the
"traducianists" who thus made the soul to be derived from the parent by
procreation. It is contrasted with that of the "creationists" who held that each
soul was separately created, and infused into the child at the moment when life
began.


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  CHAPTER 13: RUFINUS' PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION OF ORIGEN'S COMMENTARY ON PSALMS 36, 37, AND 38
========================================================================

Rufinus' Preface to the Translation of Origen's Commentary on Psalms 36, 37, and
38.

Addressed to Apronianus,1 Either at Rome or at Aquileia, Between a.d. 398 and
a.d. 407 Rufinus' Preface to the Translation of Origen's Commentary on Psalms
36, 37, and 38.

Addressed to Apronianus,1 Either at Rome or at Aquileia, Between a.d. 398 and
a.d. 407

------------ The whole exposition of the thirty-sixth, thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth Psalms is ethical in its character, being designed to enforce more correct methods of life; and teaches at one time the way of conversion and repentance, at another that of purification and of progress. I have therefore thought it well to translate it into Latin for you, my dearest son Apronianus, having first arranged it in nine of the short sermons which are called in Greek Homilies, and incorporated it into one whole; and thus this discourse which in all its parts aims at the correction and the advancement of the moral life, is collected into a single volume. My translation will at all events be of use so far as to put the reader without effort in possession of the meaning of the author, which is here fully laid open, and to bring home to him the simplicity of life which he enjoins with clearness of thought and in simple words; and thus the voice of prophecy may reach not men alone but also god-fearing women, and lend subtlety to the minds of the simple. Yet I fear that pious lady, who is my daughter but your sister in Christ, may think that she owes me no thanks for my work if it brings her nothing but puzzling thoughts and thorny questions: for the human body could hardly hold together if divine providence had formed it of bones and muscles alone without blending with them the ease and grace of the softer tissues.

1: A Roman noble converted by Rufinus and Melania, with the latter of whom he
was connected.


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  CHAPTER 14: RUFINUS' PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION OF ORIGEN'S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS
========================================================================

Rufinus' Preface to the Translation of Origen's Commentary on the Epistle to the
Romans Addressed to Heraclius at Aquileia About a.d. 407 Rufinus' Preface to the
Translation of Origen's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans Addressed to
Heraclius at Aquileia About a.d. 407

------------ My intention was to press the shore of the quiet land in the little bark in which I was sailing, and to draw oat a few little fishes from the pools of Greece: but you have compelled me, brother Heraclius, to give my sails to the wind and go forth into the deep sea; you persuade me to leave the work which lay before me in the translation of the homilies written by the Man of Adamant1 in his old age, and to open to you the fifteen volumes in which he discussed the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. In these books. while he aims at representing the Apostle's thoughts, he is carried away into a sea of such depth that one who follows him into it may well be afraid of being drowned in the greatness of his thoughts as in the vastness of the waves. Then also you do not consider this, that my breath is but scanty for filling a grand trumpet of eloquence like his. And beyond all these difficulties is this, that the books themselves have been interpolated. In almost all the libraries (I grant that no one can tell how it happened) some of the volumes are absent from the body of the work; and to supply these, and to restore the continuity of the work in the Latin version is beyond my talent, but would be, as you must know when you make your demand, a special gift of God. You add, however, so that nothing may be wanting to the labour I am undertaking, that I had better abbreviate this whole body of fifteen volumes, which in the Greek reaches to the length of forty thousand lines or more, and bring it within moderate compass. Your injunctions are hard indeed, and might be thought to be imposed by one who did not care to consider what the burden of such a work must be. I will, however, attempt it, hoping that through your prayers, and the favour of the Lord, what seems impossible to man may become possible. But we will now, if you please, listen to the Preface which Origen himself prefixes to the work on which he was entering.

1: Or man of steel: (it might also be translated, The indomitable); a name given
to Origen, an account of the greatness of his labours. It is said by Westcott
Dict. of Xtn. Biog. "Origen") to have been adopted by Origen himself, and to
form part of his real name.


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  CHAPTER 15: RUFINUS'S EPILOGUE TO PAMPHILUS THE MARTYR'S APOLOGY FOR ORIGEN 
========================================================================

Rufinus's Epilogue to Pamphilus the Martyr's Apology for Origen Otherwise the
Book Concerning the Adulteration of the Works of Origen.

Addressed to Macarius at Pinetum a.d. 397.

Rufinus's Epilogue to Pamphilus the Martyr's Apology for Origen Otherwise the
Book Concerning the Adulteration of the Works of Origen.

------------ Addressed to Macarius at Pinetum a.d. 397.

------------

The next work was sent out at the same time with Pamphilus' Apology. Rufinus
believed that Origen's works had been adulterated by heretics so as to turn his
assertions into support of their own opinions. He therefore, in his translation
of the Peri 'Arxwn, altered many things which had a heterodox meaning as found
in the ordinary mss. of Origen, so as to make the work consistent with itself
and with the orthodox views expressed in other parts of Origen's writings. How
far this process was legitimate or honest must be judged from a perusal of the
controversy which followed; but it should be borne in mind, first, that the
standard of literary exactness and conscientiousness was not the same in those
days as in ours; secondly, that when everything depended on copyists there was
room for infinite variations in the copies, whether through negligence,
ignorance or fraud; thirdly, that the principles adopted by Rufinus were
precisely those acknowledged by his great opponent Jerome, in his Treatise De
Optimo Genere Interpretandi, and his Letter to Vigilantius (Letters lxvi and
lxi).

My object in the translation from Greek into Latin of the holy martyr Pamphilus'
Apology for Origen, which I have given in the preceding volume according to my
ability and the requirements of the matter, is this: I wish you to know through
full information that the rule of faith which has been set forth above in his
writings is that which we must embrace and hold; for it is clearly shown that
the Catholic opinion is contained in them all. Nevertheless you have to allow
that there are found in his books certain things not only different from this
but in certain cases even repugnant to it; things which our canons of truth do
not sanction, and which we can neither receive nor approve. As to the cause of
this an opinion has reached me which has been widely entertained, and which I
wish to be fully known by you and by those who desire to know what is true,
since it is possible also that some who have before been actuated by the love of
fault-finding may acquiesce in the truth and reason of the matter when they have
it set before them; for some seem determined to believe anything in the world to
be true rather than that which withdraws from them the occasions of
fault-finding. It must, I think, be felt to be wholly impossible that a man so
learned and so wise, a man whom even his accusers may well admit to have been
neither foolish nor insane, should have written what is contrary and repugnant
to himself and his own opinions. But even suppose that this could in some way
have happened; suppose, as some perhaps have said, that in the decline of life
he might have forgotten what he had written in his early days, and have made
assertions at variance with his former opinions; how are we to deal with the
fact that we sometimes find in the very same passages, and, as I may say, almost
in successive sentences, clauses inserted expressive of contrary opinions ? Can
we believe that in the same work and in the same book, and even sometimes, as I
have said, in the following paragraph,.a man could have forgotten his own views
? For example that, when he had said just before that no passage in all the
Scripture could be found in which the Holy Spirit was spoken of as made or
created, he could have immediately added that the Holy Spirit had been made
along with the rest of the creatures ? or again, that the same man who clearly
states that the Father and the Son are of one substance, or as it is called in
Greek Homoousion, could in the next sentence say that He was of another
substance, and was a created being, when he had but a little before described
him as born of the very nature of God the Father? Or again in the matter of the
resurrection of the flesh, could he who so clearly declared that it was the
nature of the flesh which ascended with the Word of God into heaven, and there
appeared to the celestial Powers, presenting a new image of himself for them to
worship, could he, I ask you, possibly turn round and say that this flesh was
not to be saved ? Such things could not happen even in the case of a man who had
taken leave of his senses and was not sound in the brain. How, therefore, this
came to pass, I will point out with all possible brevity. The heretics are
capable of any violence, they have no remorse and no scruples: this we are
forced to recognize by the audacities of which they have been frequently
convicted. And, just as their father the devil has from the heginning made it
his object to falsify the words of God and twist them from their true meaning,
and subtilely to interpolate among them his own poisonous ideas, so he has left
these successors of his the same art as their inheritance. Accordingly, when God
had said to Adam, "You shall eat of all the trees of the garden;" he, when he
wished to deceive Eve interpolated a single syllable, by which he reduced within
the narrowest bounds God's liberality in permitting all the fruits to be eaten.
He said: "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden?" and
thus by suggesting the complaint that God's command was severe, he more easily
persuaded her to transgress the precept. The heretics have followed the example
of their father the craft of their teacher. Whenever they found in any of the
renowned writers of old days a discussion of those things which pertain to the
glory of God so full and faithful that every believer could gain profit aud
instruction from it, they have not scrupled to infuse into their writings the
poisonous taint of their own false doctrines; this they have done, either by
inserting things which the writers had not said or by changing by interpolation
what they had said, so that their own poisonous heresy might more easily be
asserted and authorized by passing under the name of all the church writers of
the greatest learning and renown; they meant it to appear that well-known and
orthodox men had held as they did. We hold the clearest proofs of this in the
case of the Greek writers and this adulteration of books is to be found in the
case of many of the ancients; but it will suffice to adduce the testimony of a
few, so that it may be more easily understood what has befallen the writings of
Origen.

Clement, the disciple of the Apostles, who was bishop of the Roman church next
to the Apostles, was a martyr, wrote the work which is called in the Greek
'Anagnwrismoj, or in Latin, The Recognition.1 In these books he sets forth again
and again in the name of the Apostle Peter a doctrine which appears s to be
truly apostolical: yet in certain passages the heresy of Eunomius is so brought
in that you would imagine that you were listening to an argument of Eunomius
himself, asserting that the Son of God was created out of no existing elements.
Then again that other method of falsification is introduced, by which it is made
to appear that the nature of the devil and of other demons has not resulted from
the wickedness of their will and purpose, but from an exceptional and separate
quality of their creation, although he in all other places had taught that every
reasonable creature was endowed with the faculty of free will. There are also
some other things inserted into his books which the church's creed does not
admit. I ask, then, what we are to think of these things? Are we to believe that
an apostolic man, nay, almost an apostle (since he writes the things which the
apostles speak), one to whom the apostle Paul bore his testimony in the words,
"With Clement and others, my fellow labourers, whose names are in the book of
life" was the writer of words which contradict the book of life ? or are we to
say, as we have said before, that perverse men, in order to gain authority for
their own heresies by the use of the names of holy men, and so procure their
readier acceptance, interpolated these things which it is impossible to believe
that the true authors either thought or wrote?

Again, the other Clement, the presbyter of Alexandria, and the teacher of that
church, in almost all his books describes the three Persons as having one and
the same glory and eternity: and yet we sometimes find in his books passages in
which he speaks of the Son as a creature of God. Is it credible that so great a
man as he, so orthodox in all points, and so learned, either held opinions
mutually contradictory, or left in writing views concerning God which it is an
impiety, I will not say to believe, but even to listen to?

Once more, Dionysius the Bishop of Alexandria, was a most learned maintainer of
the church's faith, and in passages without end defended the unity and eternity
of the Trinity, so earnestly that some persons of less insight imagine that he
held the views of Sabellius; yet in the books which he wrote against the heresy
of Sabellius, there are things inserted of such a character that the Arians
endeavour to shield themselves under his authority, and on this account the holy
Bishop Athanasius felt himself compelled to write an apology for his work,
because he was assured that he could not have held strange opinions or have
written things in which he contradicted himself, but felt sure that these things
had been interpreted by ill disposed men. This opinion we have been led to form
by the force of the facts themselves, in the case of these very reverend men and
doctors of the church; we have found it impossible, I say, to believe that those
reverend men who again and again have supported the church's belief should in
particular points have held opinions contradictory to themselves. As to Origen,
however, in whom, as I have said above, are to be found, as in those others,
certain diversities of statement, it will not be sufficient to think precisely
as we think or feel about those who enjoy an established reputation for
orthodoxy; nor could a similar charge be met by a similar excuse, were it not
that its validity is shown by words and writings of his own in which he makes
this fact the subject of earnest complaint. What he had to suffer while still
living in the flesh, while still having feeling and sight, from the corruption
of his books and treatises, or from counterfeit versions of them, we may learn
clearly from his own letter which he wrote to certain intimate friends at
Alexandria; and by this you will see how it comes to pass that some things which
are self-contradictory are found in his writings.2

"Some of those persons who take a pleasure in accusing their neighbours, bring
against us and our teaching the charge of blasphemy, though from us they have
never heard anything of the kind. Let them take heed to themselves how they
refuse to mark that solemn injunction which says that3

`Revilers shall not inherit the kingdom of God,' when they declare that I hold
that the father of wickedness and perdition, and of those who are castforth from
the kingdom of God, that is the devil, is to be saved, a thing which no man can
say even if he has taken leave of his senses and is manifestly insane. Yet it is
no wonder, I think, if my teaching is falsified by my adversaries, and is
corrupted and adulterated in the same manner as the epistle of Paul the Apostle.
Certain men, as we know, compiled a false epistle under the name of Paul, so
that they might trouble the Thessalonians as if the day of the Lord were nigh at
hand, and thus beguile them. It is on account of that false epistle that he
wrote these words in the second epistle to the Thessalonians:4 `We beseech you,
brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto
him; to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be
troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter as sent from us, as that the
day of the Lord is at hand. Let no man beguile you in any wise.' It is something
of the same kind, I perceive, which is happening to us also. A certain promoter
of heresy, after a discussion which had been held between us in the presence of
many persons, and notes of it had been taken, procured the document from those
who had written out the notes, and added or struck out whatever he chose, and
changed things as he thought right, and published it abroad as if it were my
work, but pointing in triumphant scorn at the expressions which he had himself
inserted. The brethren in Palestine, indignant at this, sent a man to me at
Athens to obtain from me an authentic copy of the work. Up to thatthne I had
never even read it over again or revised it: it had been so completely neglected
and thrown aside that it could hardly be found. Nevertheless, I sent it:
and,-God is witness that I am speaking the truth,-when I met the man himself who
had adulterated the work, and took him to task for having done so, be answered,
as if he were giving me satisfaction: "I did it because I wished to improve that
treatise and to purge away its faults." What kind of a purging was this that he
applied to my dissertation? such a purging as Marcion or his successor Apelles
after him gave to the Gospels and to the writings of the Apostle. They subverted
the true text of Scripture; and this man similarly first took away the true
statements which I had made, and then inserted what was false to furnish grounds
for accusation against me. But, though those who have dared to do this are
impious and heretical men, yet those who give credence to such accusations
against us shall not escape the judgment of God. There are others also, not a
few, who have done this through a wish to throw confusion into the churches.
Lately, a certain heretic who had seen me at Ephesus and had refused to meet me,
and had not opened his mouth in my presence, but for some reason or other had
avoided doing so, afterwards composed a dissertation according to his own fancy,
partly mine, partly his own, and sent it to his disciples in various places: I
know that it reached those who were in Rome, and I doubt not that it reached
others also. He was behaving in the same reckless way at Antioch also before I
came there: and the dissertation which he brought with him came into tbe hands
of many of our friends. But when I arrived, I took him to task in the presence
of many persons, and, when he persisted, with a complete absence of shame, in
the impudent defence of his forgery, I demanded that the book should be brought
in amongst us, so that my mode of speech might be recognized by the brethren,
who of course knew the points on which I am accustomed to insist and the method
of teaching which I employ. He did not, however, venture to bring in the book,
and his assertions were refuted by them all and he himself was convicted of
forgery, and thus the brethren were taught a lesson not to give ear to such
accusations. If then any one is willing to trust me at all-I speak as in the
sight of God-let him believe what I say about the things which are falsely
inserted in my letter. But if any man refuses to believe me, and chooses to
speak evil of me, it is not to me that he does the injury: he will himself be
arraigned as a false witness before God, since he is either bearing false
witness against his neighbour, or giving credit to those who bear it."

Such are the complaints which he made while still living, and while he was still
able to detect the corruptions and falsifications which had been made in his
books. There is another letter of his, in which I remember to have read a
complaint of the falsifying of his writings; but I have not a copy of it at
hand, otherwise I could add to those which I have quoted a second testimony in
favour of his good faith and veracity direct from himself. But I think that I
have said enough to satisfy those who listen to what is said, not in the
interest of strife and detraction, but in that of a love of truth. I have shown
and proved in the case of the saintly men of whom I have made mention, and of
whose orthodoxy is no question, that, where the tenor of a book is presumably
right, anything which is found in it contrary to the faith of the church is more
properly believed to have been inserted by heretics than to have been written by
the author: and I cannot think it an absurd demand that the same thing should be
believed in the case of Origen, not only because the argument is similar but
because of the witness given by himself in the complaints which I have brought
out from his writings: otherwise we must believe that, like a silly or insane
person, he has written in contradiction to himself. As to the possibility that
the heretics may have acted in the violent manner supposed, such wickedness may
easily be believe of them. They have given a specimen of it, which makes it
credible in the present case, in the fact that they have been unable to keep off
their impious hands even from the sacred words of the Gospel. Any one who has a
mind to see how they have acted in the case of the Acts of the Apostles or their
Epistles, how they have befouled them and gnawed them away, how they have
defiled them in every kind of way, sometimes adding words which expressed their
impious doctrine, sometimes taking out the opposing truths, will understand it
most fully if he will read the books of Tertullian written against Marcion. It
is no great thing that they should have corrupted the writings of Origen when
they have dared to corrupt the sayings of God our Saviour. It is true that some
persons may withhold their assent from what I am saying on the ground of the
difference of the heresies; since it was one kind of heresy the partisans of
which corrupted the Gospels, but it is another which is aimed at in these
passages which, as we assert, have been inserted in the works of Origen. Let
those who have such doubts consider that, as in all the saints dwells the one
spirit of God (for the Apostle says,5 "The spirits of the prophets are subject
to the prophets," and again,6 "We all have been made to drink of that one
spirit"); so also in all the heretics dwells the one spirit of the devil, who
teaches them all and at all times the same or similar wickedness.

There may, however, be some to whom the instances we have given have less
persuasive force because they have to do with Greek writers; and therefore,
although it is a Greek writer for whom I am pleading, yet, since it is the Latin
tongue which is, so to speak, entrusted with the argument, and they are Latin
people before whom you have earnestly begged me to plead the cause of these men,
and to show what wounds they suffer by the calumnious renderings of their works,
it will be satisfactory to show that things of the same kind have happened to
Latin as well as Greek writers, and that men approved for their saintly
character have had a storm of calumny raised against them by the falsification
of their works. I will recount things of still recent memory, so that nothing
may be lacking to the manifest credibility of my contention, and its truth may
lie open for all to see.

Hilary Bishop of Pictavium7 was a believer in the Catholic doctrine, and wrote a
very complete work of instruction with the view of bringing back from their
error those who had subscribed the faithless creed of Ariminum.8 This book fell
into the hands of his adversaries and ill wishers, whether, as some said, by
bribing his secretary, or by no matter what other cause. He knew nothing of
this: but the book was so falsified by them, the saintly man being all the while
entirely unconscious of it, that, when his enemies began to accuse him of heresy
in the episcopal assembly, as holding what they knew they had corruptly inserted
in his manuscript, he himself demanded the production of his book as evidence of
his faith. It was brought from his house, and was found to be full of matter
which he repudiated: but it caused him to be excommunicatecl and to be excluded
from the meeting of the synod. In this case, however, though the crime was one
of unexampled wickedness, the man who was the victhn of it was alive, and
present in the flesh; and the hostile faction could be convicted and brought to
punishment, when their tricks became known and their machinations were exposed.
A remedy was applied through statements, explanations, and similar things: for
living men can take action on their own behalf, the dead can refute no
accusations under which they labour.

Take another case. The whole collection of the letters of the martyr Cyprian is
usually found in a single manuscript. Into this collection certain heretics who
held a blasphemous doctrine about the Holy Spirit inserted a treatise of
Tertullian on the Trinity, which was faultily expressed though he is himself an
upholder of our faith: and from the copies thus made they wrote out a number of
others; these they distributed through the whole of the vast city of
Constantinople at a very low price: men were attracted by this cheapness and
readily bought up the documents full of hidden snares of which they knew
nothing; and thus the heretics found means of gaining credit for their impious
doctrines through the authoritv of a great name. It happened, however, that,
shortly after the publication, there were found there some of our catholic
brothers who were able to expose this wicked fabrication, and recalled as many
as they could reach from the entanglements of error. In this they partly
succeeded. But there were a great many in those parts who remained convinced
that the saintly martyr Cyprian held the belief which had been erroneously
expressed by Tertullian.

I will add one other instance of the falsification of a document. It is one of
recent memory, though it is an example of the primeval subtlety, and it
surpasses all the stories of the ancients.

Bishop Damasus, at the time when a consultation was held in the matter of the
reconciling of the followers of Apollinarius to the church,9 desired to have a
document setting forth the faith of the church, which should be subscribed by
those who wished to be reconciled. The compiling of this document he entrusted
to a certain friend of his, a presbyter and a highly accomplished man,10 who
usually acted for him in matters of this kind. When he came to compose the
document, he found it necessary, in speaking of the Incarnation of our Lord, to
apply to him the expression "Homo Dominicus." The Apollinarists11 took offence
at this expression, and began to impugn it as a novelty. The writer of the
document thereupon undertook to defend himself, and to confute the objectors by
the authority of ancient Catholic writers; and he happened to show to one of
those who complained of the novelty of the expression a book of the bishop
Athanasius in which the word which was under discussion occurred. The man to
whom this evidence was offered appeared to be convinced, and asked that the
manuscript should be lent to him so that he might convince the rest who from
their ignorance were still maintaining their objections. When he had got the
manuscript into his hands he devised a perfectly new method of falsification. He
first erased the passage in which the expression occurred, and then wrote in
again the same words which he had erased. He returned the paper, and it was
accepted without question. The controversy about this expression again arose;
the manuscript was brought forward: the expression in question was found in it,
but in a position where there had been an erasure: and the man who had brought
forward such a manuscript lost all authority, since the erasure seemed to be the
proof of malpractice and falsification.. However, in this case as in one which I
mentioned before, it wasa living man who was thus treated by a living man, and
he at once did all in his power to lay bare the iniquitous fraud which had been
committed, and to remove the stain of this nefarious act from the man who was
innocent and had done no evil of the kind, and to attach it to the real author
of the deed, so that it should completely overwhelm him with infamy.

Since, then, Origen in his letter complains with his own voice that he has
suffered such things at the hands of the heretics who wished him ill, and
similar things have happened in the case of many other orthodox men among both
the dead and the living, and since in the cases adduced, men's writings are
proved to have been tampered with in a similar way: what determined obstinacy is
this, which refuses to admit the same excuse when the case is the same, and,
when the circumstances are parallel, assigns to one party the allowance due to
respect, but to another infamy due to a criminal. The truth must be told, and
must not lie hid at this point; for it is impossible for any man really to judge
so unjustly as to form different opinions on cases which are similar. The fact
is that the prompters of Origen's accusers are men who make long controversial
discourses in the chruches,12 and even write books the whole matter of which is
borrowed from him, and who wish to deter men of simple mind from reading him,
for fear that their plagiarisms should become widely known, though, indeed,
their appropriations would be no reproach to them if they were not ungrateful to
their master. For instance, one of these men,13 who thinks that a necessity is
laid upon him,14 like that of preaching the Gospel, to speak evil of Origen
among all nations and tongues, declared in a vast assembly of Christian hearers
that he had read six thousand of his works. Surely, if his object in reading
these were, as he is in the habit of asserting, only to acquaint himself with
Origen's faults, ten or twenty or at most thirty of these works would have
sufficed for the purpose. But to read six thousand books is no longer wishing to
know the man, but giving up almost one's whole life to his teaching and
researches. On what ground then can his words be worthy of credit when he blames
men who have only read quite a few of these books while their rule of faith is
kept sacred and their piety unimpaired.

What has been said may suffice to show what opinion we ought to form of the
books of Origen. I think that every one who has at heart the interests of truth,
not of controversy, may easily assent to the well-proved statements I have made.
But if any man perseveres in his contentiousness, we have no such custom.15 It
is a settled custom among us, when we read him, to hold fast that which is good,
according to the apostolic in junction. If we find in these books anything
discrepant to the Catholic faith, we suspect that it has been inserted by the
heretics, and consider it as alien from his opinion as it is from our faith. If,
however, this is a mistake of ours, we run, as I think, no danger from such an
error; for we ourselves, through God's help, continue unharmed by avoiding what
we hold in suspicion and condemn: and further we shall not be accounted accusers
of our brethren before God (you will remember that the accusing of the brethren
is the special work of the devil, and that he received the name of devil16 from
his being a slanderer). Moreover, we thus escape the sentence pronounced on evil
speakers, which separates those who are such from the kingdom of God.

--------

1: Rufinus was deceived as was the whole world until the revival of learning, in
believing this fabrication to be the work of Clement. It is really a romance in
the form of an autobiography of Clement, supposed to be addressed to James of
Jerusalem; and was written probably in Asia Minor or Syria about a.d. 200. See
Article "Clementine Literature" in Dict. of Ch. Biog.

2: The letter is headed "On the adulteration and corruption of his books; from
the 4th book of the letters of Origen: a letter written to certain familiar
friends at Alexandria."

3: 1 Cor. vi, 10.

4: 2 Thess. ii, 1-3.

5: 1 Cor. xiv, 32.

6: 1 Cor. xii, 13.

7: Poictiers.

8: There seem to be no means of throwing light upon this story. Hilary was not
at the council of Ariminum, but at that of Seleucia, held the same year (359).
On his return to Gaul in 361 he endeavoured, in various meetings of bishops to
reunite with the Homoousians those who had subscribed the creed of Ariminum.
(See Art. on Hilary Pictav. in Dict. of Christ. Biography.) It may have been in
one of these meetings that this scene occurred.

9: This was in 382, the year after the Council of Constantinople. Jerome had
come from Constantinople to Rome with the Eastern Bishops Epiphanius of Salamis
in Cyprus and Paulinus of Antioch. His position at Rome is described in the
words of his letter (cxxiii) to Ageruchia, c. 10. "I was assisting Damasus in
matters of ecclesiastical literature, and answering the questions discussed in
the Councils of the East and the West."

10: Jerome.

11: Apollinaris, in his reaction from Arianism, held that the Godhead supplied
the place of the human soul in Christ. Hence their objection to this expression.

12: This is believed to refer to Epiphanius, whose anti-Origenistic sermon at
Jerusalem in the year 394 greatly irritated the Bishops John and Rufinus. See
Jerome Ep. li, and "Against John of Jerusalem," c. 14.

13: Epiphanius.

14: 1 Cor. ix, 16.

15: Adapted from 1 Cor. xi, 16.

16: Diaboloj diaballw to slander.


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  CHAPTER 16: THE APOLOGY OF RUFINUS - BOOK 1
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Book I.

Book I. The following is an epitome of the argument:

1. I must submit to the taunts of my adversary as Christ did to those of the
Jews.

2. Yet the substantial charges must be answered.

3. I praised him but he has wounded me.

4. I am no heretic, but declare my faith, that of my baptism.

5. I give a further proof of my faith in the resurrection of the flesh.

6-9. The resurrection body is a spiritual body.

10. Origen's doctrines in the Peri 'Arxwn.

11. What led to the translation.

12, 13. Pamphilus Apology for Origen.

14. Preface to the Translation of the Peri 'Arxwn.

15. Treatise on the Adulteration of the works of Origen.

16. The difficulties of translation.

17. Explanation of Origen's words "The Son does not see the Father."

18. Difference between seeing and knowing.

19. The Translation interpolated by Eusebius of Cremona.

20. Eusebius, if acting honestly, should have shown me what he thought
dangerous.

21. Jerome's method of translation was the same as mine.

22. Jerome's reference to his Commentary on the Ephesians.

23. Jerome has not really changed his mind about Origen.

24. Women turned into men and bodies into souls.

25. The foundation (katabolh) of the world explained by Jerome as a casting
down.

26. Jerome, under the name of "another," gives his own views.

27. The fall of souls into human bodies is taught by Jerome.

28. Predestination.

29. "Another," who gives strange views, is Jerome himself.

30. "Hopers" and "fore-hopers."

31. and 30 (a). Jerome has confessed these views to be his own.

31 (a) and 32. Further identification of Jerome's views with Origen's.

33. The commentary on the Ephesians, selected by Jerome, is his condemnation.

34, 35. Principalities and Powers.

36. Jerome's complaint of new doctrines may be retorted on himself.

38, 39. Origin of men, angels, and heavenly bodies.

40, 41. The body as a prison.

42. All creatures, including the fallen angel, partaking in the final
restoration.

43. Arrogance of Jerome's teaching.

44. If Origen is not to be pardoned, neither is Jerome.

I have read the document sent from the East by our friend and good brother to a
distinguished member of the Senate, Pammachius, which you have copied and
forwarded to me. It brought to my mind the words of the Prophet:1 "The sons of
men whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword." But for
these wounds which men inflict on one another with the tongue we can hardly find
a physician; so I have betaken myself to Jesus, the heavenly physician, and he
has brought out for me from the medicine chest of the Gospel an antidote of
sovereign power; he has assuaged the violence of my grief with the assurance of
the righteous judgment which I shall have at his hands. The potion which our
Lord dispensed to me was nothing else than these words:2 "Blessed are ye when
men persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely. Rejoice and
leap for joy, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the
Prophets which were before you." With this medicine I was content, and, as far
as the matter concerned me, I had determined for the future to keep silence; for
I said within myself,3 "If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub,
how much more them of his household?" (that is, you and me, unworthy though we
are). And, if it was said of him,4 "He is a deceiver, he deceiveth the people,"
I must not be indignant if I hear that I am called a heretic, and that the name
of mole is applied to me because of the slowness of my mind, or indeed my
blindness. Christ who is my Lord, aye, and who is God over all, was called5 "a
gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." How can I,
then, be angry when I am called a carnal man6 who lives in luxury?

2. Nevertheless, a necessity, as it were, is laid upon me to reply, as a simple
matter of justice: I mean, because many, as I hear, are likely to be upset by
what he has written unless the true state of the case is laid before them. I am
compelled, against my resolution and even my vows, to make reply, lest by
keeping silence I should seem to acknowledge the accusation to be true. It is,
indeed, in most cases, a Christian's glory to follow our Lord's example of
silence, and thereby to repel the accusation; hut to follow this course in
matters of faith causes stumbling blocks to spring up in vast numbers. It is
true that, in the beginning of his invective he promises that he will avoid
personalities, and reply only about the things in question and the charges made
against him; but his profession in both cases is false; for how can he answer a
charge when no charge has been made? and how can a man be said to avoid
personalities when he never ceases to attack and tear to pieces the translator
of the books in question from the first line to the last of his invective? I
shall avoid all pretence of saying less than I mean, and similar subterfuges of
hypocrisy which are hateful in God's sight; and, though my words may be uncouth
and my style unadorned, I will make my reply. I trust, and I shall not trust in
vain, that my readers will pardon my lack of skill, since my object is not to
amuse others but to endeavour to clear myself from the reproaches directed
against me. My wish is that what may shine forth in me may not be style but
truth.

3. But, before I begin to clear up these points, there is one in which I confess
that he has spoken the truth in an eminent degree; namely, when he says that be
is not rendering evil speaking for evil speaking. This, I say, is quite true;
for it is not for evil speaking but for speaking well of him and praising him
that he has rendered reproach and evil speaking. But it is not true, as he says,
that he turns the left cheek to one who smites him on the right. It is on one
who is stroking him and caressing him on the cheek that he suddenly turns and
bites him. I praised his eloquence and his industry in the work of translating
from the Greek. I said nothing in derogation of his faith; but he condemns me on
both these points. He must therefore pardon me if I say some things rather
roughly and rudely; for he has challenged to a reply a man who has no great
rhetorical skill, and who has not, as he knows, the power to make one whom he
wishes to injure and to wound appear to have. received neither wounds nor
injuries. Those who love this kind of eloquence must to seek it in a man whom
every light reportstirs up to fault-finding and vituperation, and who thinks
himself bound, as if he were the censor, to be always coming up to set things to
rights. A man who desires to clear himself from the stains which have been cast
upon him, does not trouble himself, in the answer which he is compelled to
make,about the elegance and neat turns of his reply, but only about its truth.

4. At the very beginning of his work he says, "As if they could not be heretics
by themselves, without me." I must first show that, whether with him or without
him, we are no heretics: then, when our status is made clear, we shall be safe
from having the infamous imputation hurled at us from other men's reports. I was
already living in a monastery, where, as both he and all others know, about 30
years ago, I was made regenerate by Baptism, and received the seal of the faith
at the hands of those saintly men, Chromatius,7 Jovinus8 and Eusebius,9 all of
them now bishops, well-tried and highly esteemed in the church of God, one of
whom was then a presbyter of the church under Valerian of blessed memory, the
second was archdeacon, the third Deacon, and to me a spiritual father, my
teacher in the creed and the articles of belief. These men so taught me, and so
I believe, namely, that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one
Godhead, of one Substance: a Trinity coeternal, inseparable, incorporeal,
invisible, incomprehensible, known to itself alone as it truly is in its
perfection: For "No man10 knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any
man the Father but the Son": and the Holy Spirit is he who "searcheth11 the deep
thingsof God": that this Trinity, therefore, is without all bodily visibility,
but that it is with the eye of the understanding that the Son and the Holy
Spirit see the Father even as the Father sees the Son and the Holy Spirit; and
further, that in this Trinity there is no diversity except that one is Father,
another Son and a third Holy Spirit. There is a Trinity as touching the
distinction of persons, a unity in the reality of the Substance. We received,
further, that the only begotten Son of God, through whom in the beginning all
existing things were made, whether visible or invisible, in these last days took
upon him a human body and Soul, and was made man, and suffered for our
salvation; and the third day he rose again from the dead in that very flesh
which had been laid in the sepulchre; and in that very same flesh made glorious
he ascended into the heavens, whence we look for his coming to judge the quick
and the dead. But further we confess that he gave us hope that we too should
rise in a similar manner, so that we believe that our resurrection will be in
the same manner and process, and in the same form, as the resurrection of our
Lord himself from the dead: that the bodies which we shall receive will not be
phantoms or thin vapours, as some slanderously affirm that we say, but these
very bodies of ours in which we live and in which we die. For how can we truly
believe in the resurrection of the flesh, unless the very nature of flesh
remains in it truly and substantially? It is then without any equivocation, that
we confess the resurrection of this real and substantial flesh of ours in which
we live.

5. Moreover, to give a fuller demonstration of this point, I will add one thing
more. It is the compulsion of those who calumniate me which forces me to exhibit
a singular and special mystery of my own church. It is this, that, while all the
churches thus hand down the Sacrament of the Creed in the form which, after the
words "the remission of sins" adds "the resurrection of the flesh," the holy
church of Aquileia (as though the Spirit of God had foreseen the calumnies which
would be spoken against us) puts in a particular pronoun at the place where it
delivers the resurrection of the dead; instead of saying as others do, "the
resurrection of the flesh," we say "the resurrection of this flesh." At this
point, as the custom is at the close of the Creed, we touch the forehead of this
flesh with the sign of the cross. and with the mouth of this flesh, which we
have so touched, we confess the resurrection; that so we may stop up every
entrance through which the poisoned tongue might bring in its calumnies against
us. Can any confession be fuller than this? Can any exposition of the truth be
more perfect? Yet I see that this remarkable provision of the Holy Spirit has
been of no profit to us. Evil and busy tongues still find room for cavilling.
Unless, says he, you name the members one by one, and expressly designate the
head with its hair, the hands, the feet, the belly, and that which is below the
belly, you have denied the resurrection of the flesh.

6. Behold the discovery of this man of the new learning! a thing which escaped
the notice of the Apostles when they delivered · the faith to the Church; a
thing which none of the saints knew till it was revealed to this man by the
spirit of the flesh. He indeed cannot expound it without bringing in an
indecency. Nevertheless, I will set it forth in his hearing both more worthily
and more truly. Christ is the first fruits of those that sleep;12 he is also
called13 the first begotten from the dead; as also the Apostle says,14 "Christ
is the beginning, afterward they that are Christ's." Since then we have Christ
as the undoubted first fruits of our resurrection, how can any question arise
about the rest of us? It must be evident that, whatever the members, the hair,
the flesh, the bones, were in which Christ rose, in the same shall we also rise.
For this purpose be offered himself to the, disciples to touch after his
resurrection, so that no hesitation as to his resurrection should remain. Since
then Christ has given his own resurrection as a typical instance, one that is
quite evident, and (as I may say) capable of being felt and handled by the hand,
who can be so mad as to think that he himself will rise otherwise than as He
rose who opened the door of the resurrection? This also confirms the truth of
this confession of ours that, while it is the actual natural flesh and no other
which will rise, vet it will rise purged from its faults and having laid aside
its corruption; so that the saying of the Apostle is true:15 "It is sown in
corruption, it will be raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it will
be raised in glory; it is sown a natural16 body, it will be raised a spiritual
body." Inasmuch then as it is a spiritual body, and glorious, and incorruptible,
it will be furnished and adorned with its own proper members, not with members
taken from elsewhere, according to that glorious image of which Christ is set
forth as the perpetual type, as it is said by the Apostle:17 "Who shall change
the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory."

7. Since then, in reference to our hope of the resurrection, Christ is set forth
all through as the archetype, since he is the first born of those who rise, and
since he is the head of every creature, as it is written,18 "Who is the head of
all, the first born from the dead, that in all things he might have the
preeminence;" how is it that we stir up these vain strifes of words, and
conflicts of evil surmises? Does not the faith of the church consist in the
confession which I have set forth above? And is it not evident that men are
moved to accuse others not by difference of belief, but by perversity of
disposition? At this point, however, in arguing about the resurrection of the
flesh, our friend, as his habit is, mixes up what is ridiculous and farcical
with what is serious. He says:

"Some poor creatures of the female sex among us are fond of asking what good the
resurrection will be to them? They touch their breasts, and stroke their
beardless faces, and strike their thighs and their bellies, and ask whether this
poor weak body is to rise again. No, they say, if we are to be like angels we
shall have the nature of angels." Who the poor women are whom he thus takes to
task, and whether they are deserving of his attacks, he knows best. And if he
considers himself to be one of those who are bound to preach that it is not our
part to attack another out of revenge, but that in this instance he is right in
attacking others when they have given him no cause for revenge; or if, again, he
considers that it is no business of his to take care that weak women of his
company should be subjected to attacks only for real causes, and not for such
false and fictitious reasons as these-of all this, I say, he is himself the best
judge. For us it is sufficient to act as he said that he would act: we shall not
render evil for evil. But it is evident that the man who is angry with a woman
because she says that she hopes not to have a frail body in the resurrection is
of the opinion that the frailties of the body will remain. Only, what then, we
ask, are we to make of the words of the Apostle: "It is sown in weakness, it
will be raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it will be raised a
spiritual body"? What frailty can you suppose to exist in a spiritual body? It
is to rise in power; how then is it again to be frail? If it is frail, how can
it be in power? Are not those poor women after all more right than you, when
they say that their bodily frailty cannot have dominion over them in the world
beyond? Why should you mock at them, when they are only following the Apostle's
words: "This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on
immortality?" The Apostles never taught that the body which would rise from the
dead would be frail, but, on the contrary, that it would rise in power and in
glory. Whence entries this opinion which you now produce? Perhaps it is one
obtained from some of your Jews,19 which is now to be promulgated as a new law
for the church, so that we may learn their ways: for in truth the Jews have such
an opinion as this about the resurrection; they believe that they will rise, but
in such sort as that they will enjoy all carnal delights and luxuries, and other
pleasures of the body. What else, indeed, can this "bodily frailty" of yours
mean except members given over to corruption, appetites stimulated and lusts
inflamed?

8. But suffer it to be so, I beg you, as you are lovers of Christ, that the body
is to be in incorruption and without these conditions when it rises from the
dead: then let such things henceforward cease to be mentioned. Let us believe
that in the resurrection even lawful intercourse will no longer exist between
the sexes, since there would be danger that unlawful intercourse would creep in
if such things remained present and unforgotten. What is the use of carefully
and minutely going over and discussing "the belly and what is below it?" You
tell us that we live amidst carnal delights: but I perceive that it is your
belief that we are not to give up such things even in the resurrection. Let us
not deny that this very flesh in which we now live is to rise again: but neither
let us make men think that the imperfections of the flesh are wrapped up in it
and will come again with it. The flesh, indeed, will rise, this very flesh and
not another: it will not change its nature, but it will lose its frailties and
imperfections. Otherwise, if its frailties remain, it cannot even be immortal.
And thus, as I said, we avoid heresy, whether with you or without you. For the
faith of the Church, of which we are the disciples, takes a middle path between
two dangers: it does not deny the reality of the natural flesh and body when it
rises from the dead, but neither does it assert, in contradiction to the
Apostle's words,20 that in the kingdom which is to come corruption will inherit
incorruption. We therefore do not assert that the flesh or body will rise, as
you put it, with some of its members lost or amputated, but that the body will
be whole and complete, having laid aside nothing but its corruption and
dishonour and frailty and also having amputated all the imperfections of
mortality: nothing of its own nature will be lacking to that spiritual body
which shall rise from the dead except this corruption.

9. I have made answer more at length than I had intended on this single article
of the resurrection, through fear lest by brevity I should lay myself open to
fresh aspersions. Consequently, I have made mention again and again not only of
the body. as to which cavils are raised, but of the flesh: and not only of the
flesh; I have added "this flesh;" and further I have spoken not only of "this
flesh" but of "this natural flesh;" I have not even stopped here, but have
asserted that not even the completeness of the several members would be lacking.
I have only demanded that it should be held as part of the faith that, according
to the words of the Apostle, it should rise incorruptible instead of
corruptible, glorious in stead of dishonoured, immortal instead of frail,
spiritual instead of natural; and that we should think of the members of the
spiritual body as being without taint of corruption or of frailty. I have set
forth my faith in reference to the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Lord oar
Saviour, to his Passion and Resurrection, his second coming and the judgment to
come. I have also set it forth in the matter of the resurrection of our flesh,
and have left nothing, I think, in ambiguity. Nothing in my opinion remains to
be said, so far as the faith is concerned.

10. But in this, he says, I convict you, that you have translated the work of
Origen, in which he says that there is to be a restitution of all things, in
which we must believe that not only sinners but the devil himself and his angels
will at last be relieved from their punishment, if we are to set before oar
minds in a consistent manner what is meant by the restitution of all things. And
Origen, he says, teaches further that souls have been made before their bodies,
and have been brought down from heaven and inserted into their bodies. I am not
now acting on Origen's behalf, nor writing an apology for him. Whether he stands
accepted before God or has been cast away is not mine to judge: to his own lord
he stands or falls.21 But I am compelled to make mention of him in a few words,
since our great rhetorician, though seeming to be arguing against him is really
striking at the; and this he does no longer indirectly, but ends by openly
attacking me with his sword drawn and turns his whole fury against me. I say too
little in saying that he attacks me; for indeed, in order to vent his rage
against me, he does not even spare his old teacher:22 he thinks that in the
books which I have translated he can find something which may enable him to hurl
his calumnies against me. In addition to other things which he finds to blame in
me he adds this invidious remark, that I have chosen for translation a work
which neither he nor any of the older translators had chosen. I will begin,
therefore, since it is here that I am chiefly attacked, by stating how it came
to pass that I attempted the translation of this work in preference to any
other, and I will do so in the fewest and truest words. This is, no doubt,
superfluous for you, my well-beloved son, since you know the whole affair as it
occurred; yet it is desirable that those who are ignorant of it should know the
truth: besides, both he and all his followers make this a triumphant accusation
against me, that I promised in my Preface to adopt one method of translation but
adopted a different one in the work itself. Hence, I will make an answer which
will serve not only for them, but for many besides whose judgment is perverted
either by their own malice or by the accusations which others make against me.

11. Some time ago, Macarius, a man of distinction from his faith, his learning,
his noble birth and his personal life, had in hand a work against fatalism or,
as it is called, Mathesis,23 and was spending much necessary and fruitful toil
on its composition; but he could not decide many points, especially how to speak
of the dispensations of divine Providence. He found the matter to be one of
great difficulty. But in the visions of the night the Lord, he said, had shown
him the appearance of a ship far off upon the sea coming towards him, which
ship, when it entered the port, was to solve all the knottypoints which had
perplexed him. When hearose, he began anxiously to ponder the vision, and he
found, as he said, that that was the very moment of my arrival; so that he
forthwith made known to me the scope of his work, and his difficulties, and also
the vision which he had seen. He proceeded to inquire what were the opinions of
Origen, whom he understood to be the most renowned among the Greeks on the
points in question, and begged that I would shortly explain his views on each of
them in order. I at first could only say that the task was one of much
difficulty: but I told him that that saintly man the Martyr Pamphilus had to
some extent dealt with the question in a work of the kind he wished, that is in
his Apology for Origen. Immediately he begged me to translate this work into
Latin. I told him several times that I had no practice in this style of
composition, and that my power of writing Latin had grown dull through the
neglect of nearly thirty years. He, however, persevered in his request, begging
earnestly that by any kind of words that might be possible, the things which he
longed to know should be placed within his reach. I did what he wished in the
best language in my power; but this only inflamed him with greater desire for
the full knowledge of the work itself from which, as he saw, the few
translations which I had made had been taken. I tried to excuse myself; but he
urged me with vehemence, taking God to witness of his earnest request to me not
to refuse him the means which might assist him in doing a good work. It was only
because he insisted so earnestly,and it seemed clear that his desire was
according to the will of God, that I at length acquiesced, and made the
translation.

12. But I wrote a Preface24 to each of these works, and in both, but especially
in the Preface to the work of Pamphilus, which was translated first, I set in
the forefront an exposition of my faith, affirming that my belief is in
accordance with the catholic faith; and I stated that whatever men might find in
the original or in my translation, my share in it in no way implicated my own
faith, and further, in reference to the Peri 'Arxwn I gave this warning. I had
found that in these books some things relating to the faith were set forth in a
catholic sense, just as the Church proclaims them, while in other places, when
the very same thing is in question, expressions of a contrary kind are used. I
had thought it right to set forth these points in the way in which the author
had set them forth when he had propounded the catholic view of them: on the
other hand, when I found things which were contrary to the author's real
opinion, I looked on them as things inserted by others, (for he witnesses by the
complaints contained in his letter that this has been done), and therefore
rejected them, or at all events considered that I might omit them as having none
of the "godly edifying in the faith." It will not, I think, be considered
superfluous to insert these passages from my Prefaces, so that proof may be at
hand for each statement. And further, to prevent the reader from falling into
any mistake as to the passages which I insert from other documents, I have,
where the quotation is from my own works, placed a single mark against the
passage, but, where the words are those of my opponent, a double mark.25 13. In
the Preface to the Apology of Pamphilus, after a few other remarks, I said:

`What the opinions of Origen are may be gathered from the tenor of this
treatise. But as for those things in which he is found to contradict himself, I
will point out how this has come to pass in a few words which I have added at
the close of this Preface. As for us, we believe what has been delivered to us
by the holy Prophets, namely: that the holy Trinity is coeternal, and is of one
power and substance: and that the Son of God in these last days was made man and
suffered for our sins, and, in that very flesh in which he suffered, rose from
the dead; and thereby imparted the hope of a resurrection to the whole race of
men. When we speak of the resurrection of the flesh, we do so not with any
subterfuges, as some slanderously affirm: we believe that the flesh which is to
rise isthis very flesh in which we now live: we do not put one thing for
another, nor when we say body, mean something different from this flesh. If,
therefore, we saythat the body is to rise again, we speak as the Apostle spoke;
for this word body was the word which he employed: Or if, again, we speak of the
flesh, our confession coin tides with the words of the creed. It is a foolish
and calumnious invention to imagine that the human body can be anything but
flesh. Whether, then, we say that it is flesh according to the common faith, or
body according to the Apostle, which is to rise again, our belief must be held,
according to the definition given by the Apostle, with the understanding that
that which is to rise again is to be raised inpower and in glory, an
incorruptible and a spiritual body. While, therefore, we maintain the superior
excellence of the body or flesh which is to be, we must hold that the flesh
which rises again will be real and perfect; the actual nature of the flesh will
be preserved, while the glorious condition of the uncorrupted and spiritual body
will not be impaired. For so it is written:26 "Corruption shall not inherit
incorruption." This is what is preached at jerusalem in the church of God, by
its reverend bishop John: this is what we with him confess and hold. If any one
believes or teaches anything besides this, or thinks that we believe otherwise
than as we have stated, let him be anathema.'

If then any one wishes to have a statement of our faith, he has it in these
words. And whatever we read or affirm, or whatever translations we make, we do
it without prejudice to this faith of ours, according to the words of the
apostle:27 "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good. Abstain from every
form of evil." "And as many as follow this rule, peace be upon them; and upon
the Israel of God."

14. I wrote these words beforehand as a statement of my faith, when as yet none
of these calumniators had arisen, so that it should be in no man's power to say
that it was merely because of their admonition or their compulsion that I said
things which I had not believed before. Moreover, I promised that, whatever the
requirements of translation might be, I would, while complying with them,
maintain the principles of my faith inviolate. How then can any room be left for
evil, when the very first word of my confession preserves and defends the from
the suspicion of holding any doctrine inconsistent with it? Besides, as I have
said above. I have learned from the words of the Lord that every one shall be
justified or condemned from his own words and not from those of others. But I
will show how, in the Preface28 which I prefixed to the books Peri 'Arxwn, I
declared what was to be the regulative principle of my translation, and will
prove it, as in the former case, by quoting the words themselves: for it is
right to quotefrom this document also whatever is pertinent to the matter in
hand. I had made honourable mention of the man who now turns my praise of him
into all accusation against me, for his services in having led the way and
having translated a great many works of Origen before I had begun: I had praised
both his eloquence as an expositor and his diligence as a translator, and had
said that I took him as my model in doing a similar work. And then, after a few
more sentences, I continued thus:

`Him therefore we take as our model so far as in us lies, not indeed in the
power of his eloquence, but in his method of doing his work, taking care not to
reproduce things which are found in the books of Origen discrepant and contrary
to his own true opinion.'

I beg the reader to observe what I have said, and not to let this sentence
escape him because of its brevity. What I said was that `I would not reproduce
the things which are found in the books of Origen discrepant and contrary to his
own true opinion.' I did not make a general promise that I would not reproduce
what was contrary to the faith, nor yet what was contrary to me or to some one
else, but what was contrary to or discrepant from Origen himself. My opponents
must not be allowed to propagate a false statement against me by snatching at a
part of this sentence and saying that I had promised not to reproduce anything
which was contrary to or discrepant from my own belief. If I had been capable of
such conduct, I certainly should not have dared to make a public profession of
it. If you find that this has been done in my work, you will know how to judge
of it. But if you find that it has not been done, you will not think that I am
to blame, since I never gave you any pledge which would bind me to do it.

15. But let me add what comes after. My Preface continued as follows:

`The causes of these discrepancies I have more fully set forth in the Apology
which Pamphilus expressly wrote for the works of Origen, to which I added a very
short paper in which I shewed by proofs which appear to me quite clear, that his
books have been in very many places tampered with by heretics and ill disposed
men, and especially the very books which you ask me to translate, namely, the
Peri 'Arxwn, which may be rendered "Concerning Beginnings"29 or "Concerning
Principalities." which are in any case most obscure and most difficult. For in
these books Origen discusses matters on which the philosophers have spent their
whole lives without finding out the truth. In these matters, man's belief in a
creator and his reasoning about the created world which had been made use of by
the philosophers for the purposes of their own profanity, the Christian writer
turns to the support of the true faith.'

Here also I beg you to mark my words carefully, and to observe that I said
`belief in a Creator,' but `reasoning about the created world;' since what is
said about God belongs to the domain of faith, but our discussions about created
things to the domain of reason. I continued:

`Wherever, therefore, in his works we find erroneous definitions of the Trinity
as to which he has in other places expressed his views in accordance with the
true faith, we have either left them out as passages which had been falsified or
inserted, or else have changed the expression in accordance with the rule of
faith which the writer again and again lays down.' Have I here, I ask, written
incautiously? Have I said that I expressed the matter according to the ride of
our faith, which would have been evidently going far beyond the scope of a
translator whose duty was merely to turn Greek into Latin? On the contrary I
said that I expressed these passages according to the rule of faith which I
found again and again laid down by Origen himself. Moreover I added:

`I grant that, when he has expressed a thing obscurely, as a man does when he is
writing for those who have technical knowledge of the subject and wishes to go
over it rapidly, I have made the sentence plainer by adding the fuller
expression which he had given of the same thing in some of his other works which
I had read. I did this simply in the interests of clearness. But I have
expressed nothing in my own words; I have only restored to Origen what was
really Origen's though found in other parts of his works.'

16. I should have thought that this statement, I mean the words, `I have
expressed nothing in my own words; I have only restored to Origen what was
really Origen's, though found in other part of his works,' would of itself have
been sufficient for my defence even before the most hostile judges. Have I
thrust myself forward in any way? Have I ever led men to expect that I should
put in anything of my own? Where can they find the words which they pretend that
I have said, and on which they ground their calumnious accusations, namely, that
I have removed what was bad and put good words instead, while I had translated
literally all that is good? It is time, I think, that they should show some
sense of shame, and should cease from false charges and from taking upon
themselves the office of the devil who is the accuser of the brethen. Let them
listen to the words `I have put in no words of my own.' Let them listen to them
again and hear them constantly reiterated, `I have put in no words of my own; I
have only restored to Origen what was really Origen's, though found in other
parts of his works.' And let them see how God's mercy watched over me when I put
my hand to this work; let them mark how f was led to forebode the very acts
which they are doing. For my Preface continues thus:

`I have given this statement in my Preface for fear that my detractors should
think that they had found a fresh reason for accusing me.' When I said a fresh
charge I alluded to the charge which they had previously made against the
reverend Bishop John for the letter written by him to the reverend Bishop
Theophilus30 on the articles of faith: they pretended that when he spoke of the
human body he meant something-I know not what-different from flesh. Therefore I
spoke of a fresh charge. Take notice, then, I say, of the conduct of these
perverse and contentious men.

`I have undertaken this great labour, (which I have only done at your entreaty)
not with a view of shutting the mouths of my calumniators, which indeed is
impossible unless God himself should do it, but in order to give solid
information to those, who are seeking to advance in knowledge.'

But, to show you that I foresaw and foretold that they would falsify what I was
writing, observe what I said in the following passage:

`Of this I solemnly warn every one who may read or copy out these books, in the
sight of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and adjure him by our
belief in the kingdom which is to come, by the assurance of the resurrection
from the dead, and by that eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his
angels,-I adjure him, as he would not have for his eternal portion that place
where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, where their worm dieth not and
their fire is not quenched, that he should add nothing to this writing, take
away nothing, insert nothing, and change nothing.'

Nevertheless, after I had warned them by all these dread and terrible forms of
adjuration, these men have not been afraid to become falsifiers and corrupters
of my work, though they profess to believe that the resurrection of the flesh is
a reality of the future. Why, if they even believed the simple fact of the
existence of God, they would never set their hands to acts so injurious and so
impious. I ask, further, what line of my Preface can be pointed to in which I
have, as my accuser says, praised Origen up to the skies, or in which I have
called him, as he once did, an Apostle or a Prophet, or anything of the kind. I
may ask indeed in what other matter they find any ground of accusation. I made
at the outset a confession of my faith in terms which I think agree in all
respects with the confession of the Church. I made a clear statement of my
canons of translation, which indeed in most respects were taken from the model
furnished by the very man who now comes forward as my accuser. I declared what
was the purpose I set before me in making the translation. Whether I have proved
capable of fulfilling the task more or less completely is, no doubt, a matter
for the judgment of those who read the work, and who may be expected to praise
it or to ridicule it, but not to make it a ground for accusation when it is a
question of turning words from one language into another with more or less
propriety.

17. But I have said that these men would have been unable to find grounds for
accusation on the points I have mentioned, however they may take them, unless
they had first falsified them. It appears to me therefore desirable that the
chief matter on which they have laid their forgers' hands should be inserted in
this Apology, lest they should think that I am intentionally withdrawing it from
notice because they after making their own additions to it allege it as a ground
of false accusation. In the book which I translated there is a passage in which
I examine the tenets of those who believe that God has a bodily shape and who
describe him as clothed with human members and dress. This is openly asserted by
the heretical sects of the Valentinians and Anthropomorphites, and I see that
those who are now our accusers have been far too ready to hold out the hand to
them. Origen in this passage has defended the faith of the church against them,
affirming that God is wholly without bodily form, and therefore also invisible;
and then, following out his scrutiny in a logical manner, he says a few words in
answer to the heretics, which I thus translated into Latin.31

"But these assertions will perhaps be held to have little authority by those
whose desire is to be instructed out of the Holy Scriptures in the things of
God, and who require that from that source should be drawn the proof of the
preïminence of the nature of God over that of the human body. Consider whether
the Apostle does not say the same thing when he speaks thus of Christ:32 "Who is
the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature." The nature of
God is not, as some think, visible to some and not to others, for the Apostle
does not say The image of God who is invisible to men, or to sinners; but he
speaks quite distinctly of the nature of God in itself, where he says "The image
of the invisible God." John also says in his Gospel,33 "No man hath seen God at
any time," by which he distinctly declares: to all who can understand, that
there is no being to whom God is visible; not as if he were naturallyvisible
and, like a being of attenuated substance.escaped and eluded our glance; but
that, in his own nature it is impossible for him to be seen. But perhaps you
will ask me my opinion as to the Only begotten himself. Well, if I should say
that even to him the nature of God is invisible, since it is its very nature to
be invisible, do not dismiss my answer as if it were impious or absurd, for I
will at once give you my reason for it. Observe that seeing is a different thing
from knowing. Seeing and being seen belong to bodies; to know and to be known
belong to the intellectual nature. Whatever then is merely a property of bodies,
this we must not attribute to the Father or the Son; but that which belongs to
the nature of Deity governs the relations of the Father and the Son. Moreover,
Christ himself in the Gospel34 did not say "No man seeth the Son but the Father
nor the Father but the Son," but "No man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither
doth any one know the Father but the Son." By this it is clearly shown that what
is called seeing and being seen in the case of bodily existence is called
knowledge in the case of the Father and the Son: their intercourse is maintained
through the power of knowledge not through the weakness of visibility. Since,
therefore, an incorporeal nature cannot properly be said to see or to be seen,
therefore in the Gospel it is not said either that the Father is seen by the Son
or the Son by the Father but that each is known by the other. And if any one
should ask how it is that it is said35 "Blessed are the pure in heart for they
shall see God," I think that this text wilt confirm my assertion still more. For
what else is it to see God with the heart than, according to the explanation I
have given above, to understand Him with the mind and to know Him?"

18. This is the chief passage which those who were sent from the East to lay
snares for me tried to brand as heretical, not only by perversely
misunderstanding it, but by falsifying the words. But I could see nothing to
suspect in it, as also in several similar passages of the writer I was
translating, nor did I think that there was any reason to leave it out, since
there was nothing said in it as to a comparison of the Son with the Father, but
the question related to the nature of the Deity itself, whether in any sense the
word visibility could be applied to it. Origen was answering, as I have said
before, the heretics who assert that God is visible because they say that he is
corporeal, the faculty of sight being a property of the body; for which reason
the Valentinian heretics, of whom I spoke above, declare that the Father begat
and the Son was begotten in a bodily and visiblesense. He therefore shrank, I
presume, from the word Seeing as a suspicious term, and says that it is better,
when the question turns upon the nature of the Deity, that is, upon the relation
of the Father and the Son, to use the word which the Lord himself definitely
chose, when he said: "No man knoweth the Son save the Father, neither doth any
know the Father save the Son." He thought that all occasion which might be given
to the aforesaid heresies would be shut out if, in speaking of the nature of the
Deity he used the word Knowledge rather than Vision. `Vision' might seem to
afford the heretics some support. The word Knowledge on the other hand preserves
the true relation of Father and Son in one nature never to be set apart; and
this is specially confirmed by the authoritative language of the Gospel. Origen
thought also that this mode of speaking would ensure that the Anthropomorphites
should never in any way hear God spoken of as visible. It did not seem to me
right that this reasoning, since it made no difference between the persons of
the Trinity, should be completely thrown on one side, though indeed there were
some words in the Greek, which perhaps were somewhat incautiously used, and
which I thought it well to avoid using. I will suppose that readers may hesitate
in their judgment whether or not even so, it is an argument which can be
employed with effect against the aforesaid heresies. I will even grant that
those who are practised in judging of words and their sense in matters of this
kind and who, besides being experts, are God-fearing men, men who do nothing
through strife or vain glory, whose mind is equally free from envy and favour
and prejudice may say that the point is of little value either for edification
or for the combating of heresy; even so, is it not competent for them to pass it
over and to leave it aside as not valid for the repulse of our adversaries?
Suppose it to be superfluous, does that make it criminous? How can we count as a
criminal passage one which asserts the equality of the Father the Son and the
Holy Spirit in this point of invisibility? I do not think that any one can
really think so. I say any one: for there is no evidence that anything contained
in my writings is offensive in the eyes of my accusers; for, if they had thought
so, they would have set down my words as they stood in my translation.

19. But what did they actually do? Consider what it was and ask yourself whether
the crime is not unexampled? Recall the passage which says: "But perhaps you
will ask me my opinion as to the Only-begotten himself. Well, if I should say
that even to him the nature of God is invisible, since it is its very nature to
be invisible, do not dismiss my answer as if it were impious or absurd, for I
will at once give you my reason for it." Well, in the place of the words which I
had written, "I will at once give you my reason for it" they put the following
words: "Do not dismiss my, answer as if it were impious or absurd, for, as the
Son does not see the Father, so the Holy Spirit also does not see the Son." If
the man who did this, the man who was sent from their monastery36 to Rome as the
greatest expert in calumny, had been employed in the forum and had committed
this forgery in some secular business every one knows what would be the
consequence to him according to the public laws, when he was convicted of the
crime. But now, since he has left the secular life, and has turned his back upon
business and entered a monastery, and has connected himself with a renowned
master, he has learned from him to leave his former self-restraint and to become
a furious madman: he was quiet before, now he is a mover of sedition: he was
peaceable, now he provokes war: instead of concord, he is the promoter of
strife. For faith he has learnt perfidiousness, for truth forgery. He would, you
may well think, have been the complete exemplar of wickedness and criminality of
this kind, if you had not had before you the image of that woman Jezebel.37 She
is the same who made up the accusation against Naboth the Zezreelite for the
sake of the vineyard, and sent word to the wicked eiders to urge against him a
false indictment, saying that he had blessed, that is cursed, God and the king.
I know not whether of the two is to be accounted the happier, she who sends the
command or they who obey it in all its iniquity. These matters are serious; such
a crime, as far as I know, is hitherto all but unheard of in the Church. Yet
there is something more to be said. What is that you ask. It is this, that those
who are guilty should become the judges, that those who plotted the accusation
should also pronounce the sentence. It is, indeed, no new thing for a writer to
make a mistake or a slip in his words, and in my opinion it is a venial fault,
for the Scripture also says,38 "In many things we all stumble: if any stumbleth
not in word the same is a perfect man." Is it thought that some word is wrong?
Then let it he corrected or amended, or, if expediency so require, let it be
taken out. But to insert in what another man has written things he never wrote,
to put in false words for no other purpose than to defame your brother, to
corrupt his writings in order to attach a mark of infamy to the author, and to
insinuate your ideas into the ears of the multitude so as to throw confusion
into the minds of the simple; and all this with the object of staining a maws
reputation among his fellows; I ask you whose work this can be except that of
him who was a liar from the beginning, and who, from accusing the brethren,
received the name of Diabolus, which means accuser. For when he to whom I have
alluded39 recited at Milan one of these sentences which had been tampered with,
and I cried out that what he was reading was falsified, he, being asked from
whom he had received the copy of the work said that a certain woman named
Marcella had given it him. As to her, I say nothing, whosoever she may be. I
leave her to her own conscience and to God. I am content with God's own witness
and with yours. When I say yours, I mean your own and that of Macarius himself,
the saintly man for whom I was doing that work: for both of you read my papers
themselves at the first, even before they had been completed, and you have by
you the completely corrected copies. You can bear witness to what I say. The
words "as the Son does not see the Father, so also the Holy Spirit does not see
the Son" not only were never written by me, but on the contrary I can point out
the forger by whom they were written. If any man says that as the Father does
not see the Son, so the Son does not see the Father or that the Holy Spirit does
not see the Father and the Son as the Father sees the Son and the Son and the
Holy Spirit, let him be anathema. For he sees, and sees most truly; only, as God
sees God and the Light sees the Light; not as flesh sees flesh, but as the Holy
Spirit sees, not with the bodily senses, but by the powers of the Deity. I say,
if any one denies this let him be anathema for all eternity. But as the Apostle
says,40 "He that troubles you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be."

20. I remember indeed that one of these people, when he was convicted of having
falsified this passage, answered me that it was so in the Greek, but that I had,
of purpose, changed it in the Latin. I do not indeed, treat this as a serious
accusation because, though what they say is untrue yet, even supposing that the
words did stand so in the Greek, and I had changed them in the Latin, this is
nothing more than I had said in my Preface that I should do. If I had done this
with the view of making an expression which in the Greek was calculated to make
men stumble run more suitably in the Latin, I should have been acting only
according to my expressed purpose and plan. But I say to my accusers You
certainly did not find these words in the Latin copies of my work. Whence then
did it come into the papers from which he was reading? I, the translator, did
not so write it. Whence then came the words which you who have got no such words
of thine turn into a ground of accusation? Am I to be accused on the ground of
your forgeries? I put the matter in the plainest possible way. There are four
books of the work which I translated; and in these books discussions about the
Trinity occur in a scattered way, almost as much as one in each page. Let any
man read the whole of these and say whether in any passage of my translation
such an opinion concerning the Trinity can be found as that which they
calumniously represent as occurring in this chapter. If such an opinion can be
found, then men may believe that this chapter also is composed in the sense
which they pretend. But if in the whole body of these books no such difference
of the persons of the Trinity exists anywhere, would not a critic be mad or
fatuous if he decided, on the strength of a single paragraph, that a writer had
given his adherence to a heresy which in the thousand or so other paragraphs of
his work he had combated? But the circumstances of the case are by themselves
sufficient to shew the truth to any one who has his wits about him. For if this
man had really found the passage in question in my papers, and had felt a
difficulty in what he read, he would of course have brought the documents to me
and have at once asked for explanations, since, as you well know, we were living
as neighbours in Rome. Up to that time we often saw one another, greeted one
another as friends, and joined together in prayer; and therefore he would
certainly have conferred with me about the points which appeared to him
objectionable; he would have asked me how had translated them, and how they
stood in the Greek.

21. I am sure that he would have felt that he had enjoyed a triumph if he could
have shown that through his representations I had been induced to correct
anything that I had said or written. Or, if he had been driven by his mental
excitement to expose the error publicly instead of correcting it, he certainly
would not have waited till I had left Rome to attack me, when he might have
faced me there and put me to silence. But he was deterred by the consciousness
that he was acting falsely; and therefore he did not bring to me as their author
the documents which he was determined to incriminate, but carried them round to
private houses, to ladies, to monasteries, to Christian men one by one, wherever
he might make trouble by his ex parte statements. And he did this just when he
was about to leave Rome, so that he might not be arraigned and made to give an
account of his actions. Afterwards, by the directions, as I am told, of his
master, he went about all through Italy, accusing me, stirring up the people,
throwing confusion into the churches, poisoning even the minds of the bishops,
and everywhere representing my forbearance as an acknowledgment that I was in
the wrong. Such are the arts of the disciple. Meanwhile the master, out in the
East, who had said in his letter to Vigilantius41 "Through my labour the Latins
know all that is good in Origen and are ignorant of all that is bad," set to
work upon the very books which I had translated, and in his new translation
inserted all that I had left out as untrustworthy, so that now, the contrary of
what he had boasted has come to pass. The Romans by his labour know all that is
bad in Origen and are ignorant of all that is good. By this means be endeavours
to draw not Origen only but me also under the suspicion of heresy: and he goes
on unceasingly sending out these dogs of his to bark against the in every city
and village, and to attack me with their calumnies when I am quietly passing on
a journey, and to attempt every speakable and unspeakable mischief against me.
What crime, I ask you, have I committed in doing exactly what you have done? If
you call me wicked For following your example, what judgment must you pronounce
upon yourself?

22. But now I will turn the tables and put my accuser to the question. Tell me,
O great master, if there is anything to blame in a writer, is the blame to be
laid on one who reads or translates his works? Heaven forbid, he will say;
certainly not; why do you try to circumvent me by your enigmatical questions? Am
not I myself both a reader and a translator of Origen? Read my translations and
see if you can find any one of his peculiar doctrines in them; especially any of
those which I now mark for condemnation. When driven to the point he says:

"If you wish thoroughly to see how abhorent the very suggestion of such
doctrines has always been to me, read my Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul to
the Ephesians, and you will see from what I have written there what an opinion I
formed of him from reading and translating his works."42

I ask, can we accept this man as a great and grave teacher, who in one of his
works praises Origen and in another condemns him? who in his Introductions calls
him a master second only to the Apostles, but now calls him a heretic? What
heretic, I ask, was ever called a master of the churches? "It is true, he
replies, I was wrong about this hut why do you go on bringing up this
unfortunate Preface43 against me? Read my Commentaries, and especially those
which I have designated." Is there any one who will think this satisfactory? He
has composed a great many books, in almost all of which he trumpets forth the
praises of Origen to the skies: these books through all these years have been
read and are being read by all men: many of these readers after accepting his
opinions have left this world and gone into the presence of the Lord. They hold
the opinion about Origen which they had learnt from the statements of this man,
and they departed in hope that, according to this man's assurance, they would
find him there as a master second only to the Apostles; but if we are to trust
his present writings, they have found him in a state of condemnation, among the
impious heretics and the heathen. Is this man now to turn round from his former
contention, and to say, "For some thirty years I have been, in my studies and in
my writings, praising Origen as equal to the Apostles, but now I pronounce him a
heretic?" How is this? Has he come upon some new books of his which he had never
read before? Not at all. It is from these same sayings of Origen that he
formerly called him an Apostle and now calls him a heretic. But it is impossible
that this should really have been so. For either he was right in his former
praises, and his judgment has since been perverted by some kind of extreme ill
feeling, and in that case no attention is to be paid to him; or else his former
praises were mistaken, and he is now condemning himself, and in that case what
judgment does he think others will pass upon him, when, according to the words
of the Apostle,44 he passes condemnation on himself.

22 (a). But, "Surely," he says, "this judgment is done away with since I have
repented." Not so fast! We all err, it is true, and especially in word; and we
all may repent of our errors. But can a man do penance, and accuse others, and
judge and condemn them, all in the same moment? That would be as if a harlot who
had abstained from her harlotry for a night or two, should feel called upon to
begin writing laws in favour of chastity, and not only to enact these laws, but
to proceed to throw down the monuments of all the women who have died, because
she suspected that they had led lives like her own. You do penance for having
formerly been a heretic, and you do right. But what has that to do with me who
never was a heretic at all? You are right in doing penance for your error: but
the true way of doing penance is, not by accusing others but by crying for
mercy, not by condemning but by weeping. For what sincerity can there be in
penitence when the penitent makes a decree of indulgence for himself? He who
repents of what be has spoken ill does not cure his wound by speaking ill again,
but by keeping silence. For thus it is written:45 "Thou hast sinned, be at
peace." But now you first bring yourself in a criminal, then you absolve
yourself from your crime, and forthwith change yourself from a criminal into a
judge. This may be no trouble to you who thus mock at us, but it is a trouble to
us if we suffer ourselves to be mocked by you.

23. But let us come to these two Commentaries which he alone excepts from the
general condemnation and renunciation which he pronounces upon all the rest of
his works we shall see with what modesty and self-restraint he conducts himself
in these: Remember that it is by these alone that he has chosen to prove that he
is sound in the faith, and that he is altogether opposed to Origen. Let us
examine then as witnesses these two books which alone of all his writings are
satisfactory to him, namely, the three books of his commentary on the Epistle of
Paul to the Ephesians, and the single book (I think) on Ecclesiastes. Let us for
a moment look into the one which comes forward first, the Commentary on the
Epistle to the Ephesians. Even here recognize in his arguments the influence of
him who is as his fellow, his partner and his brother mystic, to use his own
expression.46 And first of all, as to these poor weak women about whom he makes
himself merry, because they say that after the resurrection they will not have
their frail bodies since they will be like the angels. Let us hear what he has
to say about them. In the third book of his Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul
to the Ephesians,on the passage in which it is said,47 "He who loveth his own
wife loveth himself, for no man ever hated his own flesh;" after a few other
remarks, he says:

"Let us men then cherish our wives and let our souls cherish our bodies in such
a way as that the wives may be turned into men and the bodies into spirits, and
that there maybe no difference of sex but that, as among the angels there is
neither male nor female, so we who are to be like the angels may begin here to
be what it is promised that we shall be in heaven."

24. How, I ask, can you, seeing that your Commentaries contain such doctrines,
put them forward to prove your soundness in the faith, and to confute those
ideas which you reprove? How do your words tend to reprove those women whom we
have spoken of? Besides, has any woman gone so far as to say what you write,
namely, that women are to be turned into men and bodies into souls? If bodies
are to be turned into spirits, then, according to you, there will be no
resurrection not only of the flesh but even of the body, which you admit to be
the doctrine even of those whom you have set down as heretics. Where are we to
look any more for the body, if it is reduced to a spirit? In that case
everything will be spirit, the body will be nowhere. And again, if the wives are
to be turned into men, according to this suggestion of yours, that there is to
be no difference of sex whatever, by which I suppose you mean that the female
sex will entirely cease, being converted into the male, and the male sex will
alone remain; I am not sure that you would have the permission of the women to
speak here on behalf of their sex. But, even suppose that they grant you this,
then with what consistency can you argue that the male sex is any longer
necessary, when the female is shown not to be necessary? for there is a natural
bond which unites the sexes in mutual dependence, so that, if one does not
exist, there is no need of the other. And further, if it is man alone who is to
receive at the resurrection the form of clay which was originally given in
paradise, what becomes of that which is written,48 "He made them male and
female, and blessed them"? And then, if, as both you yourself say, and also
these poor women whom you arraign, there is neither man nor woman, how can
bodies be turned into souls, or women into men, since Paradise does not allow
the existence of either sex, nor does the likeness of angels, as you say, admit
it? And I marvel how you can demand from others a strict opinion upon the
continuance of the diversity of sex when you yourself, as soon as you begin to
discuss it, find yourself involved in so many knotty questions that to evolve
yourself out of them becomes impossible. How much more right would your action
be if you were to imitate us whom you blame in such matters as these and allow
God to be the only judge of them, as is indeed the truth. It would be far better
for you to confess your ignorance of them than to write things which in a little
while you have to condemn. I should like to ask my accuser whether he can
conscientiously say that he would ever have found, I do not say in any, even the
least, work of mine, but even in any familiar letter which I might have written
carelessly to a friend, such things as that bodies were to be turned into
spirits and wives into men, were it not that he had put them forward as if he
wished thorn to be inserted in brazen letters on the gates of cities, and
recited in the forum, in the Senate house and in front of the rostra. If he had
found any such thing in my writings, imagine how many heads of accusation he
would have set down, how many volumes he would have compiled, how he would be
assailing me with all the arms and shafts of that teeming breast of his; how he
would have said: "I tell you that he is deceiving you by speaking of the
resurrection of the body, for he denies the resurrection of the flesh; or even
if he confesses the resurrection of the flesh he denies that of the members and
the sex: but, if you do not believe me, behold and see the very words of his
letter, in which he says that bodies are to be turned into souls and wives into
men." Yet, when you write this, we are not to call you a heretic, but are to
give satisfaction to you as though you were our master. And as for those women
whom you have attacked with your indecent reproaches, they will, when they stand
before the judgment seat of Christ, bring forward what you have taught them in
these Commentaries as well as the things which you have since written, with
insults which show that you had forgotten yourself; and both the one and the
other will be read out there, where the favour of men will have ceased, and the
applause for which you pay by flattery will be silent, and they will be judged
together with their author for these words and deeds of yours before Christ the
righteous judge.

25. But now let us go on to discuss what he writes further as to God's
judgment,49 for this too is a matter of the faith. We shall find that as he
alters the faith about the resurrection of the flesh in other points, so he does
in reference to God's judgment. In the first book of the Commentaries on the Ep.
of Paul to the Ephesians, he deals with that passage in which the Apostle says:
"Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be
holy and without blemish before him." On this he says:

"For the foundation of the world the Greek has katabolhj kosmou. The word
katabolh does not mean the same which we understand by foundation. We,
therefore, shall not attempt to render a word for a word, which is here
impossible on account of the poverty of our language and also the novelty of the
sense, and because, as some one has said, the Greeks have a larger discourse and
a happier tongue than ours. We must explain the force of the word by some sort
of periphrasis. katabolh is properly used when something is thrown down and is
cast from a higher into a lower place, or else when anything is taking its
beginning. Hence those who lay the first foundations of future houses are said
katabeblhkenai, that is to have thrown down the first foundations. Paul thus
used the word to show that God framed all things out of nothing: he assigned to
Him not a creation nor a building up, nor a making but a katabolh, that is, a
beginning of a foundation. He wishes to show that there was not some other thing
antecedent to creatures, and out of which creatures were formed, as is held by
the Manichaeans and other heretics, who begin with a maker and a material, but
that all things were made out of nothing. But, as to our election to be holy and
without blemish before him, that is, before God, previously to the making of the
world, of which the Apostle speaks, this belongs to the foreknowledge of God, to
whom all future things are as if they were already done, and all things are
known before they come into being: as Paul is predestinated in the womb of his
mother, and Jeremiah before his birth is sanctified, chosen, and confirmed, and,
as it type of Christ, is sent to be a prophet of the nations."

26. So far he has set forth a single exposition of the passage; but on whose
authority he wishes us to receive this interpretation he has not made clear.
What he has done is to make void this first interpretation by what comes after:
for he goes on: "But there is another, who tries to show that God is just." He
therefore points out that by that first exposition the justice of God is not
vindicated, which of course is contrary to the faith: and he goes on through the
mouth of this `other,' whose assertions he evidently wishes to exhibit as being
what is everywhere held for catholic and indubitable, to give a testimony by
which he will, as he asserts, seek to show that God is just. Let us see then
what this `other man' says, who proclaims the justice of God.

"Another man," he says, "who seeks to vindicate the justice of God, argues that
it is not according to his own pre-judgment and knowledge, but according to the
merit of the elect that God's choice of men is determined; and he says that,
before the creation of the visible world, of sky and earth and seas and all that
they contain, there existed other invisible creatures, among which also were
souls; and that these souls, for reasons known to God alone, were cast down50
into this vale of tears, this place of our mournful pilgrimage, and that this is
shewn by the prayer uttered by a holy man of old who, having his habitation
fixed here, yet longed to return to his original abode: "Woe is me that my
sojourning is prolonged, that I have my habitation among the inhabitants of
Kedar,"51 "my soul has long been a pilgrim," and again "O wretched man that I
am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?"52 and in another place "It
is better to return and be with Christ,"53 and elsewhere, "Before I was brought
low, I sinned;"54 and other words of a like character." This relates, they say
to the souls' condition before they were cast down into the world. The reader of
this will be apt to say, Master, you seem to tell us, yet do not really tell us,
who these men are who say this, that the souls of men existed before they were
cast down into the world. Then he will reply, "Was I not right in saying that
you were blind, and no better than a mole? Did I not say before, that they are
those who assert that God is just,-by which, if you had any sense at all, you
would understand that I mean myself: for I am not such a heretic as not to
include myself among those who vindicate the justice of God, which indeed all
must do who have the least tincture of good sense." Then they will reply, "Tell
us, then, master, tell us, what it is that these men say, and you among them? We
understand that you say that before the souls were cast down into the world, and
before the world, which was made up of souls, had been cast down together with
its inhabitants into the abyss, God chose Paul and those like him, who were holy
and undefiled. But if men are chosen, they are chosen out of a great number;
there must be many in a worse condition out of whom the election is made.
However, just as in the Babylonian captivity, when Nebuchadnezzar carried away
the people into Chaldaea, Ezekiel and Daniel and the Three Children, and Haggai
and Zechariah were sent with them, not because they deserved to become captives,
but that they might be a comfort to those who were carried away; so also, in
that `casting down' of the world, those who had been chosen by God before the
world was, were sent to instruct and train the sinful souls, so that these,
through their preaching, might return to the place from which they had fallen;
and this is what is meant by the words of the eighty-ninth Psalm:55 "Lord thou
hast been our refuge in generation and in offspring, before the mountains were
established, or the earth and the world were made;" that is to say, that before
the world was made, and a beginning was made of the generation of all things,
God was a refuge to his saints."

27. Such are the doctrines which are to be found in these works of yours which
you single out from all that you have written, and which you desire men to read
over again to the prejudice of all the rest. It is in these very Commentaries
that these doctrines are written. There was, yon say, an invisible world before
this visible one came into being. You say that in this world, along with the
other inhabitants, that is the angels, there were also souls. You say that these
souls, for reasons known to God alone, enter into bodies at the time of birth in
this visible world: those souls, you say, who in a former age had been
inhabitants of heaven, now dwell here, on this earth, and that not without
reference to certain acts which they had committed while they lived there. You
say further that all the saints, such as Paul and others like him in each
generation were predestinated by God for the purpose of recalling them by their
preaching to that habitation from which they had fallen: and all this you,
support by very copious warranties of Scripture. But are not these statements
precisely those for which you now arraign Origen, and for which alone you demand
that he should be condemned? What `other' than him who says such things as these
do you condemn in your writings? And yet if these statements are to be
condemned, as you now urge, you will first pronounce judgment on these
statements, and then find that you have condemned yourself by anticipation. No
other refuge remains for you. There is no room for any of these twists and turns
for which you blame others: for it is just when you are doing penance and have
been converted, when you have been corrected and put in the way of amendment,
that you have stamped these books with fresh authority, to prove to us by their
means what your opinion was as to the doctrines which ought to be condemned: and
therefore what you have there written must be taken as if we heard you now
distinctly making the statements contained in them. Yet in these very books you
yourself make the statements which you say are to be condemned. But no! you will
say: it is not I that make them. It is the `other' who thus speaks, that is, of
course, the man who I now declare ought to be condemned. Well, let us recall, if
you please, that particular line in which you change the person of the speaker,
that we may see who it is whom you represent as building up this strange theory.
You say, then, that it is `another,' who is endeavouring to show that God is
just, who says these things which we have set down just above. If you say that
this `other' who by this assertion of his proves God to be just is separate and
divers from yourself, what then, I ask, is your own opinion? Must we say that
you deny that God is just? Oh, great Master, you who see so sharply, and are so
hard upon the moles that have no eyes:56 you seem to have got yourself into a
most impossible position, where you are shut in on every side. Either you must
deny that God is just by declaring yourself other than, and contrary to, him who
says these things, or if you confess God to be just, as all the Church does,
then it is you yourself who make the assertions in question; in which case the
sentence which you pass upon another falls upon you, you are thrust through with
your own spear. I think that this is enough for your conviction before the most
righteous judges whose judgment anticipates that of God: not that they would
condemn the man who sees the mote in his brother's eye but does not see the beam
in his own; but they would try to bring him to a better mind and to true
repentance.

28. But it is possible that this particular passage may have escaped his
observation, although he thought that he had revised these books so as to make
them perfectly clear, and put them forward as giving a profession of his faith,
to the prejudice of all the rest. Let us see then what are his opinions in other
parts. In the same book when he comes to the passage where it is written
"According to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glory," he
makes these remarks among others:

"Here certain men seize upon the opportunity to introduce their peculiar views:
they believe that before the foundation of the world, the souls of men dwelt in
the heavenly Jerusalem with the angels, and with all the other celestial powers.
They think that it would be impossible, in accordance with the good pleasure of
God, and the praise of his glory and of his grace, to explain the fact that some
men are born poor and barbarous, in slavery and weakness, while others are born
as wealthy Roman citizens, free and with strong health; that some are born in a
low, some in a high station, that they are born in different countries, in
different parts of the world: unless there are some antecedent causes for which
each individual soul had its lot assigned according to its merits. Moreover, the
passage which some think that they understand, (though they do not) the passage
of the Epistle to the Romans which says,57 "Hath not the potter a right over the
clay from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honour, and another unto
dishonour?" these men take as supporting this same view; for they argue that,
just as the distinction between leading a good life or a bad, one of labour or
self-indulgence. would be of little account if we did not believe in the
judgment of God which is to come, so also the difference of conditions under
which men are born would impugn the justice of God unless they were the results
of the soul's previous deserts. For, if we do not accept this view, they say, it
cannot be `the good pleasure of God' nor `to the praise of his glory and grace'
that he should have chosen some before the foundation of the world to be holy
and undefiled, and to partake of the adoption through Jesus Christ, and should
have appointed others to the lowest position and to everlasting punishment; he
could not have loved Jacob before he came forth from the womb and hated Esau
before he had done anything worthy of hatred, unless there were some antecedent
causes which would, if we knew them, prove God to be just."

29. What can be more distinct than this statement? What could possibly be
thought or said whether by Origen or by any of those whom you say that you
condemn, which would be clearer than this, that the inequality of conditions
which exists among those who are born into this world is ascribed to the justice
of God? You say that the cause of the salvation or perdition of each soul is to
be found in itself, that is, in the passions and dispositions which it has shown
in its previous life in that new Jerusalem which is the mother of us all. "But
this too," he will say no doubt, "is not said by myself. I described it as the
opinion of another: moreover, I used the expression `they seize upon the
opportunity.'" Well, I do not deny that you make it appear that you are speaking
of another. But you have not denied that this man about whom you are speaking is
in agreement and accord with you: you have not said that he is in opposition or
hostility to you. For, when you use this formula of `another' in reference to
one who is really opposed to you, you habitually, after setting down a few of
his words, at once impugn and overthrow them: you do this in the case of
Marcion, Valentinus, Arius and others. But when, as in this instance, you use,
indeed, this formula of `another,' but report his words fortified by the
strongest assertions and by the most abundant testimonies of Scripture, is it
not evident even to us who are so slow of understanding, and whom you speak of
as `moles,' that he whose words you set down and do not overthrow, is no other
than yourself, and that we have here a case of the figure well known to
rhetoricians, when they use another man's person to set forth their own
opinions. Such figures are resorted to by rhetoricians when they are afraid of
offending particular people, or when they wish to avoid exciting ill-will
against themselves. But, if you think that you have avoided blame by putting
forward `another' as the author of these statements, how much more free from it
is he whom you accuse. For his mode of action is much more cautious. He is not
content with merely saying, "This is what others say," or "so some men think,"
but, "As to this or that I do not decide, I only suggest," and, "If this seems
to any one more probable, let him hold to it, putting the other aside." He has
been very careful in his statements, as you know; and yet you summon him to be
tried and condemned. You think that you have escaped because you speak of
`another': but the points on which you condemn him are precisely those in which
you follow and imitate him.

30. But let us proceed in our study of these Commentaries; otherwise, in
dwelling too long upon a few special points, we may be prevented from taking
notice of the greater number. In the same book and the same passage58 are the
words "To the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had
before hoped in Christ." His comment is:

"If it had been simply said `We have trusted in Christ,' and there had not been
the prefix `before,' which stands in the Greek prohlpiko/tej, the sense would be
quite clear, namely, that those who have hoped in Christ have been chosen in due
order59 and have been predestinated according to the purpose of him who orders
all things according to the counsel of his own will. But, as it stands, the
addition of the preposition `before,' compels us to explain it according to the
same ideas which we argued in a former place to be necessary for the explanation
of the passage, "Who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places in Christ, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of
the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him:" namely, that
God had blessed us before in heaven with all spiritual blessing, and had chosen
us before the world was framed; and that thus we are said to have hoped in
Christ `before,' that is, in the time when we were elected and predestinated and
blessed in heaven."

31. But let this pass, for what follows is of more importance. I thank God that
he has relieved me from a very serious burden of suspicion. Perhaps I seemed to
some people to be acting contentiously and calumniously when I insinuated that,
according to a figure of rhetoric, when he spoke of `another' he meant himself.
But to prevent all further doubt from resting in the minds of his hearers, he
has himself declared that it is so. Like a truly good teacher, who would not
wish any ambiguity about his sayings to remain in the minds of his pupils, he
has been so good as to shew quite clearly who that `other' was of whom he had
spoken before. He therefore says, "But, as it stands, the addition of the
preposition `before' leads us to explain it according to the ideas which we
argued in a former place to be necessary." You see, he means that it is we, and
not some other, no one knows who, as you may have thought, who in the former
place argued thus, when we were expounding the words "Who hath blessed us with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." It was to meet the
case of the less intelligent persons, who might think that what was there said
was spoken by some one else, to prevent any error on the point remaining in the
minds of those whom he had begged to read these books so that they might see
what his opinion of Origen was, that he now acknowledges this opinion as his
own, and, no longer speaking of `another,' says what we have quoted before;
namely, that, as God had before blessed us with all spiritual blessing in Christ
in the heavenly places, and had chosen us before the foundation of the world; so
also we are said to have trusted in Christ at that former time in which we were
elected and predestinated and blessed in heaven. He himself therefore, as it
seems to me, has by his own testimony, absolved me from all suspicion of
speaking a calumny when I say that that `other' is no `other' than himself.

30 (a). But, I undertook to shew something of more importance still in what
follows. After he had said that we had hoped in Christ before, and that in the
time before the foundation of the world and before we were born in our bodies,
we had been blessed and chosen in heaven, he again introduces that `other' of
his, and says: "Another, who does not admit this doctrine that we had a previous
existence and had hope in Christ before we lived in this body, would have us
understand the matter in his own way." In this passage this `other,' whoever he
may be, has put forth all his ill savour. Let him tell us then whom he means by
this `other' who does not admit this opinion that before we lived in this body
we both existed and hoped in Christ-for which he requires us to condemn Origen.
Whom does he wish us to understand by this `other'? Is it some one opposed to
himself? What do you say, great master? You are pressed by that two-horned
dilemma of which you are so fond of speaking to your disciples. For, if you say
that by this `other' who does not admit that souls existed before they lived in
the body you mean yourself, you have betrayed the secret which in the previous
passages was concealed. It is now found out that you by your own confession are
that other who have fashioned all the doctrines of which you now demand the
condemnation. But if we are not to believe you to be the `other' of the former
passage, so that the doctrines which you now impugn may not be ascribed to you,
we have no right to consider you in this case to be the `other' who does not
admit that our souls existed before we lived in bodies. Choose either side you
like as the ground of your acquittal. This `other,' whom you so frequently bring
in, are we to understand by him yourself or some one else? Do you wish that he
should be thought by us to be a catholic or a heretic? Is he to be acquitted or
condemned? If that `other' of yours is a catholic, the man who said in the
former passage that before this visible world our souls had their abode among
the angels and the other heavenly powers in the heavenly places in Jerusalem
which is above, and that they there contracted those dispositions which caused
the diversities of their birth into the world and of the other conditions to
which they are now subject, then these must be esteemed to be catholic
doctrines, and we know that it is an impiety to condemn what is catholic. But if
yon call this `other' a heretic, you must also brand as a heretic the `other'
who will not admit that souls existed and hoped in Christ before they were born
in the body. Which way can you get out of this dilemma, my master? Whither will
you break forth? To what place will you escape? Whichever way you betake
yourself, you will stick fast. Not only is there no avenue by which you can
withdraw yourself; there is not even the least breathing space left you. Is this
all the profit you have gained from Alexander's Commentaries on Aristotle, and
Porphyry's Introduction? Is this the result of the training of all those great
Philosophers by whom you tell us you were educated, with all their learning,
Greek and Latin, and Jewish into the bargain? Have they ended by bringing you
into these inextricable straits, in which you are so pitifully confined that the
very Alps could give you no refuge?

31 (a). But let us spare him now. We must bend to our examination of the books;
for, to use an expression of his own, a great work leaves no time for sleep;
though indeed he himself spares nobody, and does not so much use reasonable
speech as lash with the scourge of his tongue whomsoever he pleases; and any one
who refuses to flatter him must expect to be branded at once as a heretic both
in his treatises and in hundreds of letters sent to all parts of the world. Let
us not follow his example, but rather that of the patriarch David, who, when he
had surprised his enemy Saul in the cave and might have slain him, refused to do
so, but spared him. This man knows well how often I have done the same by him,
both in word and deed; and if he does not choose to confess it, he has it fixed
at least in his mind and conscience. I will pardon him then, though he never
pardons others, but condemns men for their words without any consideration or
charity; and for the present I will let him come out from this pit, until he
falls into that other, from which all of us together will be unable to deliver
him, however much we may wish and strive. He has to explain how it comes to pass
that, in the first passage, where that doctrine was being asserted which sought
to vindicate the justice of God, he really meant to speak of some one else, and
that that person was the one whom he now wishes to have condemned; yet in the
second passage, where the speaker says the opposite and does not admit what has
been said before, the `other' whom he speaks of means himself. It is possible
that he may feel sure that this was what he meant, but that he was not able to
make it plain in writing. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume
that in this latter passage the `other' is himself, and that it is he who does
not admit the doctrine which holds that before our life in the body began our
souls existed and hoped in Christ. I will quote the entire passage, and
prosecute a fresh and diligent inquiry to see what it tends to. He says thus:

"Another who does not admit this doctrine that before our life in the body began
our souls existed and trusted in Christ, changes the sense of the passage so as
to mean that, in the advent of our Lord and Saviour, when in his name60 every
knee shall bow, of things heavenly and earthly and infernal, and every tongue
shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father, when
all things shall be made subject to him, there will be some who are made subject
willingly, but others only by necessity; and that those who before his coming in
his majesty have hoped in him will be to the praise of his glory; that these
therefore are called61 Fore-hopers; but that those who are only found to believe
through necessity, when even the devil and his angels will be unable to reject
Christ as King are to be called simply Hopers, and that they are not for the
praise of his glory. And this we see partly fulfilled even now, since we can
distinguish between the reward of those who follow God willingly and those who
follow Him through necessity. But,62 whether by pretence or in truth, let Christ
be proclaimed: only let each of them understand, both the Hopers and the
Fore-hopers, that for the difference of their hope they will receive different
rewards."

32. In this passage all room for doubt is removed. In the former passage you
said that those who before hoped in Christ are those who, before they were born
in bodies in this visible world, dwelt in heaven and had hope in Christ. But, to
prevent this being supposed to be your own doctrine, you introduced another
interpretation, namely, that at that time when every knee shall bow to Jesus as
Lord, the universal creation, of things heavenly, earthly and infernal, will
consist of persons subjected to him in two different ways, some willingly, some
by necessity. You add that all the saints, who now believe on him through the
word of preaching are subject to him willingly, and that these are called
Fore-hopers, that is those who have beforehand hoped in Christ: hut that those
who are subject to him by necessity are those who have not believed now through
the preaching of the word, but who then will no longer be able to deny him, such
as the devil and his angels, and those who with them have been obliged by
necessity to believe: and that all these, and amongst them the devil and his
angels, who shall afterwards believe, shall not be called Fore-hopers, Because
that name belongs to those who believed in Christ before, and hoped in him
willingly, whereas these others only did so afterward and by necessity: and you
add that, consequently, they will receive different rewards. But you assign
rewards, though they may be inferior ones, to all, even to those who now do not
believe, that is, the devil and his angels; and, though now you hold the mere
opinion, not the mature judgment, of another worthy of condemnation who thinks
it possible that the devil may one day have a respite from punishment, you bring
him into the kingdom of God to receive the second reward. This also you wish us
to understand, that, as it matters not whether Christ is preached in truth or by
necessity, so it is of no consequence whether we believe by necessity or
willingly.

33. These are the things which we learn from the Commentaries to which you
direct us. These are the rules for the confusion63 of our faith which you teach
us. You wish us to condemn in others what you teach yourself in private. For, of
course, if you are now that `other' who do not admit the doctrine which holds
that our souls existed in heaven before they were joined to bodies, you are
undoubtedly the man who not only promise pardon to the devil and his angels and
all unbelievers but also undertake that they shall be endowed with rewards of
the second order. But if you deny this second doctrine, you must be the author
of that which we first discussed. And I wonder that those able and learned men
who read these writings of his about which he now writes in commendation, should
laugh at me because he calls me a mole, and should not feel that he is all the
while thinking of them much more as moles, for not seeing that the things I bare
pointed out are imbedded in his books. For, if he thought that they could
understand as well as read, he would never have requested them to get a copy of
those books with a view to the condemnation of the very things which their
master there teaches; for these very things which he urges us to condemn are
most plainly and manifestly contained in them. I have shewn, at all events, that
he himself in these chosen Commentaries of his asserts the doctrines which he
desires to have condemned in another man's books, namely, that souls existed in
heaven before they were born in bodies in this world, and that all sinners and
unbelievers, together with the devil and his angels, will, at the time when
every knee shall bow to Jesus of things heavenly and things earthly and things
infernal, not only receive pardon, but also be summoned to receive the second
order of rewards.

34. It is indeed a thing so unheard of to believe that a man can pronounce
condemnation on the fabric which he himself has reared, that I doubt not it will
with difficulty win credit; and I feel that what you desire is that I should, if
possible, produce from his writings instances of this so clear that no room
whatever may be left for doubting; that is, passages in which that `other' of
which he is so fond is not named at all; and this I will do. In this same book
he declares his belief that, in the end of the age,64 Christ and his saints will
have their throne above the demons in such a way that the demons themselves will
act according to the will of Christ and his saints who reign over them. In
commenting upon the passage where the Apostle says,65 "That in the ages to come
he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus," after a few other remarks, he says:

"We who formerly were held bound by the law of the infernal place, and, through
our vices and sins were given over both to the works of the flesh and to
punishment, shall now reign with Christ and sit together with him. But we shall
sit, not in some kind of low place, but66 above all Principalities and power and
Dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but in the age to
come. For, if Christ has been raised from the dead, and sits at the right hand
of God in heavenly places, far above all Principality and Power and Dominion,
and above every name that is named, not only in this age but in the age to come,
we also must of necessity sit and reign with Christ and sit above those things
above which he sits. But the careful reader will at this point make his inquiry
and say: What? is man then greater than the angels and all the powers of heaven?
I make answer, though it is hazardous to do so, that the Principalities and
Powers and Mights and Dominions, and all names that are named not only in this
age but in that which is to come must refer (since all things are subjected to
the feet of Christ) not to the good part of them but the opposite; the Apostle
means by these expressions the rebellious angels, and the prince of this world,
and Lucifer who once was the morning star, over whom in the end of the age the
saints must sit with Christ, who communicates this privilege to them. These
powers are now infernal powers, abusing their freedom for the worst purposes,
wandering everywhere and running together down the steep places of sin. But when
they have Christ and the saints sitting on thrones above them, they will begin
to be ruled according to the will of those who reign over them."

Surely there is no ambiguity remaining here; the passage needs no one to bring
out its points. He says in the most distinct terms, without bringing in the
person of any `other,' that the rebellious angels and the prince of this world,
and Lucifer who once was the morning star, will in the end, when Christ sits and
reigns over them with his saints, be fellows and sharers, not only of his
kingdom but also of his will; for to act according to the will of Christ and of
all his saints is to have arrived at the highest blessedness, and the perfection
which we are taught in the Lord's Prayer to ask of the Father is none other than
this, that his will may be done in earth as it is in heaven.

35. But I beg yon to listen patiently as I follow him in his continual
recurrence to these same doctrines-not indeed in all that he says of them, for
it is so much that I should have to write many volumes if I tried to exhaust
its-but as much as will satisfy the reader that it is not by chance that he
slips into these notions which he now proposes for imitation to his disciples,
but that he supports them by large and frequent assertion. Let us see what it is
that he teaches us in these the most approved of his Commentaries. In this same
book he teaches that there is for men the possibility of both rising and
falling, not in the present age only but in that which is to come. On the
passage in which the words occur: "Far above all Principality and Power and
Might and Dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but in
that which is to come," he has the following among other remarks:

"If, however, there are Principalities, Virtues, Powers and Dominions, they must
necessarily have subjects who fear them and serve them and gain power from their
strength; and this gradation of offices will exist not only in the present age
but in that which is to come; and it must be possible that one may rise through
these various stages of advancement and honour, while another sinks, that there
will be risings and fallings, and that our spirits may pass under each of these
Powers, Virtues, Principalities, and Dominions one after the, other."

36. I will address the Master in one of his own phrases.67 Why, after nearly
four hundred years, do you give such teachings as these to the Latin people with
their peaceable and simple minds! Why do you inflict on unaccustomed ears
new-sounding words, which no one finds in the writings of the Apostles? I
beseech you, spare the ears of the Romans, spare that faith which the Apostle
praised.68 Why do you bring out in public what Peter and Paul were unwilling to
publish? Did not the Christian world exist without any of these things until-not
as you say I made my translations, but up to the time when you wrote what I have
quoted, that is till some fifteen years ago? For what is this teaching of yours,
that in the world to come there will still be risings and fallings,-that some
will go forward and some go back? If that be true, then what you say, that in
this world life is either acquired or lost, is not true; unless it has some
occult meaning. I do not find that you repent of any of these doctrines which
these commentaries contain. Again, you teach that the Church is to be understood
as being one body made up not of men only but of angels and all the powers of
heaven. You say in commenting on the passage of the same book, in which the
words occur69 "And gave him to be head over all the Church," a little way down:
"The Church may be understood as consisting not of men alone, but also of
angels, and of all the powers, and reasonable creatures." Again, you say that
souls, because in that former life they knew God, now know him not as one
previously unknown, but as though after having forgotten him they came to
recognize him again. These are the words used in a passage of the same book:

"The words which he uses "In the knowledge of him"70 some interpret by recalling
that between gnwsij and 'epignwsij (Gnosis and Epignosis) that is, between
knowing and recognition there is this difference, that Knowing has reference to
things which we did not know before and have since begun to know, while
Recognition has to do with those things which we afterwards remember. Our souls,
then, they say, have a kind of apprehension of a former life, after they have
been cast down into human bodies, and have forgotten God their Father; but now
we know him by revelation, according to that which is written:71 "All the ends
of this world shall remember and turn to the Lord;" and there are many similar
passages."

38.72 Now, as to the expression which he uses, "Some persons say," I think it
has been made clear by what I have previously said, that, when he says "some
persons say" or "Another says," anti does not controvert the opinions which are
thus introduced, it is he himself who is this `certain' or `other' person. And
this is proved by the numerous cases which I have pointed out in which he
expresses opinions agreeing with these without the introduction of any such
person. We must consider therefore in each case whether he expresses any dissent
from the `other.' For instance, an opinion is put forward that the stars and the
other things that are in heaven are reasonable beings and capable of sinning. We
must see, therefore, what his own opinion is on this point. Turn to his note, in
this book.73 upon the passage "He must reign till he hath put all his enemies
under his feet."74 You will find, some way down, the words:

"It may be observed that no one is without sin, that Even the stars are not
clean in his sight,75 and Every creature trembles at the coming of the Creator.
Hence it is not only things on earth but also things in heaven which are said to
have been cleansed by our Saviour's cross."

Again, as to the opinion that it is because of their being in this body of
humiliation or body of death that men are called children of wrath, he says, in
commenting on the words76 `We were the children of wrath, even as others.'
(Comm. on Ephes. on this verse, some way down.)

"We must hold that men are by nature children of wrath because of this77 `body
of humiliation' and78 `body of death,' and because79 `the heart of man is
disposed to evil from his youth.'"

Again, on the opinion that there is first a creation of the soul and afterwards
a fashioning of the body he says (at the same passage, a long way down)

"And observe carefully that he does not say, `We are his forming and fashioning,
but80 `We are his making.' For `fashioning' implies the fact of man's origin
from the slime of the earth: but `Making' from his origin according to the image
and similitude of God. And this distinction is confirmed by the words of the
118th Psalm81 "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me." `Making' has the first
place, `fashioning' comes after.' Are there any other things which he wishes us
to condemn? He has only to mention them, and we can draw them out from his own
books, or rather from the bottom of his own heart. For instance. We are to
condemn as a pestilent assertion that the nature of human souls and of angels is
the same. But let us see what his own opinion is on this point as given in the
books which he specially puts before us as containing the pattern of his
profession and his rule of faith. Turn to the passage,82 "He came and preached
peace to them which were afar off and to them that were nigh." His comment on
this first expounds the words of Jews and Gentiles, and then goes on:

"This has been said in accordance with the Vulgate83 translation. But, if a man
reads the words of the Apostle when he says of Christ,84 "Making peace through
the blood of his cross for those that are in earth and for those that are in
heaven" and the rest that is said in that place, he will not consider that it is
we who are called the spiritual Israel are intended by `those afar off,' and
that the Jews, who are merely called `Israel after the flesh' are `those who are
nigh.' He will modify the whole meaning of the passage, and apply it to the
angels and the heavenly powers and to human souls, and as implying that Christ
by his blood joined together things in earth and things in heaven which before
were at variance, who brought back the sheep which had grown sickly upon the
mountains to be with the rest, and put back the last piece of money among those
which had before been safe."

39. You observe how much difference he makes between the souls of men and the
angels. Merely the difference between the one sheep and the others, between one
drachma and the rest. But he adds something more, a little way further; he says:

"As to what the Apostle says, "That he might create in himself of two one new
man, so making peace," though it seems to be even more applicable than the
former passage to the case of Jews and Gentiles, it may be adapted to our
understanding of the passage in this way: We may suppose him to mean that man,
who was made after the image and similitude of God, is after his reconciliation
to receive the same form which the angels now have and he has lost: and he calls
him a new man because he is renewed day by day, and is to dwell in the new
world." The souls of men then, differ, according to him, from the angels as
sheep from sheep or as drachma from drachma; and men will have that form
hereafter which the angels now have, but which men once had and had lost. If
then there is no difference between them in nature, in shape or in form, I
wonder that our learned man is not ashamed to condemn another person for saying
what he himself has said, and especially when you observe that this is an
exposition not of the Vulgate rendering but of the real meaning of the Apostle.
But see what is added further in the same place. He presently says:

"And the creation of the new man will be fully and completely perfected when
things in heaven and things in earth shall be joined in one, and we have access
to the Father in one spirit, in one feeling and mind. There is something similar
suggested by Paul to all thoughtful readers in another Epistle (though some do
not receive it as his), in these words:85 "All these, having had witness borne
of their faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing
for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect." For this reason the
whole creation86 groans and travails with pain in sympathy with us who groan in
this tabernacle, who have conceived in the womb by the fear of God,87 and are in
grief and wait for the revelation of the sons of God; and it waits to be
delivered from the vanity of the bondage to which it is now subject; so that
there may be one shepherd and one flock, and that the petition in the Lord's
Prayer may be fulfilled, "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.""

We are to understand then that things in heaven and those on earth, that is,
Angels and men, formerly had one form and one sheepfold, and that so it will be
in their future restoration, since Christ will come to make both into one flock,
and men are to be what angels now are, and what they, that is their souls,
previously were. I ask then, with what face you can mock, as we lately saw you,
so pleasantly, or rather not pleasantly at all but scurrilously, at those poor
women who, striking their bellies and thighs, said that they should not after
the resurrection have those frail bodies but would be like the angels and have a
life like theirs. You reprove with bitter raillery these poor women for saying
the very things which are now produced as passages from these selected
Commentaries of yours. Do not you think this is somewhat as if a man were to
accuse another of theft, while he had the very thing that had been stolen
concealed in the bosom of his toga; and as if, after inveighing against the
supposed thief in a long and magnificent peroration, after bringing forward
witnesses and taking the oath in due form, he should have the stolen article
extracted from his toga which he supposed himself to have convicted another of
stealing.

There is another point. You find fault with others because, when questions are
asked them about such matters, they do not answer at once, but hesitate and use
gestures rather than words. Yet you say that the Apostle does much the same, at
least, that he `insinuates' something of this kind in his Epistle to thoughtful
men. If Paul does not plainly declare these things, but `insinuates' them, and
this not to everybody but only to thoughtful people, why do you, whom we are
bringing to see your errors, laugh at us poor creatures when we say about things
which the Apostle has not plainly declared either that we do not know, or that
we stand in doubt, and that, since we do not get a full understanding but a hint
of his meaning, we do not declare but suggest an explanation. If the things
which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and which have not entered into the heart
of man have been revealed to you; if you have attained to that which is perfect,
and that which is in part is done away for you; shout aloud and proclaim the
truth, and make quite plain the things which you say the Apostle `insinuates,'
since not only what he insinuates but what he asserts, as you tell us, now falls
under your ban. All these things on which you now desire us to pronounce
anathema are those which you had ascribed to the Apostle in your exposition of
his words, and had taught as contained in the scope of his statements.

40. There are one or two more things on which he wishes condemnation to be
passed. One is this: that these men say that the body is a prison, and like a
chain round the soul; and that they assert that the soul does not depart, but
returns to the place where it originally was. Let me give quotations to show his
opinion on this point also. In the second book of these Commentaries, on the
passage "For this cause, I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ," he says, a
little way down;

"The Apostle in several passages calls the body the chain of the soul, because
the soul is kept shut up as it were in a prison; and thus we may speak of Paul
being kept close in the bonds of the body and does not return to be with Christ,
so that preaching to the Gentiles may be perfectly accomplished." And again in
the third book of these Commentaries, on the words, "for which I am an
ambassador in chains,"88 after some discussion of the passage, he speaks in the
character of that `other' which is himself:

"Another contends that he speaks thus because of the89 body of our humiliation
and the chain with which we are encompassed, so that we90 know not yet as we
ought to know, and see91 by means of a mirror in a riddle: and that he will be
able to disclose the mysteries of the Gospel only when he has cast off this
chain and gone forth free from his prison. Yet perhaps even in chains that man
may be considered as free who has his conversation in heaven, and of whom it may
be said:92 "You are not in the prison nor in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so
be that the spirit of God dwelleth in you." And in the Commentary on Paul's
Epistle to Philemon, at the place where he says93 "Epaphras my fellow-prisoner
greeteth you," some way down he says:

"Possibly, however, as some think, a more recondite and mysterious view is set
before us, namely, that the two companions had been captured and bound and
brought down into this vale of tears."

41. You see how be represents these opinions as things which are held as a kind
of esoteric mystery by certain persons, of whom, however, he is one, as we have
shewn over and over again: only, he uses this figure of speech so that he may
escape the imputations attached to this mystic gnosis. Yon see, he will tell us,
how the matter stands. You would never think of attributing to me the opinion
that all things are eventually to be restored to one condition, and to be made
up again into one body. I beg you not to impute this to me. If I say that an
opinion is another man's, let it be another's; if you afterwards find any
opinion written down without any `other' person being thrown in, you will be
right in ascribing it to me. What then? are we to lose the fruit of all the
trouble we have taken further back on this point? Such is the power of
effrontery. However, let it be as he chooses; I put aside the truth of the
matter and accept his own terms; but he will still be convicted. I will refer on
the matter now in hand to the second book of these Commentaries, at the
passage94 "Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace. There is one body and one spirit, even as ye were called in one hope of
your calling." After several remarks, he proceeds:

"The question arises how there can be one hope of our calling, when in the
Father's house there are many mansions: to which we reply that the kingdom of
heaven is the one hope of our calling, as being the one house of our Father's
but that in one house there are many mansions or rooms. For there is one glory
of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars. But certainly it is
possible that there is a deeper meaning, namely, that in the consummation of the
world, all things are to be restored to their primitive condition, and that then
we shall all be made one body, and formed anew into the perfect man, and that
thus the Saviour's Prayer will be fulfilled in us,95 `Father, grant that, as
thou and I are one, so they also may be one in us.'"

42. I have given you one instance in which he has expressed his own opinion
without any ambiguity on the universal resurrection. I will give one more, and
with this bring to an end the first book of my Apology. His statements, indeed,
on this point are innumerable. The one I select is on the passage where it is
written:96 "From whom all the body, fitly framed and knit together through that
which every joint supplieth according to the working in due measure of each
several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in
love." He begins thus:

"In the end of all things, when we shall have begun to know God face to face,
and shall have come to the measure of the age97 of the fulness of Christ, of
whose fulness we all have received,98 so that Christ will not be in us in part
but wholly, and, leaving the rudiments of babes, we shall have grown into the
perfect man, of whom the Prophet says,99 "Behold the man whose name is the
East," and whom John the Baptist announces in the words:100 "After me cometh a
man who has come to be101 before me, for he was before me"; then by the
concurrence in a common faith, and in a common recognition of the Son of God,
whom now through the variety of men's minds we cannot know and recognize with
one and the same faith, the whole body, which before had been disintegrated and
torn into many parts, will be joined and fitted together, and brought into one;
so that there will be but one administration, and one and the same operation,
and an absolute perfection of the one age,102 whereby the whole body will grow
equally, and all its members according to their measure will receive an increase
of age. But this whole process of up-building, by which the body of the church
is increased in all its members, will be completed by mutual love. We can
understand the whole mass of rational creatures by the example of a single
rational animal; and whatever we say of the single creature, we may be sure will
be applicable to every creature. Let us imagine this creature, then, to have had
all its limbs, veins and flesh so torn apart that neither bone should cleave to
bone nor muscle be joined to muscle, that the eyes lie in one place apart, the
nose in another, that the hands are placed here and the feet thrown out there,
and the rest of the members are in a similar way dispersed and divided. Then let
us suppose that a physician arrives on the spot, of such skill as to be able to
imitate the acts of Aesculapius, as told in the stories of the heathen, and to
raise up a new form, the new man Virbius.103 It will be necessary for him to
restore each member to its own place, to couple joint to joint, and to replace
the various parts and glue them together, so as to make the body one again. So
far this single comparison has carried us. But now let us take another typical
case, so as, by a similar illustration to make clear that which we wish to have
understood. A child is growing up; moment by moment, though the process is
hidden from us, he is tending to perfect maturity. His hands enlarge, his feet
undergo a proportional increase; the belly, though we cannot see it, is filled,
the shoulders widen unmarked by the eyes, and all the members in each part grow
according to their measure, but in such a way that they evidently increase not
for themselves but for the body. So will it be in the time of the restitution of
all things, when the true physician Jesus Christ, shall come to restore to
health the whole body of the church which is now dispersed and torn. Every one,
according to the measure of his faith and his recognition of the Son of God (it
is called recognition because he first knew him and afterwards ceased from
knowing him), will receive his proper place, and will begin to be what he once
had been: not that, according to another opinion which is a heresy,104 all will
be placed in one condition,105 that is, all restored to the condition of Angels,
but that every member will be perfected according to its measure and office: for
instance, that the apostate angel will begin to be that which he was originally
made, and man who had been cast out of the garden of Eden will be brought back
to cultivate the garden again. But all these things will be so constituted that
they will be joined to one another by mutual love, each member rejoicing with
its fellow and being gladdened by its advancement; and so the church of the
first born, the body of Christ, will dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem which the
Apostle in another place calls the mother of the Saints."

43. These things which you have said are read by all who know Latin, and you
yourself request them to read them: such sayings, I mean as these: that all
rational creatures, as can be imagined by taking a single rational animal as an
example, are to be formed anew into one body, just as if the members of a single
man after being torn apart should be formed anew by the art of Aesculapius into
the same solid body as before: that there will be among them as amongst the
members of the body various offices, which you specify, but that the body will
be one, that is, of one nature: this one body made up of all things you call the
original church, and to this you give the name of the body of Christ; and
further you say that one member of this church will be the apostate angel, that
is, of course, the devil, who is to be formed anew into that which he was first
created: that man in the same way, who is another of the members, will be
recalled to the culture of the garden of Eden as its original husbandman. All
those things you say one after the other, without bringing in the person of that
`other' whom you usually introduce when you speak of such matters cautiously,
and like one treading warily, so as to make men think that you had some
hesitation in deciding matters so secret and abstruse. Origen indeed, the man
whose disciple you do not deny that you are, and whose betrayer you confess
yourself to be, always did this, as we see, in dealing with such matters. But
you, as if you were the angel speaking by the mouth of Daniel or Christ by that
of Paul, give a curt and distinct opinion on each point, and declare to the ears
of mortals all the secrets of the ages to come. Then you speak thus to us: "O
multitude of the faithful, place no faith in any of the ancients. If Origen had
some thoughts about the more secret facts of the divine purposes, let none of
you admit them. And similarly if one of the Clements said any such things,
whether he who was a disciple of the apostle or he of the church of Alexandria
who was the master of Origen himself; yes even if they were said by the great
Gregory of Pontus, a man of apostolic virtues, or by the other Gregory, of
Nazianzus, and Didymus the seeing106 prophet, both of them my teachers, than
whom the world has possessed none more deeply taught in the faith of Christ. All
these have erred as Origen has erred; but let them be forgiven, for I too have
erred at times, and I am now behaving myself as a penitent, and ought to be
forgiven. But Origen, since he said the same things which I have said, shall
receive no forgiveness though he has done penance; nay, for saying the things
which we all have said, he alone shall be condemned. He it is who has done all
the mischief; he who betrayed to us the secret of all that we say or write, of
all which makes us seem to speak learnedly, of all that was good in Greek but
which we have made bad in Latin. Of all these let no man listen to a single one.
Accept those things alone which you find in my Commentaries, and especially in
those on the Epistle to the Ephesians, in which I have most painfully confuted
the doctrines of Origen. My researches have reached this result, that you must
believe and hold the resurrection of the flesh in this sense that men's bodies
will be turned into spirits and their wives into men; and that before the
foundation of the world souls existed in heaven, and thence, for reasons known
to God alone, were brought down into this valley of tears, and were inserted
into this body of death; that, in the end of the ages the whole of nature, being
reasonable, will be fashioned again into one body as it was in the beginning,
that man will be recalled into Paradise, and the apostate angel will be exalted
above Peter and Paul, since they, being but men, must be placed in the lower
position of paradise, while he will be restored to be that which he was
originally created; and that all shall together make up the Church of the first
born in heaven, and, while placed each in his separate office, shall be equally
members of Christ: but all of them taken together will be the perfect body of
Christ. Hold then to these things, my faithful and discreet disciples, and guard
them as my unhesitating definitions of truth; but for the same doctrines
pronounce your condemnation upon Origen; so you will do well. Fare ye well."

44. You do all this, you know well enough, laughing at us in your sleeve: and
you profess penitence merely to deceive those to whom you write. Even if your
penitence is sincere, as it should be, what is to become of all those souls who
for so many years have been led astray by this poisonous doctrine as you call it
which you then professed. Besides, who will ever mend his ways on account of
your penitence, when that very document, in which you are at once the penitent,
the accuser and the judge, sends your readers back to those same doctrines as
those which they are to read and to hold. Lastly, even if these things were not
so, yet you yourself, after your penitence, have stopped up every avenue of
forgiveness. You say that Origen himself repented of these doctrines, and that
he sent a document to that effect to Fabian who was at that time Bishop of the
city of Rome; and yet after this repentance of his, and after he has been dead a
hundred and fifty years, you drag him into court and call for his condemnation.
How is it possible then that you should receive forgiveness, even though you
repent, since he who before was penitent for emitting those doctrines gains no
forgiveness? He wrote just as you have written: he repented as you have
repented. You ought therefore either both of you to be absolved for your
repentance, or, if you refuse forgiveness to a penitent (which I do not desire
to see you insist upon), to be both of you equally condemned. There is a parable
of the Gospel which illustrates this. A woman taken in adultery was brought
before our Lord by the Jews, so that they might see what judgment he would
pronounce according to the law. He, the merciful and pitying Lord, said: "He
that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone at her." And then, it
is said, they all departed. The Jews, impious and unbelieving though they were,
yet blushed through their own consciousness of guilt;107 since they were
sinners, they would not appear publicly as executing vengeance on sinners. And
the robber upon the cross, said to the other robber who was hanging like him on
a cross, and was blaspheming, "Dost not thou fear God, seeing we are in the same
condemnation?" But we condemn in others the things of which we ourselves are
conscious; yet we neither blush like the Jews nor are softened like the robber.

1: Ps. lvii, 4.

2: Matt. v, 11, Matt. v, 12.

3: Matt. x, 25.

4: John vii, 12.

5: Matt. xi, 19.

6: Jerome Ep. lxxxiv, 8.

7: Bp. of Aquileia at the time of this Apology and maintaining friendly
relations with both Jerome and Rufinus. (Ruf. Pref. to Eusebius in this Volume.
Jer. Ep. vii, lx. 19, Pref. to Bks. of Solomon &c. &c.) 8: See Jerome Ep. vii.
It is not known of what church he was Bp.

9: Brother of Chromatius. See an allusion to him in Jerome, Ep. viii, and lx,
19. His see is unknown.

10: Matt. xi, 27.

11: 1 Cor. ii, 10.

12: 1 Cor. xv, 20.

13: Rev. i, 5.

14: 1 Cor. xv, 23.

15: 1 Cor. xv, 42-4.

16: animale.

17: Phil. iii, 21.

18: Col. i, 18.

19: Rufinus frequently taunts Jerome with having paid too much heed to the
Jewish teachers from whom he learned Hebrew.

20: Cor. xv. 50.

21: Rom. xiv. 4.

22: That is, Origen. Rufinus insinuates that Jerome owed and cared more for
Origen than he chose to avow.

23: This word originally meant simply learning. It was then applied in a special
sense to mathematics. But the mathematici under the later Roman Empire became
identified with astrologers.

24: See these Prefaces translated in the earlier part of this Volume.

25: Corresponding to the single and double inverted commas used in this
translation.

26: 1 Cor. xv, 50.

27: 1 Thess. v, 21, 1 Thess. v, 22; Gal. vi, 16.

28: See the translation of this document in this Volume.

29: Or First Principles (De Principiis).

30: Of Alexandria. He was at first friendly to Origenism, afterwards bitterly
opposed to it. John wrote to him complaining of the conduct of Epiphanius. and
explaining his own views. See Jerome's letter (lxxxii) to Theophilus, and his
Treatise Against John of Jerusalem. In the latter of these charges occur like
those here noticed by Rufinus.

31: IIeri 'Arxwn Book I. c. 1.

32: Col. i, 15.

33: John i, 18.

34: Matt. xi, 27.

35: Matt. v, 8.

36: Jerome's friend Eusebius of Cremona, of whom Rufinus complains as having
taken occasion from this old friendship to purloin and falsify his mss. See
below c. 20, 21.

37: Marcella. See below in this chapter. Also, Jerome Letter cxxvii, c. 9, 10.

38: James iii, 2.

39: Eusebius of Cremona, Jerome's friend and emissary, alluded to above in this
chapter.

40: Gal. v, 10.

41: Jerome, Letter lxi, c, 2; a passage which shows that Jerome had adopted much
the same method as Rufinus in translating Origen.

42: The words are not quoted literally from Jerome's letter to Pammachius and
Oceanus (Ep. lxxxiv. c. 2) the passage referred to; but they give the sense
fairly well. See also the letter to Vigilantius (lxi. c. 2).

43: Proefati unculam. That is, the Preface to Origen's Song of Songs, in which
he says that Origen has not only surpassed every one else, but also in this work
has surpassed himself.

44: Perhaps from 1 Cor. xi, 29, or Rom. xiv, 23.

45: Possibly a kind of paraphrase of our Lord's words to the woman taken in
adultery. John viii, 11.

46: summusthn , that is one who partakes with us in the mysteries; hence,
initiated into the same secret, or special opinions.

47: Ephes. v, 28.

48: Gen. i, 27.

49: Quoestiones. Examinations or inquisitions. It seems here to mean the method
which God follows in distinguishing between individuals.

50: katabolh "foundation," means literally "casting down."

51: Ps. cxx, 5.

52: Rom. vii, 24.

53: Phil. i, 23.

54: Ps. cxix, 67.

55: In our numbering, Ps. xc.

56: Talpas oculis captos. Virg, Georg. i, 183.

57: Rom. ix, 21.

58: Eph. i. 12.

59: Reading `sorte 0' as in the Comm. itself.

60: Phil. ii, 10, Phil. ii, 11.

61: Jerome uses the Greek word prohlpikotaj . It seems best to coin a new one to
represent the peculiar idea.

62: Phil. i, 18.

63: Regulas confusionis fidei. Another reading is Confessionis. But probably
Rufinus meant to give point to his expression by substituting for the well known
words "Rule of faith" "Rule of confusion of faith."

64: Soeculi; usually translated by `the end of the world, 0' which, however,
hardly gives the true meaning.

65: Eph. ii, 7.

66: Eph. i, 21.

67: Jerome, Letter lxxxiv, 8.

68: Rom. 1, 8.

69: Eph. i, 22.

70: Eph. i, 17.

71: Ps. xxii. 27.

72: There is no chapter numbered 37.

73: Comm. on Eph. i, 22.

74: 1 Cor. xv, 25.

75: Job xxv, 5.

76: Eph. ii, 3.

77: Phil. iii, 21.

78: Rom. vii, 24.

79: Gen. viii, 21.

80: Workmanship Eng. Ver. Eph. ii, 10.

81: With us Ps. cxix, 73.

82: Eph. ii, 17.

83:

84: Col. i, 20, slightly altered.

85: Heb. xi, 39, Heb. xi, 40.

86: Rom. viii, 22.

87: sunwdinei "travaileth together."

88: Eph. vi, 20.

89: Col. iii, 21.

90: 1 Cor. viii, 2.

91: 1 Cor. xiii, 12.

92: Rom. viii, 9.

93: Philem. 23.

94: Eph. iv, 3.

95: John xvii, 21 slightly altered.

96: Eph. iv, 16.

97: Eph. iv, 13. The Greek word means either age or stature.

98: John i, 16.

99: Zech. vi, 12. The Branch, Eng. Ver.

100: John i, 30.

101:

102: Or stature, see above.

103: Formerly Hippolytus. See the story, in Ovid, Met. xv, 514.

104:

105: Lit. age. The word may come either wrong meaning of the Greek word for
Stature, or may be a synonym for the word Aeon, which would here mean a range or
order of being.

106: Didymus, the blind teacher of Alexandria. Jerome who admired him, though he
was a disciple of Origen, delights in calling him, in contrast to his blindness,
the Seer.

107: John viii, 9.


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  CHAPTER 17: THE APOLOGY OF RUFINUS - BOOK 2
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Book II.

Book II.

1. Jerome says that the defenders of Origen are united in a federation of
perjury.

2. Jerome's commentaries on Ephesians follow Origen's interpretation of the
texts about a secret federation to whom higher truths are to be told.

3. But I follow Christ in condemning all falsehood.

4. Jerome has not only allowed perjury but has practised it.

5. His treatise on Virginity (Ep. xxii to Eustochium) defames all orders of
Christians.

6. In his anti-Ciceronian dream he promised never to read or possess heathen
books.

7. Yet his works are filled with quotations from them.

8. In his "Best mode of Translation" he relies on the opinions of Cicero and
Horace.

9. He confesses his obligations to Porphyry.

8 (2). Jerome at Bethlehem had heathen books copied and taught them to boys.

9 (2). He condemns as heathenish unobjectionable views which he himself holds.

10 (2). He spoke of Paula impiously as the mother-in-law of God.

11. Such impiety is unpardonable.

12. Jerome's boast of his teachers, Didymus and the Jew Baranina.

13. His extravagant praises of Origen.

14. Preface to Origen on Canticles.

15. Preface to Commentary on Micah.

16. Book of Hebrew Names.

17. A story of Origen.

18. Pamphilus the Martyr and his Library.

19. Jerome praises Origen but condemns others for doing the same.

20. Jerome praises the dogmatic as well as the expository works of Origen.

21. Contrast of Jerome's earlier and later attitude towards Origen.

22. The Book of Hebrew Questions.

23. Jerome's attack upon Ambrose.

24. Preface to Didymus on the Holy Spirit.

25. Jerome attacks one Christian writer after another.

26. His treatment of Melania.

27. I never followed Jerome's errors, for which he should do penance.

27 a. But I followed his method of translation.

28. Jerome in condemning me condemns himself.

29. He says I shew Origen to be heretical, yet condemns me.

30. His pretence that the Apology for Origen is not by Pamphilus needs no
answer.

31. Others did not translate the Peri 'Arxwn because they did not know Greek.

32. Jerome's translation of the Scriptures impugned.

33. Authority of the LXX.

34. Has the Church had spurious Scriptures?

35. Danger of altering the Versions of Scripture.

36. Origen's Hexapla-Its object.

37. St. Paul's method of dealing with erring brethren.

38. How Jerome should have replied to Pammachius.

39. The Books against Jovinian.

40. My translation of the Peri 'Arxwn was meant to aid in a good cause.

41, 42, 43. Recapitulation of the Apology.

44. An appeal to Pammachius.

45, 46. Why my translations of Origen had created offence, but Jerome's not.

47. A Synod, if called on to condemn Origen, must condemn Jerome also. In the
first book of my Apology I have dealt with the accusations of dogmatic error
which he endeavours unjustly to fix upon others, and have, by producing his own
testimony, turned them back against him. In the second book, I shall be able,
now that I have settled and put aside the matters which have to do with
controversies of faith, more confidently to reply to him on the other heads of
his accusation. For there is another and a very grave accusation, which has,
like the former, to be cut down by the scythe of truth. It is this. He says1
that certain persons have joined themselves to Origen in a secret society of
perjury, and that the forms of initiation are to be found in the Sixth book of
his Miscellanies:2 and that this mystery has been detected by no one but himself
through all this space of time. I should only excite his ridicule were I to
declare, even with an oath, that I was an entire stranger to such a secret
society of perjury. The road by which I propose to reach the declaration of the
truth is more direct: it is by proving, which I can do quite easily, that I have
never possessed those books nor borrowed them from others to read. Not only
cannot I defend myself from an accusation the meaning of which I do not know,
but I do not see how a matter can be made the subject of a charge against me as
to which I do not even know what it is, or whether it exists at all. I only know
that my accuser declares that either Origen wrote or his disciples hold, that,
when the Scripture says "He that speaketh truth with his neighbour" the words
apply to a neighbour only in the sense of one of the initiated, a member of this
secret society: and again that the Apostle's words "We speak wisdom among them
that are perfect" and the words of Christ "Give not that which is holy unto
dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine," imply that truth is not to be
communicated to all.

2. Let us see what my adversary himself says on this point in those Commentaries
which he has selected. In the second book, in commenting on the words3
"Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth to his neighbour, for we
are members one of another" (after a short introduction) he speaks as follows:

"Hence Paul himself, who was one of the perfect, says in another Epistle "We
speak wisdom among them that are perfect."4 This then is what is commanded, that
those mystic and secret things, which are full of divine truth, should be spoken
by each man to his neighhour, so that day unto day may utter speech and night to
night shew knowledge,5 that is, that a man should show all those clear and lucid
truths which he knows to those to whom the words can be worthily addressed: "Ye
are the light of the world."6 On the other hand, he should exhibit everything
involved in darkness and wrapped up in the mist of symbols to others who are
themselves nothing but mist and darkness, those of whom it is said "And there
was darkness under his feet,"7 that is, of course, under the feet of God. For on
Mount Sinai Moses enters into the whirlwind and the mist where God was; and it
is written of God, "He has made darkness his secret place."8 Let each man then
thus speak truth in a mystery to his neighbour, and not give that which is holy
to dogs nor cast his pearls before swine;9 but those who are anointed with the
oil of truth, them let him lead into the bridechamber of the spouse, into the
inner sanctuary of the King."

Observe, I beg you, look carefully and see whether in all this passage there is
any one else but himself on whom the condemnation can fall. If his adversaries
were looking for an opportunity of convicting and destroying him on the ground
of what he has written, what other course could they take, and what other
testimonies could they wish to produce against him than these which he produces
against himself as if he were pleading against another? If it were sought to
pronounce a condemnation against him, his own letter would suffice. You have
only to change the name; the test of the accusation suits no one but himself
alone. What he calls on us on the one hand to condemn, he exhorts us on the
other hand to follow: what he asserts, that he reproves: what he hates, that he
does. How happy must be his disciples who obey and imitate him!

3. He has endeavoured, indeed, to brand us with the stain of this false teaching
by speaking to some of our brethren, and he repeats this by various letters,
according to his recognized plan of action. It is nothing to me what he may
write or assert, but, since he raises this question about a doctrine of perjury,
I will state my opinion upon it, and then leave him to pass judgment upon
himself. It is this. Since our Lord and Saviour says in the Gospels "It was said
to them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt pay to the Lord
thy vows, but I say unto you, Swear not at all;"10 I say that every one who
teaches that for any cause whatever we may swear falsely, is alien from the
faith of Christ and from the unity of the catholic church.

4. But I should like, now that I have satisfied you on my own account, and
supported my opinion by an anathema, to make this plain to you further, that he
himself declares that in certain orgies and mystical societies to which he
belongs perjury is practised by the votaries and associates. That is a certain
and most true saying of our God, "By their fruits ye shall know them,"11 and
this also "A tree is known by its fruits."12 Well: he says that I have accepted
this doctrine of perjury. If then I have been trained to this practice, and this
evil tree has indeed its roots within me, it is impossible but that
corresponding fruits should have grown upon me, and also that I should have
gathered some society of mystic associates around me. As regards myself whom
alone he seeks to injure by all that he writes, I will not bear witness to
myself, nor will I say that there are cases of necessity in which it is right to
swear: for I wish to avoid reproach through timidity if not through prudence;
and, at all events, if I fail in obedience to the command, I will acknowledge my
error. I will therefore make no boast of this. But, whether I have erred or
acted prudently, he at all events can lay his finger on no act of mine by which
he can convict me. But I can shew from his writings, that he not only holds this
doctrine of perjury, but practises this foul vice as a sacred duty. I will bring
nothing against him which has been trumped up by ill will, as he does against
me; but I will produce him and his writings as witnesses against himself, so
that it may be made clear that it is not his enemies who accuse but he who
convicts himself.

5. When he was living at Rome he wrote13 a treatise on the preservation of
virginity, which all the pagans and enemies of God, all apostates and
persecutors, and whoever else hate the Christian name, vied with one another in
copying out, because of the infamous charges and foul reproaches which it
contained against all orders and degrees among us, against all who profess and
call themselves Christians, in a word, against the universal church; and also
because this man declared that the crimes imputed to us by the Gentiles, which
were before supposed to be false were really true, and indeed that much worse
things were done by our people than those laid to their charge. First, he
defames the virgins themselves of whose virtue he professed to be writing,
speaking of them in these words:14

"Some of them change their dress and wear the costume of men, and are ashamed of
the sex in which they were born; they cut their hair short, and raise their
heads with the shameless stare of eunuchs. There are some who put on Cilician
jackets,15 and with hoods made up into shape, make themselves like horned owls
and night birds, as if they were becoming babies again."

There are a thousand such calumnies, and worse than these, in the book. He does
not even spare widows, for he says of them,16 "They care for nothing but the
belly and what is next it;" and he adds many other obscene remarks of this kind.
As to the whole race of Solitaries, it would take too long to give the passages
written by him in which he attacks them with the foulest abuse. It would be a
shame even to recount the indecent attacks which he makes upon the Presbyters
and the deacons. I will, however, give the beginning of this violent invective,
by which you may easily imagine what a point he reaches in its later stages.17

"There are some," he says, "of my own order, who only seek the office of
Presbyter or deacon so that they may have more license to visit women. They care
for nothing but to be well dressed, to be well scented, to prevent their feet
from being loose and bulging. Their curly hair bears the mark of the crisping
iron; their fingers sparkle with rings; and they walk on tiptoe, for fear a
fleck of mud from the road should touch their feet. When you see them, you would
take them for bridegrooms rather than clerics."

He then goes on to hurl his reproaches against our priests and ministers,
specifying their faults, or rather their crimes; and to represent the access
allowed them to married ladies not only in a disgraceful light, but so as to
seem positively execrable: and after having cut to pieces with his satirical
defamation the whole race of Christians, he does not even spare himself, as you
shall presently hear.

6. For I will now return, after a sort of digression, to the point I had
proposed, and for the sake of which it was necessary to mention this treatise. I
will shew that perjury is looked upon by him as lawful, to such a point that he
does not care for its being detected in his writings. In this same treatise he
admonishes the reader that it is wrong to study secular literature, and says,18
"What has Horace to do with the Psaltery, or Virgil with the Gospels, or Cicero
with St. Paul? Will not your brother be offended if he sees you sitting at meat
in that idol's temple?" And then, after more of the same kind, in which he
declares that a Christian must have nothing to do with the study of secular
literature, he gives an account of a revelation divinely made to him and filled
with fearful threatenings upon the subject. He reports that, after he had
renounced the world, and had turned to God, he nevertheless was held in a tight
grip by his love of secular books, and found it hard to put away his longing for
them.19

Suddenly I was caught up in the spirit and dragged before the judgment seat of
the Judge; and here the light was so bright, and those who stood around were so
radiant, that I cast myself upon the ground and did not dare to look up. Asked
who and what I was I replied `I am a Christian.' But He who presided said: `Thou
liest; thou art a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. For where thy treasure
is there will thy heart be also.' Instantly I became dumb, and amid the strokes
of the lash-for He had ordered me to be scourged-I was tortured more severely
still by the fire of conscience, considering with myself that verse `In the
grave, who shall give thee thanks?' Yet for all that I began to cry and to
bewail myself saying: `Have mercy upon me, O Lord; have mercy upon me.' Amid the
sound of the scourges this cry still made itself heard. At last the bystanders,
falling down before the knees of Him who presided, prayed that He would have
pity on my youth, and that He would give me space to repent of my error. He
might still, they urged, inflict torture upon me, should I ever again read the
works of the Gentiles. Under the stress of that awful moment I should have been
ready to make even still larger promises than these. Accordingly I made oath and
called upon His name, saying `Lord, if ever again I possess worldly books, or if
ever again I read such, I have denied thee.' On taking this oath, I was
dismissed, and returned to the upper world.

7. You observe how new and terrible a form of oath this is which he describes.
The Lord Jesus Christ sits on the tribunal as judge, the angels are assessors,
and plead for him; and there, in the intervals of scourgings and tortures, he
swears that he will never again have by him the works of heathen authors nor
read them. Now look back over the work we are dealing with, and tell me whether
there is a single page of it in which he does not again declare himself a
Ciceronian, or in which he does not speak of `our Tully,' `our Flaccus,' `our
Maro.'20 As to Chrysippus and Aristides, Empedocles and all the rest of the
Greek writers, he scatters their names around him like a vapour or halo, so as
to impress his readers with a sense of his learning and literary attainments.
Amongst the rest, he boasts of having read the books of Pythagoras. Many learned
men, indeed, declare these books to be non-extant: but he, in order that he may
illustrate every part of his vow about heathen authors, declares that he has
read even those which do not exist in writing. In almost all his works he sets
out many, more and longer quotations from these whom he calls `his own' than
from the Prophets and Apostles who are ours. Even in the works which he
addresses to girls and weak women, who desire, as is right, only to be edified
by teaching out of our Scriptures, he weaves in illustrations from `his own'
Flaccus and Tullius and Maro.

8. Take the treatise which21 he entitles "On the best mode of translating,"
though there is nothing in it except the addition of the title which is of the
best, for all is of the worst; and in which he proves those to be heretics with
whom he is now in communion, thus incurring the condemnation of our Apostle (not
his, for those whom he calls `his' are Flaccus and Tully) who says, "He who
judges22 is condemned if he eat." In that treatise, which tells us that no works
of any kind reasonably admit of a rendering word for word (though he has come
round now to think such rendering reasonable)23 he inserts whole passages from a
work of Cicero.24 But had he not said, "What has Horace to do with the Psalter,
or Maro with the Gospels, or Cicero with the Apostle? Will not your brother be
offended if he sees you sitting in that idol temple?" Here of course he brings
himself in guilty of idolatry; for if reading causes offence, much more does
writing. But, since one who turns to idolatry does not thereby become wholly and
completely a heathen unless he first denies Christ, he tells us that he said to
Christ, as he sat on the judgment seat with his most exalted angel ministers
around him, "If I ever hereafter read or possess any heathen books, I have
denied thee," and now he not only reads them and possesses them, not only copies
them and collates them, but inserts them among the words of Scripture itself,
and in discourses intended for the edification of the Church. What I say is well
enough known to all who read his treatises, and requires no proof. But it is
just like a man who is trying to save himself from such a gulf of sacrilege and
perjury, to make up some excuse for himself, and to say, as he does: "I do not
now read them, I have a tenacious memory, so that I can quote various passages
from different writers without a break, and I now merely quote what I learned in
my youth." Well: if some one were to ask me to prove that before the sun rose
this morning there was night over the earth, or that at sunset the sun had been
shining all day, I should answer that, if a man doubted about what all men knew,
it was his business to shew cause for his doubts, not for me to shew cause for
my certainty. Still in this instance, where a man's soul is at stake, and the
crime of perjury and of impious denial of Christ is alleged, a condemnation must
not be thought to be a thing of course, even though the facts are known and
understood by all men. We are not to imitate him who condemns the accused before
they have undergone any examination; and not only without a hearing, but without
summoning them to appear; and not only unsummoned, but when they are already
dead; and not only the dead, but those whom he had always praised, till then;
and not only those whom he had praised, but whom he had followed and had taken
as his masters. We must fear the judgment of the Lord, who says25 "Judge not and
ye shall not be judged," and again, "With what measure ye mete it shall be
measured to you again." Therefore, though it is really superfluous, I will bring
against him a single witness, but one who must prevail, and whom he cannot
challenge, that is, once more, himself and his own writings. All can attest what
I say in reference to this treatise of his; and my assertion about it seems to
be superfluous; but I must make use of some special testimony, lest what I say
should seem unsatisfactory to those who have not read his works.

9. When he wrote his treatises against Jovinian, and some one had raised
objections to them, he was informed of these objections by Domnio, that old man
whose memory we all revere; and in his answer to him26 he said that it was
impossible that a man like him should be in the wrong, since his knowledge
extended to everything that could be known: and he proceeded to enumerate the
various kinds of syllogisms, and the whole art of learning and of writing (of
course supposing that the man who found fault with him knew nothing about such
things). He then goes on thus:27

"It was foolish, it appears, in me to think that I could not know all these
things without the philosophers, and to look upon the end of the stylus which
strikes out and corrects as better than the end with which we write. It was
useless for me it seems, to have translated28 the Commentaries of Alexander, and
for my learned master to have brought me into the knowledge of Logic through the
`Introduction' of Porphyry; and, putting aside humanistic teachers, there was no
reason why I should have had Gregory Nazianzen and Didymus as my teachers in the
Scriptures."

This, you observe, is the man who said to Christ, I have denied thee if ever I
am found to possess or to read the works of the heathen. He might, one would
think, at all events have left out Porphyry, who was Christ's special enemy, who
endeavoured as far as in him lay to completely subvert the Christian religion,
but whom he now glories in having had as his instructor in his Introduction to
Logic. He cannot put in the plea that he had learned these things at a former
time: for, before his conversion, he and I equally were wholly ignorant of the
Greek language and literature. All these things came after his oath, after that
solemn engagement had been made. It is of no use for us to argue in such a case.
It will at once be said to us: Man, you are wrong, God is not mocked, and no
syllogisms spun out of the books of Alexander will avail with him. I think, my
brother, it was an ill-omened event that you submitted to the Introduction of
Porphyry. Into what has that faithless man introduced you? If it is into the
place where he is now, that is the place where there is weeping and gnashing of
teeth; for there dwell the apostate and the enemies of God; and perhaps the
perjurers will go there too.

10. You chose a bad introducer. If you will take my counsel, both you and I will
by preference turn to him who introduces us to the Father and who said29 `No man
cometh unto the Father but by me.' I lament for you, my brother, if you believe
this; and if you believe it not, I still lament that you hunt through all sorts
of ancient and antiquated documents for grounds for suspecting other men of
perjury, while perjury, lasting and endless with all its inexplicable impiety,
remains upon your own lips. Might not these words of the Apostle be rightly
applied to you:30 "Thou that art called a Jew and restest in the law, and makest
thy boast in God, being instructed out of the law, and trustest that thou
thyself art a leader of the blind, a light of them that sit in darkness, an
instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, who hast a form of knowledge and
of the truth in the law: Thou therefore, that teachest others, teachest thou not
thyself? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit
adultery? Thou that preachest that a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou
that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege"-that is perjury? And, what
comes last and most important, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles
through you," and your love of strife.

8 (2). We will pass on to clear up another of the charges, if only he will
confess under the stress of his own consciousness of wrong that he has been
convicted both of perjury and of making a false defence. Otherwise, if he
attempts to deny what I say, I can produce as witnesses any number of my
brethren, who, while living in the cells built by me on the Mount of Olives,
copied out for him most of the Dialogues of Cicero. I often, as they wrote them
out, had in my hands quaternions31 of these Dialogues; and I looked them over
myself, in recognition of the fact that he gave them much larger pay than is
usually given for writings of other sorts. He himself also came to see me at
Jerusalem from Bethlehem, bringing with him a book which contained a single
Dialogue of Cicero, and also one of Plato's in Greek; he will not pretend to
deny having given me that book, and having stayed some time with me. But what is
the use of delaying so long over a matter which is clearer than the light? To
all that I have said this addition is to be made, after which all further
comment is superfluous; that after he had settled in the monastery at Bethlehem,
and indeed not so long ago, he took the office of a teacher in grammar, and
explained `his own' Maro and the comedians and lyrical and historical writers to
young boys who had been entrusted to him that he might teach them the fear of
the Lord: so that he actually became a teacher and professor in the knowledge of
those heathen authors, as to whom he had sworn that if he even read them he
would have denied Christ.

9 (2). But now let us look at the other points which he blames. He says that the
doctrines in question are of heathen origin, but in this judgment he condemns
himself. He calls these doctrines heathenish; yet he himself incorporates them
into his works. He here makes a mistake. Still, we ought to stretch out the hand
to him, and not to press him too far: for it is only because he soars so
completely above the world on the wings of his eloquence, and is borne along by
the full tide of invective and vituperation that he forgets himself and his
reason loses its place. Do not be so rash, my brother, as to condemn yourself
unnecessarily. Neither you nor Origen are at once to be set down among the
heathen if, as you have yourself said, you have written these things to
vindicate the justice of God, and to make answer to those who say that
everything is moved by chance or by fate: if, I say, it is from your wish to
show that God's providence which governs all things is just that you have said
the causes of inequality have been acquired by each soul through the passions
and feelings of the former life which it had in heaven; or even if you said that
it is in accordance with the character of the Trinity, which is good and simple
and unchangeable that every creature should in the end of all things be restored
to the state in which it was first created; and that this must be after long
punishment equal to the length of all the ages, which God inflicts on each
creature in the spirit not of one who is angry but of one who corrects, since he
is not one who is extreme to mark iniquity; and that, his design like a
physician being to heal men, he will place a term upon their punishment. Whether
in this you spoke truly, let God judge; anyhow such views seem to me to contain
little of impiety against God, and nothing at all of heathenism, especially if
they were put forward with the desire and intention of finding some means by
which the justice of God might be vindicated.

10 (2). I would not, therefore, have you distress yourself overmuch about these
points, nor expose yourself needlessly either to penance or to condemnation. But
there is a matter of real importance, as to which I can neither excuse nor
defend you; namely, a statement openly made by you which is not only heathenish
but beyond all heathenism and impiety-the statement in the treatise which I have
mentioned above,32 that God has a mother-in-law. Has anything so profane as this
or so impious been said even by any of the heathen poets? It would be a foolish
question to ask whether you find anything of the kind in the holy Scriptures. I
only ask whether `your' Flaccus or Maro, whether Plautus or Terence, or even
whether any writer of Satires among all their unclean and immodest sayings has
ever uttered such an outrage against God. No doubt you were led astray by the
fact that the girl to whom you addressed the treatise33 was called the bride of
Christ: and hence you thought that her mother according to the flesh might be
called the mother-in-law of God. You did not recollect that such things are said
not according to the order of the flesh, but according to the grace of the
spirit. For a woman is called the bride of Christ because the word of God is
united in a kind of mystic wedlock with the human soul. But if the mother of the
girl in question is related to Christ by this spiritual connexion, she herself
should be called the bride of Christ, not the mother-in-law of God. As it is,
you might as well go on to call the father of the girl God's father-in-law, and
her sister his sister-in-law, or to call the girl herself God's daughter-in-law.
The fact is, you were so anxious to appear completely possessed of the eloquence
of Plautus or of Cicero, that you forgot that the Apostle speaks of the whole
church, parents and children, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, all
together, as one virgin or bride, when he says,34 "I determined this very thing,
to present you as a chaste virgin to one man, which is Christ." But you boast
that you follow not Paul's but Porphyry's Introduction, and, since he wrote his
impious and sacrilegious books against Christ and against God, you have fallen,
through his introduction, into this abyss of blasphemy.

11. If, then, you really intend to do an act of repentance for those evil
speeches of yours, if you are not merely mocking us by saying this, and if you
are not in your heart such a lover of strife and contention that you are willing
even to defame yourself on this sole condition that you may be able thereby to
besmirch another; if it is not in pretence but in good faith that you repent of
what you have said amiss, come and do penance for this great and foul blasphemy;
for it is indeed blasphemy against God. For if a man oversteps the mark by
speaking erroneously of mere creatures, this is not such a very execrable crime,
especially if he does it, as you say, not with a set purpose of blasphemy, but
in seeking to vindicate the justice of God. But to lift up your mouth against
the heaven is a grave offence; to speak violence and blasphemy against the Most
High is worthy of death. Let us bestow our lamentations upon that which is hard
to cure; for what man is there who has the jaundice,35 and is in danger both of
looks and life, who will complain loudly because of a little hangnail on his
foot or because a scratch made with his own finger which easily yields to
remedies, is not yet cured?

12. I think very little, indeed, of one reproach which he levels against me, and
think it hardly worthy of a reply; that, namely, in which, in recounting the
various teachers whom he hired, as he says, from the Jewish synagogue, he says,
in order to give me a sharp prick, "I have not been my own teacher, like some
people," meaning me of course, for he brings the whole weight of his invective
to bear against me from beginning to end. Indeed, I wonder that he should have
chosen to make a point of this, when he had a greater and easier matter at hand
by which to disparage me, namely this, that, though I stayed long among many
eminent teachers, yet I have nothing to show which is worthy of their teaching
or their training. He indeed, has not in his whole life stayed more than thirty
days at Alexandria where Didymus lived; yet almost all through his books he
boasts, at length and at large, that he was the pupil of Didymus the seer, that
he had Didymus as his initiator,36 that is, his preceptor in the holy
Scriptures; and the material for all this boasting was acquired in a single
month. But I, for the sake of God's work, stayed six years, and again after an
interval for two more, where Didymus lived, of whom alone you boast, and where
others lived who were in no way inferior to him, but whom you did not know even
by sight, Serapion and Menites, men who are like brothers in life and character
and learning; and Paul the old man, who had been the pupil of Peter the Martyr;
and, to come to the teachers of the desert, on whom I attended frequently and
earnestly, Macarius the disciple of Anthony, and the other Macarius, and Isidore
and Pambas, all of them friends of God, who taught me those things which they
themselves were learning from God. What material for boasting should I have from
all these men, if boasting were seemly or expedient! But the truth is, I blush
even while I weave together these past experiences, which I do with the
intention, not of showing you, as you put it, that my masters did not do justice
to my talents, but, what I grieve over far more, that my talents have not done
justice to my masters. But it is foolish in me to enumerate these holy Christian
men. It is not of them that he is thinking when he says that he has not like me
been his own teacher. It is of Barabbas37 whom, unlike me, he took as his
teacher from the Synagogue, and of Porphyry by whose introduction he and not I
had his introduction into Logic. Pardon me for this that I have preferred to be
thought of as an unskilled and unlearned man rather than to be called the
disciple of Barabbas. For, when Christ and Barabbas were offered for our choice,
I in my simplicity made choice of Christ. You, it appears, are willing to join
your shouts with those who say,38 "Not this man but Barabbas." And I should like
to know what Porphyry, that friend of yours who wrote his blasphemous books
against our religion, taught you? What good did you get from either of those
masters of whom you boast so much, the one drawing his inspiration from the
idols which represent demons, the other, as you tell us, from the Synagogue of
Satan. Nothing, as far as I see, but what they knew themselves. From Porphyry
you gained the art of speaking evil of Christians, to strike at those who live
in virginity and continence, at our deacons and presbyters, and to defame in
your published writings, every order and degree of Christians. From that other
friend of yours, Barabbas, whom you chose out of the synagogue rather than
Christ, you learned to hope for a resurrection not in power but in frailty, to
love the letter which kills and hate the spirit which gives life, and other more
secret things, which, if occasion so require, shall afterwards in due time be
brought to light.

13. But why should I prolong this discussion? I shall take no notice of his
reproaches and railings; I shall make no answer to his violent attacks, that
daily task of his, for which Porphyry sharpened his pen. For I have chosen
Jesus, not Barabbas, for my master, and he has taught me to be silent when
reviled. I will come to the point where I will shew how much truth there is in
the excuses for himself and the accusations against me which he has heaped
together. He says39 that it is only in two short Prefaces that he ever was known
to have praised Origen; and that his praise extended only to his work as an
interpreter of Scripture, in which nothing is said of doctrine or of the faith,
and that in those parts of his works which he has himself translated there is
absolutely nothing advanced of the kind which he now reproves in the interest of
the Synagogue rather than that of the edification of Christians. It ought, one
would think, be enough to put him to silence, that those very things which he
set forth in his own books he blames in those of others; nevertheless, let us
see how far these other assertions of his are true. In the Preface40 to the
commentaries of Origen on Ezekiel, contained in fourteen homilies or short
orations, he writes thus to one Vincentius:

"It is a great thing which you ask of me, my friend, that I should translate
Origen into Latin, and present to the ears of Romans a man of whom we may say in
the words of Didymus the seer, that he was a teacher of the churches second only
to the Apostles." And a little way on he adds:

"I will briefly state for your information that Origen's works on the whole of
Scripture are of three kinds. First come the Extracts or Notes, called in Greek
Scholia, in which he shortly and summarily touches upon the things which seemed
to him obscure or to present some difficulty. The second kind is the Homiletics,
of which the present commentary is a specimen. The third kind is what he called
Tomes, or as we say Volumes. In this part of his work he gives all the sails of
his genius to the breathing winds; and, drawing off from the land, he sails away
into mid ocean. I know that you wish that I should translate his writings of all
kinds. I have before mentioned the reason why this is impossible; but I promise
you this, that if, through your prayers, Jesus gives me back my health, I intend
to translate, I will not say all, for that would be rash, but very many of them;
on this condition, however, which I have often set you, that I should provide
the words and you the secretary."

14. Take, again, the Preface to the Song of Songs:

"To the most holy Pope Damasus. Origen in his other books has surpassed all
other men: in the Song of Songs he has surpassed himself. The work consists of
eleven complete volumes, and reaches a length of nearly twenty thousand lines.
In these he discusses first the version of the Septuagint; then those of Aquila,
Symmachus, and Theodotion, and last of all a Fifth Version which he states that
he discovered on the coast of Actium, and this he does so grandly and so freely
that it seems to me as if the words were fulfilled in him which say,41 "The king
has brought me into his bedchamber." It would require a vast amount of time, of
labour, and of money to translate a work so great and of so much merit into the
Latin language. I therefore leave it unattempted; and have merely translated,
and that without elegance, but correctly, these two Tracts which he composed in
ordinary language for babes and sucklings. I give you a mere taste of his
opinions, not a full meal; but enough to make you realize what is the worth of
his greater works, when the smaller give you so much pleasure."

15. Also in the Preface of his Commentary on Micah, which was written to Paula
and Eustochium, he says, after some few remarks:

"As to what they say, that it is not right for me to rifle the works of Origen,
and thereby to defile the writings of the ancients, they think this a telling
piece of abuse; but it is, in my opinion, the highest praise, since I am seeking
to imitate those who are approved not only by us, but by all thoughtful men."

16. Again, in the Preface to his book on the meaning of Hebrew names, he says,
some way down:

"For fear that, when the edifice has been completed, the last touch, so to
speak, should be wanting, I have explained the words and names of the New
Testament, partly through a wish to follow the steps of Origen, whom all but the
ignorant acknowledge to have been the greatest teacher of the churches next to
the Apostles. Among the rest of the illustrious monuments of his genius is the
labour which he has bestowed upon this, desiring to complete as a Christian what
Philo as a Jew had left undone."

17. Once more, in his letter to Marcella he says:42

"Ambrose, who supplied the paper, the money and the secretaries by the aid of
which our Adamantius43 and Chalcenterus44 completed his innumerable books, in a
certain letter written to the same person from Athens, declares that he never
had a meal, when Origen was present, without something being read, and that he
never went to bed without having some brother read aloud from the holy
Scriptures. This he said he continued day and night, so that prayer waited upon
reading and reading upon prayer."

18. Lastly, take the following from another letter to Marcella:

"The blessed Martyr Pamphilus, whose life Eusebius the Bishop of Caesarea set
forth in some three volumes, wished to rival Demetrius Phalereus and
Pisistratus, in his zeal to establish a library of sacred books: he sought out
all through the world representative works of great minds, which are their true
and everlasting monuments; but most of all he acquired at great expense all the
books written by Origen, and gave them to the church at Caesarea. This library
was afterwards partly destroyed; but Acatius and later on Euzoius, Bishops of
that church, endeavoured to reestablish it in parchment volumes. The last of
these recovered a great many works, and left us an inventory of them, but he
shews that he could not find the Commentary on the hundred and twenty-sixth
Psalm and the Tract on the Hebrew letter Pe, by the fact that he does not
mention it. Not that so great a man as Adamantius passed over anything, but
that, through the negligence of his successors it did not remain to times within
our memory."

19. But perhaps you will say to me: "Why do you fill your paper with this
superfluous matter? Does even my friend say that it is a crime to name Origen,
or to give him praise for his talents? If Origen is proclaimed as `such and so
great a man,' this makes us the more anxious to be told whether he is in other
passages spoken of as `an apostolic man,' or `a teacher of the churches,' or by
any similar expressions which appear to commend not only his talents but his
faith." This then shall be done. It was indeed for this purpose that I produced
the passage where he speaks of him as `such and so great a man,' because it was,
if I am not mistaken, in the Preface this laudatory expression is used about him
that he also claims the right of Origen to be called an Apostle or a Prophet,
and to be praised even to the heavens. And in the same way, if there are
passages in which I happen to have praised Origen's learning, all my praise is
just of this kind. This man rouses all this alarm in you because of such
expressions of mine; but he maintains that it is unjust to bring up similar
expressions against him when they occur in his own writings. But, since he does
not choose to stand on equal terms with us before the tribunal of opinion, but
condemns us on mere suspicion, while he himself does not hold himself bound even
by his own handwriting; since he, I say, does not think it necessary in such a
matter to observe the rule of holy Scripture which demands that each man should
be judged without respect of persons; I will make answer for myself, not
according to the demands of justice, but according to his wishes. He says to me:
"If you have translated Origen, you are to be blamed; but I, even if I have said
the very things for which I blame him, have done well, and these ought to be
read and held as true. If you have praised his talents or his knowledge, you
have committed a crime; if I have praised his talents, it goes for nothing."

20. Well then; he says, "Give me an instance in which I have so praised him as
to defend his system of belief." You have no right to ask this, I reply; yet I
will follow where you lead. There is a certain writing of his45 in which he
gives a short catalogue of the works which Varro wrote for the Latins, and of
those which Origen wrote in Greek for the Christians. In this he says:

Antiquity marvels at Marcus Terentius Varro because of the countless books which
he wrote for Latin readers; and Greek writers are extravagant in their praise of
their man of brass, because he has written more works than one of us could so
much as copy. But since Latin ears would find a list of Greek writers tiresome,
I shall confine myself to the Latin Varro. I shall try to shew that we of to-day
are sleeping the sleep of Epimenides and devoting to the amassing of riches the
energy which our predecessors gave to sound if secular learning.

Varro's writings include forty-five books of antiquities, four concerning the
life of the Roman people.

But why, you ask me, have I thus mentioned Varro and the man of brass? Simply to
bring to your notice our Christian man of brass, or, rather, man of
adamant-Origen, I mean-whose zeal for the study of Scripture has fairly earned
for him this latter name. Would you learn what monuments of his genius he has
left us? The following list exhibits them. His writings comprise thirteen books
on Genesis, two books of Mystical Homilies, notes on Exodus, notes on Leviticus
...also single books, four books on First Principles, two books on the
Resurrection, two dialogues on the same subject.

And, after enumerating all his works as if making an exact index, he added what
follows:

"So you see the labours of this one man have surpassed those of all previous
writers both Greek and Latin. Who has ever managed to read all that he has
written? Yet what reward have his exertions brought him? He stands condemned by
his bishop, Demetrius, only the bishops of Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, and
Achaia dissenting. Imperial Rome consents to his condemnation, and even convenes
a senate to censure him, not-as the rabid hounds who now pursue him cry-because
of the novelty or heterodoxy of his doctrines, but because men could not
tolerate the incomparable eloquence and knowledge, which, when once he opened
his lips, made others seem dumb.

I have written the above quickly and incautiously, by the light of a poor
lantern. You will see why, if you think of those who to-day represent Epicurus
and Aristippus.

21. Now suppose that while you were writing this, as you tell us you did,
quickly not cautiously, by the poor glimmering light of a lantern, some Prophet
had stood by you and had cried out: "O writer, suppress those words, restrain
your pen; for the time is coming and is not far off when you will make a schism
and separate yourself from the church; and, in order that you may find a
colorable excuse for this schism, you will begin to defame these very books
which you now make out to be so admirable. You will then say that the man whom
you call your own Brazen-heart,46 and whose name you are just about to write
down as Adamantine because of the merit of his praise-worthy labours, did not
write books for the edification of the soul but venomous heresies. This man,
further, whom you rightly describe as not having been condemned by Demetrius on
the ground of his belief, who you say was not accused of bringing in strange
doctrines, you will then pronounce worthy of execration because of his strange
doctrines; as to what you are writing about mad dogs bringing feigned charges
against him, you will yourself feign the same: and the Senate of Rome as you
call it, you will then stir up against him as you complain that they now do by
your letters of admonition, your vehement attestations, and satellites flying in
all directions. This is the return that you will make to your admirable
Brazen-heart for all his labours. Therefore beware how you write now, for, if
you write as you are doing and afterwards act as I have said, you will with more
justice be condemned by your own judgment than he by that of others." Would you,
do you think, have given credit to that prophet? Would you not have thought it
more likely that he was mad than that you would ever come to such a pass? The
fact is that in controversies of this kind there is no thought of sparing a
friend if only an enemy can be injured. But you go beyond even this point: you
do not spare yourself in your attempt to ruin not your enemies but your friends.

22. In the Preface to his book on Hebrew Questions, after many other remarks, he
says:

"I say nothing of Origen. His name (if I may compare small things to great) is
even more than my own the object of ill will, because though following the
common version in his Homilies which were spoken to common people, yet in his
Tomes, that is, in his fuller discussion of Scripture, he yields to the Hebrew
as the truth, and though surrounded by his own forces occasionally seeks the
foreign tongue as his ally. I will only say this about him, that I should gladly
have his knowledge of the Scriptures even if accompanied with all the ill-will
which clings to his name, and that I do not care a straw for these shades and
spectral ghosts whose nature is said to be to chatter in dark corners and be a
terror to babies."

I really can no longer wonder or complain of his unfriendly dealings with me
since he has not spared `such men, such great men.' For another man whom he
tears to pieces is Ambrose that Bishop of sacred memory. In what manner, and
with what disparagement be attacks him, I will show in a similar way from one of
his Prefaces, in which, nevertheless, he praises Origen. It is the Preface to
Origen's homilies on Luke addressed to Paula and Eustochium. A few days ago you
told me that you had read some commentaries on Matthew and Luke, of which one
was equally dull in perception and expression, the other frivolous in
expression, sleepy in sense. Accordingly, you requested me to translate without
such trifling, our Adamantius' 39 homilies on Luke, just as they are found in
the original Greek: I replied that it was an irksome task and a mental torment
to write, as Cicero phrases it, with another man's heart, not one's own: but yet
I will undertake it as your requests reach no higher than this. The demand which
the sainted Blaesia once made at Rome, that I should translate into our language
his twenty-five volumes on Matthew, five on Luke and thirty-two on John is
beyond my powers, my leisure and my energy. You see what weight your influence
and wishes have with me. I have laid aside for a time my books on Hebrew
Questions to use my energies which your judgment holds fruitful in translating
these commentaries which, good or bad, are his work, and not mine: especially as
I hear on the left of me the raven-that ominous bird-croaking and mocking in an
extraordinary way at the colours of all the other birds, because of his own
utter blackness. And so, before he change his note, I confess that these
treatises are Origen's recreation no less than dice are a boy's: very different
are the serious pursuits of his manhood and of his old age. If my proposal meet
with your approbation, if I am still able to undertake the task, and if the Lord
grant me opportunity to translate them into Latin, so that I may complete the
work I have now deferred, you will then be able to see, aye, and all who speak
Latin will learn through you, the mass of valuable knowledge of which they have
hitherto been ignorant, but which they have now begun to acquire. Besides this I
have arranged to send you shortly the commentaries on Matthew of that eloquent
man Hilarius, and of the blessed martyr Victorians, which, different as their
style may be, one spirit has enabled them to write: these will give you some
idea of the study which our Latins also have in former days bestowed upon the
Holy Scriptures.

23. You see by this what his opinions are about Origen and also about Ambrose.
If he should deny that his strictures apply to Ambrose, which every one knows,
he will be convicted in the first place by the fact that there is a Commentary
of his on Luke which is current among the Latins, and none by any other hand.
But secondly he knows that I possess a letter of his in which, while he
discharges others, he makes his strictures fall upon Ambrose. But, since that
letter contains certain more secret matters, I do not wish to see it published
before the right time; and therefore I will corroborate what I say by other
proofs similar to it. In the meantime let this be counted as demonstrated by
what I have said above, that he extols Origen's writings as in every way
admirable, and declares that `if he translates them, the Roman tongue will then
recognize what a store of good it had hitherto been ignorant of and now has
begun to understand,' that is the twenty six books on Matthew, the five on Luke,
and the thirty two on John. These are the books to which he gives the highest
honour; and in these absolutely everything is to be found which is contained in
the books on Peri =Arkwn the groundwork of his charges against me, only set
forth with greater I breadth and fulness. If then he promises that he will
translate these, why does he condemn me for a similar course? But now I have
undertaken to prove how violently he attacks a man who is worthy of all
admiration, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who was not to that church alone bat to
all the churches like a column or an impregnable fortress. I will therefore set
forth a Preface of his by which you may see in what foul and unworthy terms he
assails even a man of such eminence, and also how he praises Didymus to the sky,
though he has since cast him down even to the infernal region; and further how
he speaks of the city of Rome, which now through the grace of God is reckoned by
Christians as their capital, words which were only applicable when its
inhabitants were a nation who were heathens and princes who were persecutors.

24. The Preface is that for the treatise of Didymus on the Holy Spirit. It is
addressed to Paulinianus, and is as follows.

"While I was an inhabitant of Babylon, a settler in the land of the purple
harlot, and lived under the law of the Quirites, I attempted to write some poor
stuff about the Holy Spirit and dedicated the work to the Pontiff of that city.
When on a sudden that pot which Jeremiah saw after the almond rod47 began to
seethe from the face of the North; and the whole senate of the Pharisees raised
a clamour and no mere imaginary scribe but the whole faction of the ignorant as
if I had declared war against them, laid their heads together against me. I
therefore returned with all speed to Jerusalem, like a man going back to his
home, and, after having lived in sight of the cottage of Romulus and the
Lupercal48 with its naked games, I am now in sight of Mary's inn and the
Saviour's cave. And so, Paulinianus my dear brother, since the aforenamed
Pontiff Damasus, who had impelled me to undertake this work, now sleeps in the
Lord, it is here in Judea that I warble the song which I could not sing in a
strange land, provoked thereto by you and by Paula and Eustochium those
handmaids of Christ whom I revere, and aided by your prayers; for this land
which bore the Saviour is more august to me than that which bore the man who
slew his brother.49 I have in the title ascribed the work to its true authors
for I preferred to be known as the translator of another man's work than to
imitate certain people and, like the ungainly jackdaw, deck myself in another
bird's plumage. I read some time ago the treatise of a certain person on the
Holy Spirit, and I recognized then, according to the sentence of Terence,50 bad
things in Latin taken from good things in Greek. There is nothing in it of close
reasoning, nothing downright and manly, such as draws us into assent even
against our will, but all is flaccid and soft, sleek and pretty, picked out with
the rarest colours. But Didymus,51 my own Didymus, who has the eyes of the bride
in the Song of Songs, those eyes which Jesus bade us lift up upon the whitening
fields, looks afar into the depths, and has once more given us cause to call
him, as is our wont, the Seer Prophet. Whoever reads the work will recognize the
plagiarisms of the Latins, and will despise the derivative streams, as soon as
he begins to drink at the fountain head. He is rude in speech, yet not in
knowledge;52 his very style marks him as one like the apostle as well by the
grandeur of the sense as by the simplicity of the words."

25. You observe how he treats Ambrose. First, he calls him a crow and says that
he is black all over; then he calls him a jackdaw who decks himself in other
birds' showy feathers; and then he rends him with his foul abuse, and declares
that there is nothing manly in a man whom God has singled out to be the glory of
the churches of Christ who has53 spoken of the testimonies of the Lord even in
the sight of persecuting kings and has not been alarmed. The saintly Ambrose
wrote his book on the Holy Spirit not in words only but with his own blood; for
he offered his life-blood to his persecutors, and shed it within himself,
although God preserved his life for future labours. Suppose that he did follow
some of the Greek writers belonging to our Catholic body, and borrowed something
from their writings, it should hardly have been the first thought in your mind,
(still less the object of such zealous efforts as to make you set to work to
translate the work of Didymus on the Holy Spirit,) to blaze abroad what you call
his plagiarisms, which were very possibly the result of a literary necessity
when he had to reply at once to some ravings of the heretics. Is this the
fairness of a Christian? Is it thus that we are to observe the injunction of the
Apostle,54 "Do nothing through faction or through vain glory"? But I might turn
the tables on you and ask,55 Thou that sayest that a man should not steal, dost
thou steal? I might quote a fact I have already mentioned, namely, that, a
little before you wrote your commentary on Micah, you had been accused of
plagiarizing from Origen. And you did not deny it, but said: "What they bring
against me in violent abuse I accept as the highest praise; for I wish to
imitate the man whom we and all who are wise admire." Your plagiarisms redound
to your highest praise; those of others make them crows and jackdaws in your
estimation. If yon act rightly in imitating Origen whom you call second only to
the Apostles, why do you sharply attack another for following Didymus, whom
nevertheless you point to by name as a Prophet and an apostolic man? For myself
I must not complain, since you abuse us all alike. First you do not spare
Ambrose, great and highly esteemed as he was; then the man of whom you write
that he was second only to the Apostles, and that all the wise admire him, and
whom you have praised up to the skies a thousand times over, not as you say in
two, but in innumerable places, this man who was before an Apostle, you now turn
round and make a heretic. Thirdly, this very Didymus whom you designate the
Seer-Prophet, who has the eye of the bride in the Song of Songs, and whom you
call according to the meaning of his name56 an Apostolic man, you now on the
other hand criminate as a perverse teacher, and separate him off with what you
call your censor's rod, into the communion of heretics. I do not know whence you
received this rod. I know that Christ once gave the keys to Peter: but what
spirit it is who now dispenses these censors' rods, it is for you to say.
However, if you condemn all those I have mentioned with the same mouth with
which you once praised them, I who in comparison of them am but like a flea,
must not complain, I repeat, if now you tear me to pieces, though once you
praised me, and in your Chronicle57 equalled me to Florentius and Bonosus for
the nobleness, as you said, of my life.

26. There is also an astonishing action of his in relation to Melania, which I
must not pass by in silence because of the shame which those who hear it may
feel. She was the granddaughter of the Consul Marcellinus; and in these very
Chronicles58 he had narrated how she was the first lady of the Roman nobility to
visit Jerusalem; how she had left her son, then a little child, behind her at
Rome, and how the name of Thecla was given her on account of her signal merit
and virtue. But afterwards, when he found that some of his deeds were
disapproved by this lady through the stricter discipline of her life, he erased
her name from all the copies of his work.

It has been necessary for me to bring together the large number of passages
which I have adduced from his works, so as to put to the test the truth of his
statement,59 that it is only in two short prefaces that he has made mention of
Origen with praise, and that not because of his faith but his talent; that he
has praised in him the commentator not the doctrinal teacher. I have actually
brought forward ten.

27. But there is danger of expanding my treatise too far and becoming burdensome
to the reader; it is sufficient that in the passages I have cited he speaks of
Origen as almost an Apostle and a teacher of the churches, and says that it is
not because of his novel doctrines as the mad dogs pretend that the senate of
Rome is excited against him; that he follows him because be himself and all the
wise approve him; and all the other testimonies, adduced from his prefaces which
are inserted above. But, however these matters may stand, and whatever your
relations may be to these writers whether ancient or modern, and whether you
call them Apostles or mere wantons,60 Prophets or perverse teachers, what is
that to me? It is for you to do penance for all your changes of opinion, your
violent words and the wounds you have inflicted on good men, whether you have
vet done so or not. As for myself, what is the meaning of your saying "If they
have followed me when I erred, let them follow me also in my amendment?" Get
thee behind me! Far be such a thing from me. I never followed you or any other
man in your errors, but in the strength of Christ I will follow, not you nor any
other man, but the Catholic church. But you, who have written all these things
who have followed those whom you knew to be in error, you who, as I have shewn,
have written so unworthily of God, go you, I say, and do penance, if at least
you have any hope that your crime of blasphemy can be pardoned.

27 a. I ask whether you can produce anything which I have written, by which you
may convict me of having fallen into heresy even in my youth,-anything of such a
character as the heresies of which, though you will not confess it, you now
stand convicted. I said that I had followed or imitated you in your system of
translating, in that alone and in nothing else. Yet you say that by this I have
done you all the injury which you complain of. I followed you in such things as
I saw that you had done in the Homilies on the Gospel according to Luke. Take
the passage: "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God
my Saviour." When you found that the Greek Commentary had something relating to
the Son of God which was not right, you passed it over; whereas the words about
the Spirit, which as you may remember, are expressed in the ordinary way, you
not only did not pass over but added a few words of your own to make the
expression more clear. And so in the note on the words,61 "Behold, when the
voice of thy salutation came into my ears, the babe leaped in my womb," you
render: "Because this was not the beginning of his substance," and you add of
your own the words "and nature," though both these and a thousand other things
in your translations of these homilies or those on Isaiah or Jeremiah, but more
particularly in those on Ezekiel, you have now withdrawn. But, in certain places
where you found things relating to the faith, that is the Trinity, expressed in
a strange manner, you left out words at your discretion. This mode of
translation we have both of us observed, and if any one finds fault with it, it
is you who ought to make answer, since you made use of it before me. But now the
practice which you blame is undoubtedly one for which you may yourself incur
blame. The practice of translating word for word you formerly pronounced to be
both foolish and injurious. In this I followed you. You can hardly mean that I
am to repent of this because you have now changed your opinion, and say that you
have translated the present work with literal exactness. In previous cases you
took out what was unedifying in matters of faith, though you did so in such a
way as not to excise them wholly nor in all cases. For instance, in the Homilies
on Isaiah, at the Vision of God62 Origen refers the words to the Son and the
Holy Spirit; and so you have translated, adding, however, words of your own
which would make the passage have a more acceptable sense. It stands thus: "Who
are then these two Seraphim? My Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit:" but you
add of your own, "And do not think that there is any difference in the nature of
the Trinity, when the functions indicated by the several persons are preserved."
The same thing I have done in a great many cases, either cutting out words or
bending them into a sounder meaning. For this you bid me do penance. I do not
think that you are of this opinion as regards yourself. If then on this ground
no penitence is due from either of us, what other things are there of which you
invite me to repent?

28. I repeat that there are no writings of mine in which there is any error to
be corrected. There are many of yours which, as I have shewn, according to your
present opinion, ought to be wholly condemned. You made an exception in favour
of the Commentaries on the Ephesians, in which you imagined that you had written
more correctly. But even you must have seen, as I have shewn, how like they are
all through to Origen's views; and, indeed, how they contain something more
extreme than the views of which you demand the condemnation. And, were it not
that you had cut yourself off from the power of repentance by saying "Read over
my Commentaries on the Ep. to the Ephesians, and you will acknowledge that I
have opposed the doctrines of Origen;" possibly you might wish to turn round and
do penance for those, and in this case, as in the rest, to condemn yourself. As
far as I am concerned, I give you full leave to repent of these also; indeed,
the best thing that you can do is to do penance for all that you have said and
also for all that you are going to say; for it is certain that all that you have
ever written is to be repented of. But if any one blame me for having translated
anything at all of Origen's, then I say that I am the last of many who have done
the deed, and the blame, if any, should begin with the first. But does any one
ever punish a deed the doing of which he had not previously forbidden. We did
what was permissible. If there is to be a new law, it holds good only for the
future. But it may be said that the works themselves ought to be condemned and
their author as well. If that be so, what is to happen to the other author who
writes the same things, as I have shewn most fully above? He must receive a
similar judgment. I do not ask for this nor press for it, although he acts a
hostile part towards me. But I cannot but see that he is heaping up such a
judgment for himself by his rash condemnation of others.

29. But I must deal with you once more by quoting your own words. You say of me
in that invective of yours63 that I have by my translation shewn that Origen is
a heretic while I was a Catholic. The words are: "That is to say, I am a
Catholic, but he whom I was translating is a heretic." Yes you say it, I have
read it. Well then, if, as you tell us, the result of my whole work is to show
that I am a Catholic and Origen a heretic, what more do you want? Is not your
whole object gained if Origen is proved a heretic and I a Catholic? If you bear
witness that I have said this and have thus given you satisfaction by the whole
of my work, what cause of accusation against me remains? What purpose was served
by that Invective of yours against me? If I proved Origen to be a heretic and
myself a Catholic, was I right or not? If I was, then why do you subject to
blame and accusation what was rightly done? But, if it was not right that Origen
should be called a heretic, why do you make a charge against me on that head?
What need was there for you to translate in a worse sense what I had already
translated according to your principles, though in a less elegant style?
Especially what need was there for you to play your readers false, and, when
they expected one thing, for you to do another? They imagine that you are acting
in opposition to those who defend Origen as Catholic; but the person whom you
combat and accuse is the man who you say has pronounced him a heretic. Perhaps
it was for this that you invited me to do penance; and I had misunderstood you.
But even of this I must say that I could not repent, if my repentance implied
that I thought all things which are found in his works are catholic. Whether
what is uncatholic is his own or, as I think, inserted by others, God only
knows: at all events these things, when brought to the standard of the faith and
of truth are wholly rejected by me. What then is it that you want me to say?
That Origen is a heretic? That is what you say that I have done, and you blame
it. That he is a catholic then? Again you make this a ground of accusation
against me. Point out more clearly what you mean; possibly there is something
which you can find out that lies between the two. This is all the wit that you
have gathered from the acuteness of Alexander and Porphyry and Aristotle
himself: This is the issue of all the boasting which you make of having from
infancy to old age been versed and trained in the schools of rhetoric and
philosophy, that you set forth with the intention of pronouncing sentence on
Origen as a heretic, and in the very speech in which you are delivering judgment
turn upon the man whom you are addressing and accuse him because he also has
shown Origen to be a heretic. I beg all men to note that there is in all this no
care for the faith or for truth, no earnest thought of religion and sound
judgment; there is nothing but the practised lust of evil speaking and accusing
the brethren which works in his tongue, nothing but rivalry with his fellow men
in his heart, nothing but malice and envy in his mind. So much is this the case
that, before any cause of ill feeling existed, and I spoke of you with praise as
my brother and colleague, you nevertheless were angry at my advances. Forgive me
for not knowing that you were what the Greeks call acatonomastos
(akatono/mastoj), one whom no one dares to address by name. Still, I wonder that
you should call upon me to condemn what you complain of me for branding as
wrong.

30. It seems needless to make any answer to that part of his indictment in which
he says that the works of the Martyr Pamphilus, expressed as they are with so
much faithfulness and piety, are either not to be considered genuine or if
genuine, to be treated with contempt. Is there any one to whose authority he
will bow? Is there any one whom he will refrain from abusing? All the old Greek
writers of the church, according to him, have erred. As to the Latins, how he
disparages them, how he attacks them one by one, both those of the old and those
of modern times, any one who reads his various work knows well. Now even the
Martyrs fail to gain any respect from him. "I do not believe," he says "that
this is really the work of the Martyr." If such an argument were admitted in the
case of the works of any writer, how can we prove their genuineness in any
particular case? If I were to say, It is not true that books of Miscellanies are
Origen's as you maintain, how can they be proved to be his? His answer is, From
their likeness to the rest. But, just as, when a man wants to forge some one's
signature, he imitates his handwriting, so he who wishes to introduce his own
thoughts under another man's name, is sure to imitate the style of him whose
name he has assumed. But, to pass over for brevity's sake all that might with
great justice be said on this point, if you were determined to be so bold as to
question the works of the Martyr, you ought to have brought out publicly the
actual statements which seemed to you liable to question, and then every reader
could have seen what was absurd in them and what was reasonable, what was
unsuitable to or against the system of the Apostles; and especially the great
impiety, whatever it may have been, in expiation of which you tell us that the
Martyr shed his blood. A man who read those actual words would be able to say,
not, as now, on your judgment but on his own, either that the martyr had gone
wrong, or that a treatise which was so full of absurdity and unbelief had been
composed by some one else. But, as it is, you know well that if the writings
which you impugn are read by any one, the blame will be turned back upon him who
has unjustly found fault; and therefore you do not cite the passages which you
impugn, but with that `censor's rod' of yours, and by your own arrogant
authority, you make your decrees in this style: "Let this book be cast out of
the libraries, let that book be retained; and again, if today a book is
accepted, tomorrow if any one but myself has praised it, let it be cast out, and
with it the man who praised it. Let this one be counted as Catholic, even though
he seems at times to have gone wrong; let that man have no pardon for his error,
even though he has said the same things as myself, and let no man translate him
nor read him, for fear he should recognize my plagiarisms. This man indeed was a
heretic, but he was my master. And this other, though he is a Jew, and of the
Synagogue of Satan, and is hired to sell words for gain, yet he is my master who
must be preferred to all others, because it is among the Jews alone that the
truth of the Scriptures dwells." If the universal Church had with one voice
conferred on you this authority, and had demanded of you that you should be the
judge of each and all, would it not have been your duty to refuse to allow so
heavy and perilous a burden to be laid upon you? But now we have made such
progress in the daily habit of disparaging others that we no longer spare even
the martyrs. But let us suppose that the work is not that of the martyr
Pamphilus, but of some other unknown member of the church; did he, whoever he
may have been, employ his own words, I ask, so that we are called upon to defer
to the merits of the writer? No. He sets out quotations from the works of Origen
himself, and exhibits his opinion upon each question not in the words of the
apologist but in those of the accused himself; and, just as in the present
treatise what I have quoted from your writings carried much more force than what
I have said myself, so also the defence of Origen lies not in the authority of
his apologist, but in his own words. The question of authorship is superfluous,
when the defence is so conducted as to dispense with the author's aid.

31. But I must come to that head of his inculpation of me which is most
injurious and full of ill-will; nay, not of ill-will only but of malice. He
says: Which of all the wise and holy men before us has dared to attempt the
translation of these books which you have translated? I myself, he adds, though
asked by many, to do it, have always refused. But the fact is, the excuse to be
made for those holy men is easy enough; for it by no means follows because a man
of Latin race is a holy and a wise man, that he has an adequate knowledge of the
Greek language; it is no slur upon his holiness that he is wanting in the
knowledge of a foreign tongue. And further, if he has the knowledge of the Greek
language, it does not follow that he has the wish to make translations. Even if
he has such a wish, we are not to find fault with him for not translating more
than a few works, and for translating some rather than others. Every man has
power to do as he likes in such matters according to his own free will or
according to the wish of any one who asks him to make the translation. But he
brings forward the case of the saintly men Hilary and Victorinus, the first of
whom, though well-known as a commentator, translated nothing, I believe, from
the Greek; while the other himself tells us that he employed a learned presbyter
named Heliodorus to draw what he needed from the Greek sources, while he himself
merely gave them their Latin form because he knew little or nothing of Greek.
There is therefore a very good reason why these men should not have made this
translation. That you should have acted in the same way is, I admit, a matter
for wonder. For what further audacity, what larger amount of rashness, would
have been required to translate those books of Origen, after you had put almost
the whole of their contents into your other works, and, indeed, had already
published in books bearing your own name all that is said in those which you now
declare worthy of blame?

32. Perhaps it was a greater piece of audacity to alter the books of the divine
Scriptures which had been delivered to the Churches of Christ by the Apostles to
be a complete record of their faith by making a new translation under the
influence of the Jews. Which of these two things appears to you to be the less
legitimate? As to the sayings of Origen, if we agree with them, we agree with
them as the sayings of a man; if we disagree, we can easily disregard them as
those of a mere man. But how are we to regard those translations of yours which
you are now sending about everywhere, through our churches and monasteries,
through all our cities and walled towns? are they to be treated as human or
divine? And what are we to do when we are told that the books which bear the
names of the Hebrew Prophets and lawgivers are to be had from you in a truer
form than that which was approved by the Apostles? How, I ask, is this mistake
to be set right, or rather, how is this crime to be expiated? We hold it a thing
worthy of condemnation that a man should have put forth some strange opinions in
the interpretation of the law of God; but to pervert the law itself and make it
different from that which the Apostles handed down to us,-how many times over
must this be pronounced worthy of condemnation? To the daring temerity of this
act we may much more justly apply your words: "Which of all the wise and holy
men who have gone before you has dared to put his hand to that work?" Which of
them would have presumed thus to profane the book of God, and the sacred words
of the Holy Spirit? Who but you would have laid hands upon the divine gift and
the inheritance of the Apostles?

33. There has been from the first in the churches of God, and especially in that
of Jerusalem, a plentiful supply of men who being born Jews have become
Christians; and their perfect acquaintance with both languages and their
sufficient knowledge of the law is shewn by their administration of the
pontifical office. In all this abundance of learned men, has there been one who
has dared to make havoc of the divine record handed down to the Churches by the
Apostles and the deposit of the Holy Spirit? For what can we call it but havoc,
when some parts of it are transformed, and this is called the correction of an
error? For instance, the whole of the history of Susanna, which gave a lesson of
chastity to the churches of God, has by him been cut out, thrown aside and
dismissed. The hymn of the three children, which is regularly sung on festivals
in the Church of God, he has wholly erased from the place where it stood. But
why should I enumerate these cases one by one, when their number cannot be
estimated? This, however, cannot be passed over. The seventy translators, each
in their separate cells, produced a version couched in consonant and identical
words, under the inspiration, as we cannot doubt, of the Holy Spirit; and this
version must certainly be of more authority with us than a translation made by a
single man under the inspiration of Barabbas. But, putting this aside, I beg you
to listen, for example, to this as an instance of what we mean. Peter was for
twenty-four years Bishop of the Church of Rome. We cannot doubt that, amongst
other things necessary for the instruction of the church, he himself delivered
to them the treasury of the sacred books, which, no doubt, had even then begun
to be read under his presidency and teaching. What are we to say then? Did Peter
the Apostle of Christ deceive the church and deliver to them books which were
false and contained nothing of truth? Are we to believe that he knew that the
Jews possessed what was true, and yet determined that the Christians should have
what was false? But perhaps the answer will be made that Peter was illiterate,
and that, though he knew that the books of the Jews were truer than those which
existed in the church, yet he could not translate them into Latin because of his
linguistic incapacity. What then! Was the tongue of fire given by the Holy
Spirit from heaven of no avail to him? Did not the Apostles speak in all
languages?

34. But let us grant that the Apostle Peter was unable to do what our friend has
lately done. Was Paul illiterate? we ask; He who was a Hebrew of the Hebrews,
touching the law a Pharisee, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel? Could not he,
when he was at Rome, have supplied any deficiencies of Peter? Is it conceivable
that they, who prescribed to their disciples that they should give attention to
reading,64 did not give them correct and true reading? These men who bid us not
attend to Jewish fables and genealogies, which minister questioning rather than
edification; and who, again, bid us beware of, and specially watch, those of the
circumcision; is it conceivable that they could not foresee through the Spirit
that a time would come, after nearly four hundred years, when the church would
find out that the Apostles had not delivered to them the truth of the old
Testament, and would send an embassy to those whom the apostles spoke of as the
circumcision, begging and beseeching them to dole out to them some small portion
of the truth which was in their possession: and that the Church would through
this embassy confess that she had been for all those four hundred years in
error; that she had indeed been called the Apostles from among the Gentiles to
be the bride of Christ, but that they had not decked her with a necklace of
genuine jewels; that she had fondly thought that they were precious stones, but
now had found out that those were not true gems which the Apostles had put upon
her, so that she felt ashamed to go forth in public decked in false instead of
true jewels, and that she therefore begged that they would send her Barabbas,
even him whom she had once rejected to be married to Christ, so that in
conjunction with one man chosen from among her own people, he might restore to
her the true ornaments with which the Apostles had failed to furnish her.

35. What wonder is there then that he should tear me to pieces, being as I am of
no account; or that he should wound Ambrose, or find fault with Hilary,
Lactantius and Didymus? I must not greatly grieve over any injury of my own in
the fact that he has attempted to do my work of translating over again, when he
is only treating me with the same contempt with which he has treated the Seventy
translators. But this emendation of the Seventy, what are we to think of it? Is
it not evident, how greatly the grounds for the heathens' unbelief have been
increased by this proceeding? For they take notice of what is going on amongst
us. They know that our law has been amended, or at least changed; and do you
suppose they do not say among themselves, "These people are wandering at random,
they have no fixed truth among them, for you see how they make amendments and
corrections in their laws whenever they please," and indeed it is evident that
there must have been previous error where amendment has supervened, and that
things which undergo change at the hand of man cannot possibly be divine. This
has been the present which you have made us with your excess of wisdom, that we
are all judged even by the heathen as lacking in wisdom. I reject the wisdom
which Peter and Paul did not teach. I will have nothing to do with a truth which
the Apostles have not approved. These are your own words:65 "The ears of simple
men among the Latins ought not after four hundred years to be molested by the
sound of new doctrines." Now you are yourself saying: "Every one has been under
a mistake who thought that Susanna had afforded an example of chastity to both
the married and the unmarried. It is not true. And every one who thought that
the boy Daniel was filled with the Holy Spirit and convicted the adulterous old
men, was under a mistake. That also was not true. And every congregation
throughout the universe, whether of those who are in the body or of those who
have departed to be with the Lord, even though they were holy martyrs or
confessors, all who have sung the Hymn of the three children have been in error,
and have sung what is false. Now therefore after four hundred years the truth of
the law comes forth for us, it has been bought with money from the Synagogue.
When the world has grown old and all things are hastening to their end, let us
change the inscriptions upon the tombs of the ancients, so that it may be known
by those who had read the story otherwise, that it was not a gourd66 but an ivy
plant under whose shade Jonah rested; and that, when our legislator pleases, it
will no longer be the shade of ivy but of some other plant.

36. But Origen also, you will tell us, in composing his work called the Hexapla,
adopted the asterisks,67 taking them from the translation of Theodotion. How is
this? You produce Origen sometimes for condemnation, sometimes for imitation, at
your own caprice. But can it be admitted as right that you should bring in the
same man as your advocate whom just now you were accusing? Can you take as an
authority for your actions one whom you yourself have previously condemned, and
to the condemnation of whom you stirred up the Roman senate? You ought to have
made provision for this beforehand. No man begins by cutting the trunk of a tree
when he is intending to lean against it; and no man first impugns the faith of
another and then invokes his faith in his own defence. Whether Origen did as you
say or not, makes no difference to you. If you wish that his case should be a
precedent for yours, read over your judgment upon him, and see what you have
said. You used the expression: "This is not clearing yourself but only seeking
abettors of your crime." Apply this to yourself; your business is not to seek
abettors of your crime, but to find means of justification for your conduct.
However, let us see whether anything of the kind was done by Origen whom you
make both plaintiff and defendant. I do not find a single passage which he
translated froth the Hebrew. How then can your action and his be said to be
alike? What he did was this. He proved that apostates and Jews had translated
the writings which the Jews specially read: and, since it would frequently
happen in the course of discussion that they falsely asserted that some things
had been taken out and others put in in our copies of the Scriptures, Origen
desired to shew to our people what reading obtained among the Jews. He therefore
wrote out each of their versions in separate pages or columns, and pointed out
by means of certain specified marks at the head of each line what had been added
or subtracted by them; and he merely put these marks of his in the work of
others, not in his own; so that we might understand not what we ourselves but
what the Jews believed to have been either removed or inserted. This was no more
than what is done in the army when a list is made out containing the names of
the soldiers. If the captain wishes to see how many of them have survived after
an action, he sends a man to make inquiry; and he makes his own mark, a (q)
(theta), for instance, as is commonly done, against the name of each soldier who
has fallen, and puts some other mark of his own to designate the survivors. Do
you suppose that he who makes one mark against the name of a dead man and
another of his own against that of a survivor, will be thought to have done
anything which causes the one to be dead and the other to be alive? He has only,
as is well understood, marked the names of those who have been killed by others,
so as to call attention to the fact. Just in the same way, Origen pointed out by
certain marks of his own, namely, the signs of asterisks and obeli,68 which
words had been, so to speak, killed by other translators, and those which had
been superfluously introduced. But he put in no single word of his own, nor did
he make it appear that the certainty of our copies was in any point shaken; but
those things which, as the actual words run, seemed wanting in plainness and
clearness, he showed to be full of the mysteries of a spiritual meaning. What
comfort then can the conduct of Origen give you in this matter, when your work
is shown to be quite unlike his, and when all your labour is spent upon making
one letter kill the next, whereas his endeavour, on the contrary, is to
vindicate the Spirit which giveth life?

37. This action is yours, my brother, yours alone. It is clear that no one in
the church has been your companion or confederate in it, but only that Barabbas
whom you mention so frequently. What other spirit than that of the Jews would
dare to tamper with the records of the church which have been handed down from
the Apostles? It is they, my brother, you who were most dear to me before you
were taken captive by the Jews, it is they who are hurrying you into this abyss
of evil. It is their doing that those books of yours are put forth in which you
brand your Christian brethren, not sparing even the martyrs, and heap up
accusations speakable and unspeakable against Christians of every degree, and
mar our peace, and cause a scandal to the church. It is they who cause you to
pass sentence upon yourself and your own writings as upon words which you once
spoke as a Christian. We all of us have become worthless in your eyes, while
they and their evil acts are all your delight. If you had but listened to Paul
where he says in his Epistle:69 "If any brother be overtaken in a fault ye who
are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness," you would never
have let your passions swell up so as altogether to break through the order of
our spiritual discipline. Suppose that I had written something which was
injurious to you; suppose that I had done some injustice to you a man of the
highest eloquence, who were my brother and my brother presbyter, whom also I had
pronounced worthy of imitation in your method of translation: even so, this was
the first complaint which you had received of any injury on my part since
friendship had been restored between us, and that with difficulty and much
trouble. But suppose that you had reason to be offended at the fact that, in my
translation of Origen, I passed over some things which appeared to me unedifying
in point of doctrine-though in this I only did what you had done. Possibly I was
deserving of blame and correction for this. You say that some of the brethren
sent letters to you demanding that the faults of the translator should be
pointed out. What then did you do, you who are a man of spiritual attainments?
What a model, what an example of conduct in such matters is this which you have
given! You not only blazen forth the shame of your brother's nakedness to those
who are without, but you yourself tear away the covering of his nakedness.
Suppose even that what I did was not done as you had done it, suppose that,
through some access of drunkenness creeping unawares upon me, I had laid bare my
own shame as the Patriarch did; would it have been a curse which you would have
incurred if you had walked backward and made your reply like a soft cloak to
cover my reproach, if the letter of the brother who was wide-awake had veiled
the brother who lay exposed through his own drowsiness in writing?

38. But you will say, It was impossible for me to reply otherwise than I did.
The letter which I received was such that, if I had not replied and retranslated
literally the books which you had translated paraphrastically, I should myself
have been thought to be a follower of Origen. I will not at present say anything
as to the character of that letter, except that it bears the name of a man of
high rank, Pammachius: but I ask, would there have been anything uncourteous in
such a reply as this: I "My brothers we ought not readily to judge of other
men's works. You remember what you did when I had sent my books against Jovinian
to Rome,70 and when some persons understood them in a different sense from that
in which, if my memory serves me, I had composed them. They were read by a great
many people, and almost every one I was offended by them, you yourself, as was
believed, amongst them. Did you not on that occasion withdraw from circulation
the copies which had been exposed to sale publicly in the forum, and send them,
not to some one else, but to me, at the same time pointing out the grounds on
which you thought so many had been offended? And I, as you remember, wrote an
Apology in new terms, so as to give a sounder meaning, as far as I could, to
expressions to which a different sense had been attributed. Well, it is but fair
that as we would that men should do to us so we should do to them: and
therefore, as you sent me back my books for correction, so do now with these
books: send them back to their author, and hint to him what you think blameable
in them, so that, if in anything he has gone wrong, he may correct it. Besides,
though I have exercised my talents on many subjects, and laboured out many
works, this is almost the first work which he has attempted, and possibly even
this he has done under compulsion, so that it is not strange if he has not gone
quite straight at first. We should not seize upon opportunities for disparaging
men who are Christians, but seek their advantage by correcting what they have
done wrong."

39. If your reply to him had been couched in terms like these, would you not
have ministered grace and edification both to him, since he has been initiated
into the fear of God, and to all your other readers, whereas these invectives of
yours are the cause of sadness and confusion to all who fear God, since they see
you a prey to this hideous lust of detraction, and me driven to the wretched
necessity of recrimination. But, as I have said, this evidence was unnecessary.
You yourself in the books you published against Jovinian, at one time assert, as
can be shewn, the same things which you blamed in him, while at another you fall
into the opposite extreme, and declare marriage to be so disgraceful a state
that its stain cannot even be washed away by the blood of martyrdom. But, if it
appeared to you an easy thing for your friend to procure what amounts to a
correction of the dogma of the Manichaeans as it was originally expressed in
these books, and that when they were already published and placed in the hands
of many persons to copy, what difficulty would there have been in my correcting
a work which was not my own but a translation of that of another man, if any
mistakes could be pointed out in it, I will not say by reason, but even by envy?
especially when it was still in rough sheets, which I had not read over again or
corrected, and which were not published when your friends took possession of
them. Was it an impossibility to get these writings corrected which were then in
an uncorrected state? But the sting does not proceed from that quarter; he would
have found nothing to blame there It proceeds wholly from the fact that he was
afraid that it might come to light what is the source of all that he says, and
whence he gains the reputation of a learned man and a great expounder of the
Scriptures.

40. I explained the reasons which induced me to make the translation so that it
should be seen that I acted, not in the spirit of contention and rivalry, in
which he so often acts, but from the necessity which I have explained above; and
I did it as an aid to a good and useful undertaking.71 I hoped that it might
impart something both of lucidity and of brightness to one who, though with
little culture, was composing a serious work. Do we not know cases in which old
houses have been of use in the construction of new ones? Sometimes a stone is
taken from the parts of air old house which are remote and concealed, to
decorate the portal of the new house and adorn its entrance. And at times an
edifice of modern architecture is supported by the strength of a single ancient
beam. Are we then to place ourselves in opposition to those who rightly use what
is old in building up what is new? Are we to say, You are not allowed to
transfer the materials of the old house to the new, unless you join each beam to
its beam, each stone to its stone, unless you make a portico of what was a
portico before, a chamber of what was a chamber; and this must further involve
building up the most secret recesses from what were such before, and the sewers
from the former sewers: for every large house must have such places. This is the
process of translating word for word, which in former days you esteemed
inadmissible, but which you now approve. But you claim that what is in itself
unlawful is lawful for you, while for us even what is lawful you impute as a
crime. You think it right that you should be praised for changing the words of
the Sacred Books and Divine volumes; but if we, when we imitate you in
translating a human work, pass over anything which seems to us not to be
edifying, we are to have no pardon for this at your hands, though you yourself
set us the example.

41. However, let him act in these matters as he himself thinks lawful or
expedient. Let me recapitulate in the end of this book what I have said in a
scattered way in my own defence. He had said of me that it seemed as if I could
not be a heretic without him; I therefore set forth my belief and, in respect of
the resurrection of the dead I proved that he rather than I was in error, since
he spoke of the resurrection body as frail. I shewed also that he did away with
the distinction of sex in the other world, saying that bodies would become souls
women men. I next revealed the causes which had led to my translation-very
proper causes in my opinion; I shewed that it was not because I was stimulated
by contentiousness, nor because I was desirous of glory, but because I was
incited by the fear of God, that I imported a store of old Greek material to be
used in the new Latin construction, that I furbished up the old armour which had
become enveloped in rust, not with a view to excite a civil war but to repel a
hostile attack. I then introduced the chief matter on which they have laid their
forgers' hands, the adulterous blasphemy against the Son of God and the Holy
Spirit, a thing quite alien from me, but brought in by these men in their
wickedness as I shewed by quotations.

42. I then took up one by one the points in which he had blamed Origen, with the
intention of striking at me and discrediting my work of translation. I shewed
from those very Commentaries of his from which he had said that we might expect
to learn and test his belief, that on three points, namely the previous state of
the soul, the restitution of all things, and his views concerning the devil and
apostate angels, he has himself written the same things which he blames in
Origen. I convicted him of having said that the souls of men were held bound in
this body as in a prison; and I proved that he had asserted in these very
Commentaries that the whole rational creation of angels and of human souls
formed but a single body. I next shewed that, as to an association for perjury,
there was no one who had so much to do with it in its deepest mysteries as
himself; and in accordance with this I proved that the doctrine that truth and
the higher teaching ought not to be disclosed to all men was taught by him in
these same Commentaries. I next took up the question of secular literature, as
to which he had made this declaration to Christ as he sat on the judgment seat
and ordered him to be beaten: "If ever I read or possess the books of the
heathen, I have denied Thee;" and I shewed clearly that he not only reads and
possesses these books now, but that he supports all the bragging of which his
teaching is full on his knowledge of them; so much so that he boasts of having
been introduced to the knowledge of logic through the Introduction of Porphyry
the prince of unbelievers. And, while he says that it is a doctrine of the
heathen, to speak in this or that manner both about the soul and about other
creatures, I shewed that he had spoken of God in a more degrading manner than
any of the heathen when he said that God had a mother-in-law. But further,
whereas he had declared that he had only mentioned Origen in two short Prefaces,
and then not as a man of apostolic rank but merely as a man of talent, I, though
for brevity's sake only bringing forward ten of his Prefaces, established the
fact that in each of them he had spoken of him not only as an apostolic man but
as a teacher of the churches next after the apostles, and as one whose teaching
was followed by himself and all wise men.

43. Moreover, I pointed out clearly that it is habitual to him to disparage all
good men, and that, if he can find something to blame in one man after another
of those who are highly esteemed and have gained a name in literature, he thinks
that he has added to his own reputation. I shewed also how shamefully some of
Christ's72 priests have been assailed by him; and how he has spared neither the
monks nor the virgins, nor those who live in continency, whom he had praised
before; how he has defamed in his lampoons every order and degree of Christians;
how shamefully and foully he assailed even Ambrose, that saintly man, the memory
of whose illustrious life still lives in the hearts of all men: how even
Didymus, whom he had formerly ranked among the seer-prophets and Apostles, now
he places among those whose teaching diverges from that of the churches; how he
brands with the marks of ignorance or of folly every single writer of ancient
and of modern days; and finally does not spare even the martyrs. All these
things I have brought to the proof of his own works and his own testimony, not
to that of external witnesses. I have gone through each particular, and have
brought out the evidence from those very books of his which he most commends,
books which alone he excepted as containing nothing of which he needed to
repent, while he says that he repents of all his other sayings and writings; not
that his repentance is sincere, but that he is driven into such straits that he
must choose either to feign penitence or to forfeit the vantage ground which
enables him to bite and wound any one whom he pleases. I therefore preferred not
to touch his other writings, so that his conviction might come out of those
alone out of which he had himself closed the door of repentance. Last of all I
have shown that he has altered the sacred books which the Apostles had committed
to the churches as the trustworthy deposit of the Holy Spirit, and that he who
calls out about the audacity shewn in translating mere human works himself
commits the greater crime of subverting the divine oracles.

44. It remains that every reader of this book should give his suffrage for one
or the other of us, judging as he desires that he may himself be judged by God;
and that he should not injure his own soul by favoring either party unjustly.
Also, my beloved son Apronianus, go to Pammachius, that saintly man whose letter
is put forward by our friend in this Invective or Bill of Indictment of his, and
adjure him in Christ's name to incline in his judgment to the cause of innocence
not that of party-spirit: it is the cause of truth that is at stake, and
religion not party should be our guide. It is a precept of our Lord73 to "judge
not according to the appearance, but judge a righteous judgment," and, just as
in each one of the least of his brethren it is Christ who is thirsty and hungry,
who is clothed and fed; so in these who are unjustly judged it is He who is
judged unrighteously. When some are hated without a cause, he will speak on
their behalf and say:74 "You have hated me without a cause." What judgment does
he think will be formed of this cause and of his action in it before the
tribunal of Christ? He remembers well no doubt how, when the men we are speaking
of had written and published his books against Jovinian, and men were already
reading them and finding fault with them, he withdrew them from the hands of the
readers, and stopped their remarks, and blamed them for their blame of his
friend; and how, further, he sent the books back to the author, with the
suggestion that he should either correct those passages which had been found
fault with, or in any way that he would set matters right. But when what I had
written fell into his hands,-it was not then a book but merely a number of
imperfect, uncorrected papers, which had been subtracted by fraud and theft by
some scoundrel; he did not bring it to me and complain of it, though I was close
at hand; he did not deign even to rebuke me or to convict me of wrong through
some friend, as it might have been, or even some enemy; but sent my papers to
the East, and set to work the tongue of that man who never yet knew how to
control it. Would it have been against the precepts of our religion if he had
met me face to face? Did he think me so utterly unworthy of holding converse
with him, that it was not worth while even to argue with me? Yet for us too
Christ died, for our salvation also He shed his blood. We are sinners, I grant,
but we belong to his flock and are numbered among his sheep. Pammachius,
however, must be held in honour for his excellent deeds wrought through faith in
Christ, which should be an example to all others; for he has counted his rank as
nothing worth, and has made himself equal to the humble; consequently, I was
unwilling to see him carried away by human partisanship and contention, lest his
faith should suffer damage in any way. At all events we shall see how far he
preserves a right judgment when he sees that that great master Jerome75 taught,
in the commentaries which he selected as satisfactory even after his repentance,
the very things which he condemns in others as being alien to his own teaching.
We shall think that his former action was a mistake due to ignorance if he
recognizes it and sets it right. As for myself, though76 under the compulsion of
necessity, I have endeavoured to make answer to him who had attacked me with
such great bitterness, yet for this also I ask for forgiveness if I have handled
the matter too sharply; for God is my witness how truly I can say that I have
kept silence on many more points than I have brought forward. I could not wholly
keep silence in the presence of accusations which I know to be undeserved, when
I heard from many that my silence would bring their own faith into peril.

45. After this Apology had been written, one of the brethren who came to us from
you at Rome and helped me in revising it, observed that one point in my defence
had been passed over which he had heard adversely dwelt upon by my detractors
there. The point turns upon a statement in my Preface, where I said of him who
is now my persecutor and accuser that in the works of Origen which he translated
there are found certain grounds of offence in the Greek, but that he has in his
translation so cleared them away that the Latin reader will find nothing in them
which is dissonant from our faith. On this sentence they remark: "You see how he
has praised his method of translation and has borne his testimony that in the
books he has translated no grounds of offence are to be found, and promised that
he would himself follow the same method. Why then is not his own translation
free from grounds of offence, as he bears witness is the case with the writings
of the other?

46. I suppose it is not to be wondered at that I am always blamed for the points
in which I have praised him. It is quite right, no doubt. But to come to the
matter itself. I said that when grounds of offence appeared in the Greek he had
cleared them away in his Latin translation; and not wrongly; but he had done
this just in the same sense as I have done it. For instance, in the Homilies on
Isaiah, he explains the two Seraphim as meaning the Son and the Holy Ghost, and
he adds this of his own: "Let no one think that there is a difference of nature
in the Trinity when the offices of the Persons are distinguished"; and by this
he thinks that he has been able to remedy the grounds of offence. I in a similar
way occasionally removed, altered or added a few words, in the attempt to draw
the meaning of the writer into better accordance with the straight path of the
faith. What did I do in this which was different or contrary to our friend's
system? what which was not identical with it? But the difference lies in this,
that I was judging of his writings without ill-will or detraction, and therefore
saw in them not what might lend itself to depreciation, but what the translator
aimed at; whereas he is seeking for occasions for calumniating others, and
therefore finds fault with those things in my writings which he himself has
formerly written. And indeed he is right in blaming me, since I have pronounced
what he has said to be right, whereas in his judgment it is reprehensible. This
holds in reference to the doctrine he has expressed about the Trinity; namely,
that the two Seraphim are the Son and the Holy Ghost, from which especially the
charge of blasphemy is drawn, that is, if he is to be judged according to the
system which he has adopted in dealing with me. But according to the system
which I have adopted in judging of his writings, apart from the matter of
calumny, he is not to be held guilty because of what he has added on his own
account to explain the author's meaning.

47. As regards the resurrection of the flesh, I think that my translation
contains the same doctrines which are preached in the churches. As to the other
points which relate to the various orders of created beings, I have already said
that they have nothing to do with our faith in the Deity. But if he appeals to
these for the sake of calumniating others, though they have hitherto presented
no ground of offence, I do not deny his right to do so, if he thinks well to
revoke my judgment by which he might have been absolved, and to enforce his own,
by which he ought to be condemned. It is not my judgment on him which is
blameable, but his own, which takes others to task for doing what he approves in
himself. But this is a new method of judgment according to which I am defending
my own accuser, and he considers that he has at last gained the victory over me
when he has brought himself in guilty. But suppose that a Synod of Bishops
should accept the sentences you have pronounced, and should demand that all the
books which contain the impugned doctrines, together with their authors, should
be condemned; then these books must be condemned first as they stand in the
Greek; and then what is condemned in Greek must undoubtedly be condemned in the
Latin. Then will come the turn of your own books; they will be found to contain
the same things, even according to your own judgment. And as it has been of no
advantage to Origen that you have praised him, so it will be of no profit to you
that I have pleaded in your behalf. I shall then be bound to follow the judgment
of the Catholic Church whether it is given against the books of Origen or
against yours.

1: Letter lxxxiv. 3 (end).

2: Stromateis, meaning collections of short essays on important subjects,
disconnected, and thrown out like things scattered or strewn on the ground.

3: Eph. iv, 25.

4: 1 Cor. ii, 6.

5: Ps. xix, 2.

6: Matt. v, 14.

7: Ps. xviii, 9.

8: Ps. xviii, 11.

9: Matt. vii, 6.

10: Matt. v, 33, Matt. v, 34.

11: Matt. vii, 16-20.

12: Luke vi, 44.

13: See letter xxii. to Eustochium. In it Jerome pointed out the worldliness of
professing Christians, and the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of many of the
clergy and monks.

14: Letter xxii. c. 27 (end).

15: Of goats' hair, used by soldiers and sailors.

16: Letter xxii. c. 29 (middle).

17: Id. c. 28.

18: Id. 29 (end).

19: Id. 30.

20: Cicero, Horace and Virgil.

21: Letter lvii.

22: Discerns it. Vulg. Rom. xiv, 23. He that doubteth A.V.

23: In the translation of the Arxwn made by Jerome for Pammachius and Oceanus,
he rendered word for word.

24: Letter lvii. 5.

25: Matt. vii, 1, Matt. vii, 2.

26: Ep. 1.

27: Ep. l. 1.

28: Verti. Possibly used like Versare for `turning over the leaves, 0' `making
constant use of. 0' 29: John xiv, 6.

30: Rom. ii, 17-24.

31: Quaterniones may mean `sets of four. 0' It likely to be used for a `cahier
0' of four sheets.

32: Ep. xxii. c. 20.

33: The word "Dei" has crept in, apparently, wrongly. If it stands the meaning
would be, `To whom you were teaching the word of God, 0' or the allusion may be
to Ps. xlv, 10, with which the Letter to Eustochium begins, `Hearken O daughter
so shall the King desire thy beauty. 0' 34: 2 Cor. xi, 2.

35: Morbus regius; used variously for jaundice and leprosy. See Jer. Life of
Hilarion, c. 34.

36: The word is given in Greek, kaqhghthj .

37: The name of Jerome's Jewish teacher of Hebrew, which Rufinus here perverts,
was Baranina. Letter lxxxiv. c. 3.

38: John xviii, 40.

39: Letter lxxxiv, 2.

40: See this Preface translated among Jerome's works in this Series.

41: Cant. i, 4.

42: Letter xliii, 1.

43: Indomitable or made of adamant.

44: Indefatigable;lit. Brazen-bowelled.

45: Letter xxxiii.

46: Chalcenterus as above.

47: Jer. i, 11, Jer. i, 13.

48: These games took place at Rome each February in honour of Lupercus the god
of fertility. Two noble youths, after a sacrifice of goats and dogs, ran almost
naked about the city with thongs cut from the skins, a stroke from which was
believed to impart fertility to women.

49: Romulus, the founder of Rome who slew his brother Remus.

50: Eun. Prol. The sentiment, not the words, are quoted above.

51: The blind teacher of Alexandria.

52: 2 Cor. xi. 6.

53: Ps. cxix, 46.

54: Phil. ii, 3.

55: Rom. ii, 21.

56: Sensuum nomine. Thomas the Apostle is called Didymus. John xi, 16.

57: See the continuation by Jerome of the Chronicle of Eusebius (not included in
this translation) a.d. 381 "Florentius, Bonosus and Rufinus became known as
distinguished monks."

58: Chronicle. a.d. 377.

59: Letter lxxxiv. 2.

60: Venerarios, belonging to Venus or love. It might mean `beloved ones. 0'

61: Luke i, 44.

62: Is. vi.

63: Namely, Ep. lxxxiv. c. 7.

64: Tim. iv. 13.

65: Jer. Letter lxxxiv. c. 8.

66: This change of the gourd for the ivy forms the ground. work of a curious
story told by Augustine, to which no doubt Rufinus here alludes See Ep. civ, 5
of the collection of Jerome's letters. Augustin Letter lxxi.

67: The asterisks denoted that the words to which they were attached were added,
and the obeli (_) that something had been subtracted. See Jerome's Preface to
the Kings in this Series.

68: Stars and spits.

69: Gal. vi, 1.

70: See Jerome's letter to Pammachius (Letter xlviii) describing his friend's
remonstrance, and defending himself.

71: That is, the work which Macarius was writing upon fate, as explained in this
Apology i. 11.

72: Sacerdotes. This is almost always applied to Bishops. Here the allusion is
chiefly to Jerome's attack upon Ambrose, See Sect. 23-25.

73: John vii, 24.

74: John xv, 25.

75: The older editions do not contain the name.

76: Some copies read visi instead of nisi sumus: I seemed to be compelled.


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  CHAPTER 18: THE LETTER OF ANASTASIUS TO JOHN BISHOP CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF RUFINUS
========================================================================

The Letter of Anastasius, Bishop of the Church of Rome to John Bishop of
Jerusalem Concerning the Character of Rufinus The Letter of Anastasius, Bishop
of the Church of Rome to John Bishop of Jerusalem Concerning the Character of
Rufinus

The letter of Anastasius to John of Jerusalem was written in the year 401; it is
spoken of in Jerome's Apol.iii., c. 21, which was written in the first half of
402, as "the letter of last year." Jerome intimates in the same passage that it
was only one of several letters of the same character which Anastasius wrote to
the East. Rufinus had not seen it, and refused to believe its genuineness. But
there seems to be no reason for doubting this. Anastasius had, at the earnest
request of Theophilus of Alexandria, formally condemned Origenism. And Rufinus'
translations of Origen's Peri 'Arxwn and of Pamphilus' Vindication of Origen,
and his own book on the Falsification of Origen's works were taken at Rome as a
defence of Origenism generally. Rufinus, however, appealed continually, and
especially in his Apology to Anastasius, to the church of Jerusalem, where he
had been ordained. "My faith," he says, "is that which is preached at
Jerusalem." Anastasius, therefore, in condemning Origen would be understood as
condemning Rufinus, and might also seem to condemn his Bishop John of Jerusalem.
This will account for the fulsome praises with which the letter opens. John,
moreover, had written "to consult" Anastasius about Rufinus, which probably
implies some action in Rufinus' interest; but the fact that Jerome knew the
contents of the letter and Rufinus did not seems to show that Bishop John had
become more friendly with Jerome and less so with Rufinus.

1. The kind words of approval that you have addressed, my dear Bishop, to your
brother Bishop, is a fresh mark of your long tried affection. It is a high
commendation which you confer upon me, a most lavish recognition of my services.
I thank you for this proof of your love; and, following you at a distance in my
littleness, I bring the tribute of my words to honour the splendour of your
holiness and those virtues which the Lord has conferred upon you. You excel all
others so far, the splendour of your praise shines forth so conspicuously, that
no words which I can use can equal your deserts. Yet your glory excites in me
such admiration that I cannot turn away from the attempt to describe it, even
though I can never do so adequately. And, first, the praise which you have
bestowed on me out of the serene heaven of your great spirit forms part of your
own glory: for it is the majesty of your episcopate, shining forth like the sun
upon the opposite quarter of the world, which has reflected its own brightness
upon us. And you give me your friendship unreservedly; you do not weigh me in
the balance of criticism. If it is right for you to praise me, must not your
praise be echoed back to you? I beg you therefore, for your own sake no less
than mine, that you will not praise me any more to my face. I ask this for two
reasons: if the praise is undeserved it must excite in your brother-bishop a
sense of pain; if it is true, it must make him blush.

2. Let me come to the subject of your letter. Rufinus, about whom you have done
me the honour to ask my advice, must bring his conscience to the bar of the
divine majesty. It is for him to see how he can approve himself to God as
maintaining his true allegiance to him.

3. As for Origen, whose writings he has translated into our language, I have
neither formerly known, nor do I now seek to know either who he was or what
expression he may have given to his thought. But as to the feeling left by this
matter on my own mind I should be glad to speak with your holiness for a moment.
The impression which I have received is this,-and it has been brought out
clearly by the reading of parts of Origen's works by the people of our City, and
by the sort of mist of blindness which it threw over them,-that his object was
to disintegrate our faith, which is that of the Apostles, and has been confirmed
by the traditions of the fathers, by leading us into tortuous paths.

4. I want to know what is the meaning of the translation of this work into the
Roman tongue. If the translator intends by it to put the author in the wrong,
and to denounce to the world his execrable deeds, well and good. In that case he
will expose to well-merited hatred one who has long laboured under the adverse
weight of public opinion. But if by translating all these evil things he means
to give his assent to them, and in that sense gives them to the world to read,
then the edifice which he has reared at the expense of so much labour serves for
nothing else than to make the guilt the act of his own will, and to give the
sanction of his unlooked for support to the overthrow of all that is of prime
importance in the true faith as held by Catholic Christians from the time of the
Apostles till now.

5. Far be such teaching from the catholic system of the Church of Rome. It can
never by any possibility come to pass that we should accept as reasonable things
which we condemn as matters of law and right. We have, therefore, the assurance
that Christ our God, whose providence reaches over the whole world, bestows his
approval on us when we say that it is wholly impossible for us to admit
doctrines which defile the church, which subvert its well tried moral system,
which offend the ears of all who are witnesses of our doings and lay the ground
for strife and anger and dissensions. This was the motive which led me to write
my letter to Venerius1 our brother in the Episcopate, the character of which,
written as it was in my weakness but with great care and diligence, you will
realize by what I now subjoin: "Whence, then, he who translated the work has
gained and preserves this assurance of innocence I am not greatly troubled to
know: it fills me with no vain alarm. I certainly shall omit nothing which may
enable me to guard the faith of the Gospel amongst my own people, and to warn,
as far as in me lies, those who form part of my body, in whatever part of the
world they live, not to allow any translation of profane authors to creep in and
spring up amongst them, which will seek to unsettle the mind of devout men by
spreading its own darkness among them. Moreover, I cannot passover in silence an
event which has given me great pleasure, the decree issued by our Emperors,2 by
which every one who serves God is warned against the reading of Origen, and all
who are convicted of reading his impious works are condemned by the imperial
judgment." In these words my formal sentence was pronounced.

6. You are troubled by the complaint which people make as to our treatment of
Rufinus, so that you pursue certain persons3 with vague suspicions. But I will
meet this feeling of yours with an instance taken from holy writ, namely, where
it is said: "Man seeth not as God seeth; for God looketh upon the heart, but man
upon the countenance." Therefore, my dearly beloved brother, put away all your
prejudice. Weigh the conduct of Rufinus in your own unbiassed judgment; ask
yourself whether he has not translated Origen's words into Latin and approved
them, and whether a man who gives his encouragement to vicious acts committed by
another differs at all from the guilty party. In any case I beg you to he
assured of this, that he is so completely separate from all part or lot with us,
that I neither know nor wish to know either what he is doing or where he is
living. I have only to add that it is for him to consider where he may obtain
absolution.

1: Appointed bishop of Milan in 400, in succession to Simplicianus.

2: Arcadius and Honorius.

3: Probably the friends of Jerome at Rome, Pammachius and Marcella.


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  CHAPTER 19: THE PERORATION OF RUFINUS APPENDED TO HIS TRANSLATION OF ORIGEN'S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS
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The Peroration of Rufinus Appended to His Translation of Origen's Commentary on
the Epistle to the Romans Addressed to Heraclius at Aquileia, Probably About 407
The Peroration of Rufinus Appended to His Translation of Origen's Commentary on
the Epistle to the Romans Addressed to Heraclius at Aquileia, Probably About 407

------------ A satisfactory conclusion has now, I trust, been reached of the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, the writing of which has been a work of very great labour and time. I confess, my most loving brother Heraclius, that in the attempt to respond to your request I have almost forgotten the precept; "Do not lift a burden above your strength." Even in the other translations of Origen's works into Latin, which were made because you earnestly requested it, or rather exacted it as a journeyman's task, the labour was very great; for I made it my object to supplement what Origen spoke extempore in the lecture room of the church; for his aim there was the application of the subject for the sake of edification rather than the exposition of the text. This I have done in the case of the Homilies, and the short lectures on Genesis and Exodus, and especially in those on the book of Leviticus, where he spoke in a hortatory manner, whereas my translation takes the form of an exposition. This duty of supplying what was wanted I took up because I thought that the practice of agitating questions and then leaving them unsolved, which he frequently adopts in his homiletic mode of speaking, might prove distasteful to the Latin reader. The works upon Jesus Nave1 and the book of Judges and the thirty-sixth, thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth Psalms, I translated simply as I found them, with no great labour. While then in the other cases which I have mentioned above, I employed much labour in supplying what Origen had omitted, in this work on the Epistle to the Romans the labour that fell on me for the causes described in the Preface was immense and full of complexity. But there will have been nothing but pleasure in these labours, provided only that my experience in other cases, of ill-disposed minds requiting my toils and vigils with contumely, be pot repeated and that I do not gain for my studies the reward of detraction and for my labour a conspiracy to ruin me. For in dealing with these men I have to undergo a new form of accusation. They say to me; When you write these things, in which are found many pieces the composition or which is due to yourself, you should place your own name in the title, and let it run thus: `The books of Rufinus' commentary on (for instance) the Epistle to the Romans;' for so, they say, in the case of profane writers, the name in the title is not that of the Greek author who is translated but of the Latin author who translates him. But all this complaisance, by which the works are ascribed to me, is caused not by love to me but by hatred to the author. I am much more observant of my conscience than of my reputation; it may be apparent that I have added some things to supply what was wanting; and that I have abbreviated what was too lengthy; hut to steal the title from the man who laid the foundations on which the building has been reared is what I cannot think right. It must be, I grant, in the discretion of the reader, when he has examined the work, to ascribe the work to any one he thinks right; but my intention has been not to seek the applause of students but the good of those who wish to be edified.

I shall turn next to the work which was long ago imposed upon me but now is
demanded with still greater vehemence by the Bishop Gaudentius, namely to turn
into Latin the books called the Recognition of Clement the Bishop of Rome, the
successor and compassion of the Apostles. In this work I well know that, to
judge by the ordinary rule, I shall have labour upon labour. In this case I will
do what my friends desire, I will put my own name in the title of the work,
though I shall have that of the author also. It shall be called Rufinus's
Clement. If the Lord enable me to fulfil this task, I shall afterwards return to
that which you desire, and say something, God willing, on the books of Numbers
or of Deuteronomy (for this alone is wanting to my whole work on the
Heptateuch): or else I shall write what I can, the Lord being my guide, on the
remaining epistles of the Apostle Paul.

1: Joshua.


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  CHAPTER 20: THE PREFACE TO THE BOOKS OF RECOGNITIONS OF ST. CLEMENT
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The Preface to the Books of Recognitions of St. Clement Addressed to Bishop
Gaudentius The Preface to the Books of Recognitions of St. Clement Addressed to
Bishop Gaudentius

(For the occasion and date1 of this work see the Prolegomena, p. 412.)

------------

You possess so much vigour of character, my dear Gaudentius, you who are so
signal all ornament of our teachers, or as I would rather say, you have the
grace of the Spirit in so large a measure, that even what you say in the way of
daily conversation, or of addresses that you preach in church,1 ought to be
consigned in writing and handed down for the instruction of posterity. But I am
far less quick, my native talent being but slender, and old age is already
making me sluggish and slow; and this work is nothing but the payment of a debt
due to the command laid upon me by the virgin Sylvia whose memory I revere. She
it was who demanded of me, as you have now done by the right of heirship, to
translate Clement into our language. The debt is paid at last, though after many
delays. It is a part of the booty, and in my opinion no small one, which I have
carried off from the libraries of the Greeks, and which I am collecting for the
use and advantage of our countrymen. I have no food of my own to bring them, and
I must import their nourishment from abroad. However, foreign goods are apt to
appear sweeter; and sometimes they are really more useful. Moreover, almost
anything which brings healing to our bodies or is a defence against disease or
an antidote to poison comes from abroad. Judaea sends us the distillation of the
balsam tree, Crete the leaf of the dictamnus, Arabia her aromatic flowers, and
India the crop of the spikenard. These goods come to us, no doubt, in a less
perfect condition than those which our own fields produce, but they preserve
intact their pleasant scent and their healing power. Therefore, my friend who
are as my own soul, I present to you Clement returning to Rome. I present him
dressed in a Latin garb. Do not think it strange if the aspect which his
eloquence presents is less bright than it might be. It makes no difference if
only the meaning is felt to be the same.

These are foreign wares, then, which I am importing at a great expense of
labour; and I have still to see whether our countrymen will regard with
gratitude one who is bringing them the spoils(spolia) of his warfare, and who is
unlocking with the key of our language a treasure house hitherto concealed,
though he does it with the utmost good will. I only trust that God may look
favourably on your good wishes, so that my present may not be met in any quarter
by evil eyes and envious looks: and that we may not witness that extremely
monstrous phenomenon, expressions of illwill on the part of those on whom the
gift is conferred, while those from whom it is taken part with it ungrudgingly.
It is but right that you, who have read this work in the Greek should point out
to other's the design of my translation-unless indeed, you feel that in some
respects I have not observed the right method of rendering the original. You
are, I believe well aware that there are two Greek editions of this work of
Clement, his Recognitions; that there are two sets of books, which in some few
cases differ from each other though the bulk of the narrative is the same. For
instance, the last part of the work, that which gives an account of the
transformation of Simon Magus, exists in one of these, while in the other it is
entirely absent. On the other hand there are some things, such as the
dissertation on the unbegotten and the begotten God, and a few others, which,
though they are found in both editions, are, to say the least of them, beyond my
understanding; and these I have preferred to leave others to deal with rather
than to present them in an inadequate manner. As to the rest, I have taken pains
not to swerve, even in the slightest degree from either the sense or the
diction; and this, though it makes the expression less ornate, renders it more
faithful.

There is a letter in which this same Clement writing to James the Lord's
brother, gives an account of the death of Peter, and says that he has left him
as his successor, as ruler and teacher of the church; and further incorporates a
whole scheme of ecclesiastical government. This I have not prefixed to the work,
both because it is later in point of time, and because it has been previously
translated and published by me. Nevertheless, there is a point which would
perhaps seem inconsistent with facts were I to place the translation of it in
this work, but which I do not consider to involve an impossibility. It is this.
Linus and Cletus were Bishops of the city of Rome before Clement. How then, some
men ask, can Clement in his, letter to James say that Peter passed over to him
his position as a church-teacher.2 The explanation of this point, as I
understand, is as follows. Linus and Cletus were, no doubt," Bishops in the city
of Rome before Clement, but this was in Peter's life-time; that is, they took
charge of the episcopal work, while he discharged the duties of the apostolate.
He is known to have done the same thing at Caesarea; for there, though be was
himself on the spot, yet he had at his side Zacchaeus whom he had ordained as
Bishop. Thus we may see how both things may be true; namely how they stand as
predecessors of Clement in the list of Bishops, and vet how Clement after the
death of Peter became his successor in the teacher's chair. But it is time that
we should pay attention to the beginning of Clement's own narrative, which he
addresses to James the Lord's brother.

--------

1: The date is after the Peroration to the Epistle to the Romans (see p. 568);
but it seemed better not to divide the Prefaces, etc., to the translations of
Origen's Commentaries.

1: Si quid in Ecclesia declamatur.

2: Cathedram docendi.


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  CHAPTER 21: TRANSLATION OF PAMPHILUS' DEFENCE OF ORIGEN
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Translation of Pamphilus' Defence of Origen.

Written at Pinetum a.d. 397.

Translation of Pamphilus' Defence of Origen.

Written at Pinetum a.d. 397.

While Rufinus was staying at Pinetum, a Christian named Macarius1 sought his
advice and assistance. He was engaged in a controversy with the Mathematici, a
class of men who had deserted the scientific studies from which they took their
name, and had turned to astrology and a belief in Fatalism. Macarius, having
heard of Origen's greatness in the region of Christian speculation, earnestly
desired some knowledge of his writings: but was unable to attain it through
ignorance of Greek. He declared to Rufinus that he had had a dream in which he
saw a ship laden with Eastern merchandize arriving in Italy, and that it was
declared to him that this ship would contain the means of attaining the
knowledge he desired. The coming of Rufinus seemed to him the fulfilment of his
dream, and he earnestly besought him to impart to him some of the treasures of
his Greek learning, and especially to translate for him Origen's great
speculative work, the Peri 'Arxwn, that is On First Principles.2 Rufinus
hesitated, knowing that there was a strong prejudice against Origen, and that he
was looked on, especially in the West, as a heretic, though his writings were
little known there. He yielded, however, to the solicitations of Macarius: but
to guard against the imputation of heresy, he undertook three preliminary works.
First, he translated the Apology of the Martyr Pamphilus for Origen; secondly,
he wrote a short treatise on the Adulteration by heretics of the works of
Origen; and, thirdly, in translating the Peri 'Arxwn he prefixed to it an
elaborate Preface in justification of his course in translating the work. All
these documents became the subject of vehement controversy which found its
expression in the letter of Jerome to his friends at Rome, and the Apologies of
Rufinus and Jerome translated in this volume. The Apology of Pamphilus for
Origen forms the sixth book of a work undertaken by him in connexion with
Eusebius of Caesarea, the Church Historian. Pamphilus was a great collector of
books, and a learned man, but Eusebius was the chief writer. Pamphilus was put
to death in the last persecution, that under Galerius; and Eusebius having at a
later time fallen under suspicion of Arianism, it was attempted by those who
disliked Origen, to dissociate Pamphilus from all connexion with the work. There
seems however no reason to doubt, notwithstanding Jerome's violent
protestations, that Pamphilus was associated with Eusebius throughout the work,
and that he actually wrote the sixth book. The translation of this Apology was
made first, and sent out with a Preface which runs as follows:

You have been moved by your desire to know the truth, Macarius, who are "a man
greatly beloved,"1 to make a request of me, which will bring you the blessing
attached to the knowledge of the truth; but it will win for me the greatest
indignation on the part of those who consider themselves aggrieved whenever any
one does not think evil of Origen. It is true that it is not my opinion about
him that you have asked for, but that of the holy martyr Pamphilus; and you have
requested to have the book which he is said to have written in his defence in
Greek translated for you into Latin: nevertheless I do not doubt that there will
be some who will think themselves aggrieved if I say anything in his defence
even in the words of another man. I beg them to do nothing in the spirit of
presumption and of prejudice; and, since we must all stand before the judgment
seat of Christ, not to refuse to hear the truth spoken, lest haply they should
do wrong through ignorance. Let them consider that to wound the consciences of
their weaker brethren by false accusations is to sin against Christ; and
therefore let them not lend their ears to the accusers, nor seek an account of
another man's faith from a third party, especially when an opportunity is given
them for gaining personal and direct knowledge, and the substance and quality of
each man's faith is to be known by his own confession. For so the Scripture
says:2 "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth
confession is made unto salvation": and:3 "By his words shall each man be
justified, and by his word shall he be condemned." The opinions of Origen in the
various parts of Scripture are clearly set forth in the present work: as to the
cause of our finding certain places in which he contradicts himself, an
explanation will be offered in the short document subjoined.4 But as for myself,
I hold that which has been handed down to us from the holy fathers, namely, that
the Holy Trinity is coeternal, and of a single nature, virtue and substance;
that the Son of God in these last times has been made man, has suffered for our
transgressions and rose again from the dead in the very flesh in which he
suffered, and thereby imparted the hope of the resurrection to the whole race of
mankind. When we speak of the resurrection of the flesh, we do so, not with any
subterfuges, as is slanderously reported by certain perons; we believe that it
is this very flesh in which we are now living which will rise again, not one
kind of flesh instead of another, nor another body than the body of this flesh.
When we speak of the body rising we do so in the words of the apostle; for he
himself made use of this word: and when we speak of the flesh, our confession is
that of the Creed. It is an absurd invention of maliciousness to think that the
human body is different from the flesh. However, whether we speak of that which
is to rise, according to the common faith, as the flesh, or, according to the
Apostle, as the body, this we must believe, that according to the clear
statement of the Apostle, that which shall rise shall rise in power and in
glory; it will rise an incorruptible and a spiritual body: for "corruption
cannot inherit incorruption." We must maintain this preëminence of the body, or
flesh, which is to be: but, with this proviso, we must hold that the
resurrection of the flesh is perfect and entire; we must on the one hand
maintain the identity of the flesh, while on the other we must not detract from
the dignity and glory of the incorruptible and spiritual body. For so the
Scripture speaks. This is what is preached by the reverend Bishop John at
Jerusalem; this we with him both confess and hold. If any one either believes or
teaches otherwise, or insinuates that we believe differently from the exposition
of our faith, let him be anathema. Let this then be taken as a record of our
belief by any who desire to know it. Whatever we read and whatever we do is in
accordance with this account of our faith; we follow the words of the Apostle,5
"proving all things holding fast that which is good, avoiding every form of
evil."6 "And as many as walk by this rule, peace be upon them and upon the
Israel of God."

-------- 1: See the account in Rufinus' Apology I. 11.

2: The word may also mean On beginnings, or On Principalities and Powers: these
ideas being connected together in the speculation of the Alexandrian theology.

1: Daniel x. 11, Daniel ix. 23. The name Macarius means Blessed.

2: Rom. x, 10.

3: Matt. xii, 37.

4: See the Epilogue, infra.

5: 1 Thess. v. 21, 22.

6: Gal. vi, 16.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-tyrannius-rufinus/
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