The Apology of Rufinus

ADDRESSED TO APRONIANUS, IN REPLY TO JEROME’S LETTER TO PAMMACHIUS, WRITTEN AT AQUILEIA A.D. 400.

IN TWO BOOKS.

In order to understand the controversy between Jerome and Rufinus it is necessary to look back over their earlier relations. They had been close friends in early youth (Jerome, Ep. iii, 3, v, 2.) and had together formed part of a society of young Christian ascetics at Aquileia in the years 370–3. Jerome’s letter (3) to Rufinus in 374 is full of affection; in 381 he was placed in Jerome’s Chronicle (year 378) as “a monk of great renown,” and when after some years, they were neighbours in Palestine, Rufinus with Melania on the Mt. of Olives, Jerome with Paula at Bethlehem, they remained friends. (Ruf. Apol. ii. 8 (2).) In the disputes about Origenism which arose from the visits of Aterbius (Jer. Apol. iii, 33) and Epiphanius (Jerome Against John of Jerusalem, 11), they became estranged, Jerome siding with Epiphanius and Rufinus with John (Jer Letter li, 6. Against John of Jerusalem II). They were reconciled before Rufinus left Palestine in 397 (Jer. Apol. i, 1, iii, 33). But when Rufinus came to Italy and at the request of Macarius translated Origen’s Peri ‘Archon, the Preface which he prefixed to this work was the occasion for a fresh and final outbreak of dissension. The friends of Jerome of whom Pammachius, Oceanus and Marcella were the most prominent, were scandalized at some of the statements of the book, and still more at the assumption made by Rufinus that Jerome, by his previous translations of some of Origen’s works, had proved himself his admirer. They also suspected that Rufinus’ translation had made Origen speak in an orthodox sense which was not genuine and that heterodox statements had been suppressed. They therefore wrote to Jerome at Bethlehem a letter (translated among Jerome’s letters in this Series No. lxxxiii) begging for information on all these points. Jerome in reply made a literal translation of the Peri ‘Archon, and sent it accompanied by a letter (lxxxiv) in which he declared that he had never been a partisan of Origen’s dogmatic system, though he admired him as a commentator. He fastened on some of the most questionable of Origen’s speculations, his doctrine of the resurrection, of the previous existence of souls and their fall into human bodies, and the ultimate restoration of all spiritual beings; his permission, in agreement with Plato, of the use of falsehood in certain cases; and some expressions about the relation of the Persons of the Godhead which, at least to Western ears, seemed a denial of their equality. He appealed to his own commentaries on Ecclesiastes and on the Ephesians to show that he rejected these doctrines; and he urged that, even if he had once had too indiscriminate an admiration of Origen, he had in later years judged more clearly.

In the main Jerome’s defence was valid. But it demanded considerateness in his judges; and this quality was absent in himself. He judged Origen’s opinions harshly, and spoke of his views as poisonous (Letter lxxxiv, 3); and, when we contrast the lenity of his former judgments on the same points with his present violence, it becomes evident that he was more concerned for his own reputation than for truth. Rufinus charges him (Apol. i. c. 23 to 44) with maintaining, in his Commentaries on the Ephesians (written twelve years earlier in 388) to which Jerome had appealed (Ep. lxxxiv, 2) the views which he now denounced; and the charge, though urged too far, is substantially made out. The opinions of Origen which he introduced into this Commentary about the fall of souls out of a previous state of bliss into human bodies are set down with hardly a word of objection (comm. on ch. i, v. 4), and his speculations on the Powers and Principalities of the world to come (ib. v. 21) and on the rise of Lucifer and his angels to be subjects of Christ’s Kingdom (id. ii, 7) and their part in the final restoration of all things (id. iv, 16) are adopted as his own, thus giving some justification for Rufinus’ attack (Apol. i, 34–36. &c.). His defence of himself therefore is hardly candid. And his allusions to his opponent are exasperating, e.g. when he speaks (Letter lxxxiv, 1) of some persons “who love me so well that they cannot be heretics without me.” “I wonder that, while they speak in detraction of the flesh, they live carnally and thus cherish and nourish delicately their enemy” (Id. 8). He hardly argues fairly as to Rufinus’ assertion that Origen’s works had suffered from falsification: and he is carried so far by his animosity that he denies the Apology of Pamphilus for Origen to be by Pamphilus, though he had himself attributed it to him (De Vir. Ill. c. 7. 5) and no one can doubt that it is his. (See Dict. of Christ. Biog. Art. Pamphilus.)

But though writing thus for his friends generally, Jerome wrote at the same time a friendly letter to Rufinus himself in answer, it would seem, to one from him, (Letter lxxxi.) in which he speaks of their common friends, and of the death of Rufinus’ mother, and says that he has charged a friend whom he is sending to Italy to visit Rufinus and assure him of his high esteem; and, while remonstrating with him for his Preface to the Peri ‘Archon, merely says “I have begged my other friends to avoid a quarrel. I count on your sense of equity not to give occasion to impatient persons; for you will not find every one, like me, able to take pleasure in praises framed to suit a purpose.”

Had this letter reached Rufinus, the ensuing controversy would have been avoided. But it never reached him. It was sent through Pammachius, and he and Jerome’s other friends kept it back, while they published the letter sent them with Jerome’s translation of the Peri ‘Archon. Rufinus who was now at Aquileia, having left Rome probably early in 399 wrote the Apology, addressing it to his friend and convert Apronianus at Rome.

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 ‘Archon

11. What led to the translation.

12, 13. Pamphilus Apology for Origen.

14. Preface to the Translation of the Peri ‘Archon

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 (katabole) 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: “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: “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, “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, “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 called “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 man 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; but 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 he 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 seek it in a man whom every light report stirs 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, Jovinus and Eusebius, 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 man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father but the Son”: and the Holy Spirit is he who “searcheth the deep things of 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; he is also called the first begotten from the dead; as also the Apostle says, “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 he 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, yet it will rise purged from its faults and having laid aside its corruption; so that the saying of the Apostle is true: “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 natural 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: “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, “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 comes this opinion which you now produce? Perhaps it is one obtained from some of your Jews, 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, 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 our 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 our 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. 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 me; 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: 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, 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 knotty points which had perplexed him. When he arose, 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 Preface 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 ‘Archon 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.

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 is this 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 say that 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 coincides 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 in power 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: “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: “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 me 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 Preface which I prefixed to the books Peri ‘Archon, 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 quote from 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 ‘Archon, which may be rendered “Concerning Beginnings” 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 rule 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 brethren. 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 I 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 Theophilus 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.

“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 preiminence 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: “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, “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 naturally visible 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 Gospel 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 said “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,” I think that this text will 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 visible sense. 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 monastery 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. 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 elders 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, “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 be 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 man’s 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 alluded 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, “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 mine 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 I 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 Vigilantius “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 he 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 me 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.”

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 but why do you go on bringing up this unfortunate Preface 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, 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 he has spoken ill does not cure his wound by speaking ill again, but by keeping silence. For thus it is written: “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. 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, “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, “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 them 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, 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 kataboles kosmou. The word katabole 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. katabole 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 katabeblekenai, 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 katabole, 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 down 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,” “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?” and in another place “It is better to return and be with Christ,” and elsewhere, “Before I was brought low, I sinned;” 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: “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, you 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: 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, “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 passage 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 proelpikotes, the sense would be quite clear, namely, that those who have hoped in Christ have been chosen in due order 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 you 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 name 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 called 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, 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: but 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 confusion 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 have 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, 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, “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, but 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 you 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 it—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. 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. 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 occur “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” some interpret by recalling that between gnosis and ‘epignosis (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: “All the ends of this world shall remember and turn to the Lord;” and there are many similar passages.”

38. 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,” and 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, upon the passage “He must reign till he hath put all his enemies under his feet.” 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, 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 words 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 this body of humiliation’ and body of death,’ and because 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, but 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 Psalm “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, “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 Vulgate translation. But, if a man reads the words of the Apostle when he says of Christ, “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: “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 creation 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, 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,” 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 the body of our humiliation and the chain with which we are encompassed, so that we know not yet as we ought to know, and see 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: “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 says “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 he 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. You 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 passage “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, 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: “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 age of the fulness of Christ, of whose fulness we all have received, 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, “Behold the man whose name is the East,” and whom John the Baptist announces in the words: “After me cometh a man who has come to be 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, 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. 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, all will be placed in one condition, 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 seeing 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; 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.

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 ‘Archon 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 ‘Archon 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 says 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: 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 words “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.” 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 neighbour, so that day unto day may utter speech and night to night shew knowledge, 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.” 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,” 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.” 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; 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;” 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,” and this also “A tree is known by its fruits.” 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 wrote 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:

“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, 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, “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.

“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, “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.

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.’ 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 which 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 judges 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) he inserts whole passages from a work of Cicero. 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 says “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 him 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:

“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 translated 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 said 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: “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 quaternions 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, 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 treatise 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, “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, 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, 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 Barabbas 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, “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 says 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 Preface 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, “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:

“Ambrose, who supplied the paper, the money and the secretaries by the aid of which our Adamantius and Chalcenterus 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 his 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, 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 he 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 Victorinus, 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 ‘Archon, the groundwork of his charges against me, only set forth with greater 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 but 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 rod 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 Lupercal 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. 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, 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, 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; 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 has 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, “Do nothing through faction or through vain glory”? But I might turn the tables on you and ask, 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 you 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 name 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 Chronicle 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 Chronicles 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, 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 he 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, 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 yet 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, “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 God 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 yours 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 (akatonomastos), 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, 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 by 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: “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 gourd 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, 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 from 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 (th) (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, 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: “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: “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, 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 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. 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 an 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’s 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 Lord 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: “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 Jerome 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, though 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.