Against John of Jerusalem

Let Novatus then depart, offering no hand to those who err; let Montanus with his mad women be laid low, casting those who lie into the pit, lest they be raised up. We all sin daily and fall short in some matter. We, therefore, who are gentle toward ourselves, do not hold rigor against others: rather we pray, we ask, we beseech, that a man either simply confess his own errors, or openly defend what is alien to him. I want no ambiguities of words: I do not wish to be told something that could be understood otherwise. With face unveiled let us behold the glory of the Lord. Once the Israelite people also limped on both feet. But Elijah, whose name is interpreted "the strength of the Lord," said: How long do you limp on both feet? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, follow him. And the Lord himself says of the Jews: The sons of strangers have lied to me: the sons of strangers have grown old, and have limped from their paths.

Surely if there is no suspicion of heresy (as I wish and believe), why does he not speak my meaning in my own words? What he calls simplicity, I interpret as malice. He wishes to persuade me that he believes purely; let him then speak purely also. And if indeed one word, or one meaning, were ambiguous—if two, if three—I would grant the pardon of ignorance; nor would I judge what is obscure or doubtful by what is certain and clear. But now, what sort of simplicity is this, to walk, as it were, upon eggs and ears of grain, with a hesitant step amid theatrical illusions—everywhere doubtful, everywhere suspect? You would think he is writing not an exposition of faith but a figured controversy. What he now aims at, we learned long ago in the schools. Our own armor fights against us. Even if he believes rightly, and speaks circumspectly and timidly, his excessive caution raises suspicion in me. He who walks simply, walks confidently. It is foolish to bear infamy in vain.

A charge is brought against him of which he has no guilty conscience. Therefore let him confidently deny the charge that hangs entirely on a word, and freely bring odium upon his adversary (St. Epiphanius). With the same boldness with which the other accuses, let him defend himself. And when he has said all he wished, all he proposed, all that is free from suspicion: if the calumny persists, let him join hands and drag him into court. I do not wish anyone to be patient under a suspicion of heresy; lest, among those who do not know his innocence, his silence be judged a matter of conscience, if he remains silent—though it is superfluous to seek his presence, and to wrest silence from one whose very letters you hold.

We all know what he wrote to you, what he charged against you, in what matter (as you would have it) he calumniated you. Answer point by point, follow the footsteps of that Letter, and pass over not even a jot or tittle of the calumny. For if you act negligently, and (as I believe you when you swear) pass over some things by chance, at once he will cry out and say: Here, here I hold you defeated: here the whole hinge of the matter turns. Enemies do not listen the same way as friends. He who is an enemy seeks a knot even in a bulrush; a friend judges even crooked things straight. The literature of the world writes that the judgments of lovers are blind—which perhaps you, being wholly occupied with the sacred Volumes, have entirely neglected. Never do you boast of the judgment of friends. That is a true testimony which is uttered by a hostile voice.

Otherwise, if a friend should speak on your behalf, he will be thought not a witness or judge, but a partisan. These and such things your enemies will say, who perhaps do not believe you, and wish to stir your temper. But I, whom you have never willingly injured, whose name you are always forced to bandy about in your Letters, give you this counsel: either openly proclaim the faith of the Church, or speak as you believe. For this prudent weighing and balancing of words can deceive the unlearned. A cautious hearer and reader will quickly detect the snares, and will openly bring to light the tunnels by which truth is undermined. The Arians too, whom you know very well, for a long time, on account of the scandal attached to the name ὁμοούσιον (consubstantial), pretended to condemn it, and smeared the poison of their error with the honey of their words.

But at last the twisting serpent uncoiled itself, and its noxious head, which had been covered by the coils of its whole body, was pierced through by the spiritual sword. The Church, as you know, receives the penitent; and, overcome by the number of those who sin, while she takes counsel for the deceived flocks, she forgives the wounds of the shepherds. The same custom is now observed in the old and the new heresy alike, that the people hear one thing, and the priests preach another.

And first, before I insert into this volume, translated, the letter which you wrote to bishop Theophilus, and show you that I understand your excessively cautious prudence, I wish to expostulate with you. What is this so great arrogance, not to answer those who ask about the faith? To reckon so great a multitude of brothers, and choirs of Monks, who do not commune with you in Palestine, as if they were public enemies? The Son of God, for the sake of one sick sheep, left ninety-nine on the mountains, endured blows, the cross, and scourges, and carried her upon his own shoulders to heaven, bearing and suffering the delicate sinner. Do you, most blessed pope and fastidious prelate, alone rich, alone wise, alone noble and eloquent, look down with wrinkled brow and sidelong eyes upon your fellow-servants, redeemed by the blood of your Lord? Is this what you have learned, as the Apostle commands: Be ready always to give satisfaction to every one who asks you a reason of the hope that is in you?

Suppose that some seek an occasion, and under the pretext of faith sow strife, make schism, stir up quarrels. Take away the occasion from those who wish for an occasion; so that, after you have given satisfaction concerning the faith, and have loosed all the knots that are tied against you, you may then clearly prove to all that the contest is not about doctrines, but about ordination. Unless perhaps by a shrewd design you are silent when asked about the faith, lest you should seem to be a heretic after having given satisfaction. Ought all the charges by which men are accused not to be refuted, lest, after they have denied them, they be found guilty? But you despise laymen, deacons, and presbyters. For you are able (as you boast and vaunt) to make a thousand clerics in one hour. You have pope Epiphanius, who openly, in letters sent, calls you a heretic. Certainly you are not greater than he, either in age, or in learning, or in merit of life, or in the testimony of the whole world.

If you seek age, you write as a youth to an old man. If learning, you are not so learned as to write to a learned man—although your partisans contend that you are more eloquent than Demosthenes, sharper than Chrysippus, wiser than Plato, and have perhaps even persuaded you of it yourself. Concerning his life and faith, however, I will say nothing more, lest I seem to wound you. At the time when the whole East (except pope Athanasius and Paulinus) was possessed by the heresy of the Arians and Eunomians, when you did not commune with the Westerners and confessors in the midst of exile, he was heard either as a presbyter of a monastery by Eutychius, or afterward, as Bishop of Cyprus, was not touched by Valens. For he was ever held in such veneration, that ruling heretics thought it their own disgrace if they persecuted such a man. Write, then, to this man. Answer his letter: let others perceive your finesse, your eloquence, your prudence, lest you alone should seem eloquent to yourself.

Why, when challenged by one, do you turn your weapons elsewhere? You are questioned about Palestine, and you answer about Egypt. While others' eyes are bleary, you anoint the eyes of those who feel no pain. If you speak to please us on another matter, it is proud enough; if you say something other than what we ask, it is superfluous enough.

But you say, the bishop of Alexandria approved my letter. What did he approve? That you spoke well against Arius, against Photinus, against Mani. For who at this time accuses you of Arianism? Who now charges you with the crime of Photinus or of Mani? These things were long ago corrected and shaken off. You were not so foolish as to openly defend a heresy which you knew displeased the Church. You knew that if you had done so, you would immediately be removed from your place, and you sighed for the delights of your throne. Thus you tempered your statement, so as neither to displease the simple, nor to offend your own party. You wrote well, but nothing pertaining to the case. How did the pontiff of the Alexandrian Church know in what matters you were accused? Of what confession was demanded of you? You ought to have set forth the charges against you, and thus answered each one in turn.

An old story tells: when a certain man spoke eloquently, and was carried along by the force and fluency of his words, yet touched the case not at all, a prudent hearer and judge said: "Well, well, but to what purpose is this so well said?" Unskilled physicians use one and the same eye-salve for all eye-ailments. He who is accused on many points, and in dissolving the charges omits some, confesses by his silence whatever he has not mentioned. Did you not answer the letter of Epiphanius, and yourself set forth the points you would resolve? No doubt it was with this confidence that you answered: No one is bravely beaten by himself. Choose whichever of the two you wish. The choice is given you: either you answered the letter of Epiphanius, or you did not. If you answered, why did you leave out the greatest and most numerous of the charges brought against you?

If you did not answer, where is that Apology of yours, in which you boast among the simple, and, as though before people ignorant of the case, scatter it here and there?

Eight heads of questions (as I shall presently prove) concerning the substance of the Christian faith were put to you. You touch upon only three, and pass over the rest. On the others there is a profound silence. If you had answered the seven most fully, I would still hold fast to the one charge you had left silent, and would keep hold of what you had passed over in silence. But now, it is as if you had grasped a wolf by the ears—you can neither hold on nor dare to let go.

Even these three, as though negligent and unconcerned, and as if engaged in something else, and in matters where there is little or no real question, you fly past and merely graze. And so you proceed so covered and concealed, that you confess more by your silence than you deny by your argument. Who could not at once say to you: If the light that is in you is darkness, how great will that darkness be? If the three little questions, about which you seemed to say something, are not free from suspicion and blame, and are proven to have been written fraudulently and slippery, what shall we do about the remaining five, in which, since no occasion for ambiguous speech was given, and you could not deceive your hearers, you preferred to remain entirely silent rather than openly confess what had been right?

And first concerning the book Περὶ Ἀρχῶν, where he says: for just as it is incongruous to say that the Son can see the Father, so it is unfitting to suppose that the Holy Spirit can see the Son. Second, that in this body souls are bound as in a prison; and before man was made, they dwelt among the rational creatures in the heavens, in paradise. Whence afterward the soul speaks in the Psalms for its own consolation: Before I was humbled, I offended. And: Return, my soul, to your rest. And: Bring my soul out of prison, and other things of this kind. Third, that he says both the devil and the demons will at some time do penance, and will reign with the saints in the last time. Fourth, that he interprets the "tunics of skin" as human bodies, with which Adam and Eve were clothed after their offense and expulsion from paradise—there being no doubt that before this, in paradise, they were without flesh, sinews, and bones.

Fifth, that he most openly denies the resurrection of the flesh, the framework of the members, and the sex by which we are divided into men and women—both in his exposition of the first psalm and in many other treatises. Sixth, that he so allegorizes paradise as to strip away the truth of the history, understanding by the trees the Angels, and by the rivers the heavenly powers—thus overturning by a tropological interpretation the whole content of paradise. Seventh, that he supposes the waters said in Scripture to be above the heavens to be the holy and heavenly powers, while those above the earth and beneath the earth he considers to be contrary and demonic. Eighth, which he objects last, that he says the image and likeness of God, to which man had been made, was lost by him, and was not in man after paradise.

These are the arrows by which you are pierced through; these the darts by which you are wounded throughout the whole Letter: except for this, that, prostrate at your knees, and setting aside for a little while, along with the honor of a Priest, his holy white hairs laid low, he entreats for your salvation, and speaks these words: "Grant to me and to yourself that you may be saved, as it is written, From a perverse generation: and withdraw from the heresy of Origen, and from all heresies, most beloved." And further on: "By stirring up hatreds in defense of heresy against me, you break the charity which I had for you: so much so that you have made us even repent that we ever communicated with you, defenders as you are of Origen's errors and dogmas." Tell me, excellent disputer, about the eight chapters to which you are said to have replied. For a little while I say nothing of the rest.

That first blasphemy, that neither can the Son see the Father, nor can the Holy Spirit see the Son—with what weapons of yours has it been pierced through? "We believe," he says, "the holy and adorable Trinity, of the same substance, and coeternal; of the same glory and divinity: anathematizing those who speak of anything great or small, or unequal, or visible, in the Godhead of the Trinity. But as we call the Father incorporeal, invisible, and eternal, so we call the Son and the Holy Spirit incorporeal, invisible, and eternal." Unless you said this, you would not hold to the Church: and yet I do not ask whether you had said otherwise before; I will not agitate the question whether you have loved those who preached such things; with whom you were, when, saying these things, they endured exile: who is he that, when the presbyter Theon was preaching in the Church that the Holy Spirit is God, stopped his ears and fled outside in haste with his companions, lest he hear so great an abomination.

"At once," he says, "I want him faithful, though converted late." Wretched Praetextatus, who died as consul-designate—a sacrilegious man, and worshiper of idols—used to say jestingly to the blessed Pope Damasus: Make me bishop of the city of Rome, and I will at once be a Christian. Why do you demonstrate to me, in a long speech and with elaborate periods, that you are not an Arian? Either deny that he who is accused said this, or, if he spoke such things, condemn him for having said it. Do you wish to know how great is the ardor of those who believe rightly? Hear the Apostle: But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached, let him be accursed. But you, to lessen the charge, and by concealing the name of the accused, as though all were secure and no one were accused of blasphemies, weave together with artful speech an idle profession of faith.

Say at once—and let your Letter have this as its opening—"anathema to him who dared to write such things." Pure faith brooks no delay. As soon as the scorpion appears, it must be crushed at once. David, found according to the heart of the Lord, says: Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? And am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hated them with perfect hatred. If I had heard my father, my mother, my brother saying such things against my Christ, I would have torn their blaspheming mouths as though they were the mouth of a rabid dog, and my hand would have been first upon them. Those who said to father and mother, "We do not know you," these fulfilled the will of the Lord. He who loves father or mother more than Christ is not worthy of him.

It is objected against you that your master, whom you call catholic, whom you defend so stubbornly, said: "The Son does not see the Father; and the Holy Spirit does not see the Son." And you say to me: "The Father is invisible, the Son is invisible, the Holy Spirit is invisible"—as if the Angels also, and the Cherubim and Seraphim, were not, according to their nature, invisible to our eyes? Certainly even David, in doubt as to the sight of the heavens, says: I shall see the heavens, the works of thy fingers. "I shall see," not "I see." I shall see, when with face unveiled I shall have beheld the glory of the Lord: but now we see in part, and know in part.

The question is asked whether the Son sees the Father: and you say, "The Father is invisible." It is debated whether the Holy Spirit sees the Son: and you answer, "The Son is invisible." The matter under dispute is whether the Trinity sees itself mutually—human ears cannot bear so great a blasphemy—and you say, "The Trinity is invisible." You wander off into other praises: you make long speeches about things no one is asking about. You draw the hearer elsewhere, so as not to speak of what we ask. But let these things be said as beside the point. We grant you that you are not an Arian: nay more, that you never were. We concede that in the exposition of the first chapter no suspicion rests against you, and that you have spoken wholly purely, wholly simply; with the same simplicity we too speak with you. Did Pope Epiphanius accuse you of being an Arian? Did he charge you with the heresy of the atheist Eunomius, or of Aerius?

What is asked throughout the whole Letter is that you follow the errors of Origen's dogmas, and have certain companions in this heresy. Why, when asked one thing, do you answer another, and, as though speaking with fools, dissembling the charges contained in the letters, do you repeat instead what you said in the presence of Epiphanius in the church? Are you demanding a confession of faith, and thrusting your most eloquent treatises on those who do not want them? I beg you, reader, mindful of the tribunal of the Lord, and understanding that you yourself are to be judged in your own judgment, favor neither me nor my adversary, nor the persons of the speakers, but consider the case. Let us, then, say what we had begun.

You write in your Letter that before Paulinianus was made a presbyter, Pope Epiphanius never approached you concerning the error of Origen. First, this is doubtful, and I am disputing about persons. He says he did object; you deny it. He produces witnesses; you refuse to hear them when brought forward. He also recalls that there was another meeting; you dissemble about both. He sends you a letter by his Clerk, demanding a reply: you keep silent, you dare not mutter a word, and though challenged in Palestine, you speak at Alexandria. Which of you deserves to be believed, between him and you, is not for me to say. I think that you yourself would not dare to attribute truth to yourself and falsehood to such and so great a man, against him. But it may happen that each speaks for himself. I will call you as a witness against yourself.

For if there was no question at all concerning doctrines; if you had not stirred the old man's anger; if he had answered you nothing—what need was there, in a single sermon in the Church, for a man not sufficiently eloquent, to dispute concerning all doctrines: concerning the Trinity, concerning the assumption of the Lord's body, concerning the cross, concerning the underworld, concerning the nature of Angels, concerning the state of souls, concerning the resurrection of the Savior and our own, and on earth—which perhaps you forgot to write—in the presence of the people and of such and so great a man, to speak fearlessly, and to run through everything in one breath? Where are the ancient expositors of the Church, who scarcely could explain single questions in many volumes?

Where is the vessel of election, the trumpet of the Gospel, the roar of our lion, the thunder to the nations, the river of Christian eloquence, who marvels more at the mystery unknown to former generations, and the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, than he speaks of it? Where is Isaiah, the demonstrator of the Virgin, who, succumbing on one single question, says: Who shall declare his generation? There has been found in our times a certain very small little man, who with one turn of the tongue could flash brighter than the sun on all the questions of the Church at once. If no one was demanding anything of you, and all was tranquil, foolishly did you choose to undergo such perils of disputation.—If already then you were speaking in satisfaction of the faith, then the ordination of the presbyter is not the cause of the discord, since it is agreed that it took place much later. You have deceived those who are absent, and your letters flatter foreign ears.

We were here, we know everything, when Pope Epiphanius was speaking against Origen in your church; when under his name darts were being hurled at you. You and your chorus, with dog-like grins, noses wrinkled, scratching your heads, were calling the raving old man mad with your nods. Did you not, before the Lord's sepulcher, send the Archdeacon to command that he cease disputing on such matters? What bishop ever gave such a command to his own presbyter before the people? Did you not, when you were going from the Anastasis to the cross, and a crowd of every age and sex was flowing together to him, offering their little children, kissing his feet, plucking at the fringe of his garment—and since he could not move forward a step, but scarcely held his ground in one spot before the surging flood of people—did you not, twisted with envy against the glorious old man, keep shouting out, and were you not ashamed to say to his very face that he lingered on purpose and deliberately?

Recall, I beg you, that day when the people, invited for the seventh hour, were kept waiting merely in the hope, as if they were later to hear Epiphanius: what you preached then. Surely you spoke, raging and indignant, against the Anthropomorphites, who with rustic simplicity think that God has members, as is written in the divine books: you directed your eyes and hands and the whole trunk of your body at the old man, wishing to make him suspected of that most foolish heresy. After you had grown weary, your mouth dry, your neck thrown back, your lips trembling, and had fallen silent, and at last the whole people's wish had been fulfilled, what did that raving and foolish old man do to you? He rose, to indicate that he would say a few words, and, having greeted the church both with voice and hand, said: "All that our brother and colleague, my son in age, has said against the heresy of the Anthropomorphites, he has said well and faithfully, and it is condemned by my voice also.

But it is fitting that, just as we condemn this heresy, we should also condemn the perverse dogmas of Origen." What laughter followed from all, what acclamation ensued, I think you remember. This is what you say in your Letter, that he spoke to the people whatever he wished, and however he wished. To be sure, he was deliberating, he who was speaking against your own opinion in your own kingdom! "Whatever he wished," you say, "and however he wished." Either praise it or reject it. Why do you here too proceed doubtfully? If what he said was good, why do you not preach it openly? If bad, why do you not steadily reprove it? And yet let us consider how, this pillar of truth and faith—who dares to say of so great a man that he spoke to the people whatever he wished—how prudently and modestly, how humbly he reports of himself.

"When," he says, "we too on a certain day had spoken before him, and the reading of the Gospel then present had prompted it, in his hearing and that of the whole church, we spoke these things concerning the faith and all ecclesiastical doctrines, which by the grace of God we always teach unceasingly in the church, and in the catecheses."

I ask, what confidence is this, what a swelling of spirit? All the philosophers and orators tear apart Gorgias of Leontini, because he dared, with a seat publicly set up, to promise that he would answer whatever anyone wished to ask him about. Unless the honor of the priesthood, and reverence for your name, restrained me, and unless I knew that saying of the Apostle: I did not know, brothers, that he is high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not curse the ruler of thy people, with what outcry and indignation of words would I complain about your narration! Even though you yourself diminish the dignity of your own name, since you look down, both in deed and in word, upon the father of almost all bishops, and upon a relic of ancient sanctity. You say that on a certain day, when a reading then being read had provoked it, in his hearing and that of the whole church, you disputed concerning the faith and all ecclesiastical doctrines.

Now one may well wonder at Demosthenes, who is said to have labored a long time over the composition of that most beautiful oration against Aeschines. In vain do we look up to Tully; for Cornelius Nepos reports that, in his own presence, that defense on behalf of the seditious tribune Cornelius was delivered nearly word for word as it was afterward published. Behold our Lysias, behold our Gracchus, and—to bring in something from more recent men—Quintus Aterius, who kept his talent so ready in cash, so to speak, that he could not be silent without a prompter: of whom Caesar Augustus said so aptly, "Our Quintus needs a brake."

Would any man of sense and sound mind claim that, in a single treatment in church, he had disputed concerning the end of all things and concerning all ecclesiastical doctrines? I beg you to show me what that reading was, seasoned with the whole savor of the Scriptures, whose occasion provoked you to descend suddenly into so perilous a display of wit. And unless the flood of your eloquence had overflowed upon you, you could be charged with being unable to speak extempore on all doctrines. But what is this? You promise one thing and produce another. Now the custom among us is this: that to those who are to be baptized, over forty days, we publicly hand down the holy and adorable Trinity the symbol of faith. If a reading then present provoked you to speak in one hour concerning all doctrines, what need was there to repeat the teaching of forty days?

But if you were reporting what you had said throughout the whole of Lent, how then did "one reading on a certain day" provoke you to speak concerning all doctrines? But here too he speaks ambiguously: for it could be that what he was accustomed to hand down in church over forty days to those about to be baptized, he touched upon briefly on the occasion of a single reading. For it belongs to the same eloquence to be able to say few things in many words, and many things in few. This too may be understood, that after that single reading had provoked him, inflamed with the ardor of speaking, he never fell silent for forty days. But also that the idle old man, hanging on his lips, desiring to learn things unheard of, nearly fell asleep. However that may be, these things must be tolerated: perhaps he spoke this too simply, after his own manner.

Let us set aside the rest, in which, after the labyrinths of an intricate disputation, he sets forth a sentence by no means doubtful but quite open, and concludes his wondrous treatises with this ending: "When we had spoken these things in his very presence, and he himself, after us, being urged for the sake of the honor which we showed him beyond all measure, was provoked to speak: he praised our preaching, and marveled at it, and declared to all that it was the catholic faith." How much honor beyond all measure you showed him is shown by the insults exhibited beyond all measure: when you ordered him through the archdeacon to be silent; and when he lingered among the people, eager for praise, you thundered against him. Present things teach us about past ones. He, throughout a whole three years thereafter, swallows his injuries, and, setting aside private grievance, asks only for the correction of the faith.

You, who abound in resources, and for whom the religion of the whole world is your gain, send your most weighty legates hither and thither, and rouse the sleeping old man to make answer. And truly, to one to whom you had shown so much honor, it was fitting that he should praise, above all, your extemporaneous words.

But because men are sometimes accustomed to praise what they do not approve, and to nourish another's folly with empty applause, he not only praised your words, but "praised and marveled"—and lest even that miracle be too small, he "declared to the whole people that it was of the catholic faith." How truly he said this, we too are witnesses who heard it, to whom, disturbed by your outcries, he came breathless, saying that he had rashly communicated; and being asked by the whole monastery to return to you from Bethlehem, unable to bear so many entreaties, he so returned in the evening that he fled at midnight, as the letters to Pope Siricius prove: which, if you read them, you will see clearly how he "marveled" at your words and "declared" them catholic. But indeed we are grinding trifles, and refuting, in a long discourse, old wives' tales and superfluous songs.

Let us pass to the second question, in which, as though nothing had been proposed to him, secure and belching, he pretends to sleep, so as to make his readers doze off too. But our discourse concerned the rest of the matters pertaining to the faith, that is, that of all visible and invisible things, of heavenly powers and earthly creatures, one and the same God is the Creator, namely the Holy Trinity, according to blessed David saying: By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth: which the creation of man also plainly shows. For it is he who, having taken clay from the earth, formed man, and through the grace of his own breathing gave him a rational and free soul—not some part of his own nature (as certain people impiously teach), but his own creation.

And they believe likewise concerning the holy angels, according to the divine Scripture speaking of God: Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire: concerning whom Scripture does not allow us to believe that they are of unchangeable nature, saying: The angels also who did not keep their own principality, but abandoned their own dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day: because they were changed, and we know that from their own dignity and glory they have rather passed into the order of demons. But that the souls of men come from the fall of angels, or from a conversion of angels—we have never believed nor taught (far be it!), and we confess that this is foreign to the preaching of the Church.

We ask whether souls, before man was made in paradise and Adam was formed from earth, existed among the rational creatures; whether they had a proper state, lived, dwelt, and subsisted, and whether the teaching of Origen is true, who said that all rational creatures, incorporeal and invisible, if they became negligent, gradually slip down to lower things, and, according to the quality of the places to which they descend, take on bodies for themselves. For example, first ethereal bodies, then aerial ones.

And when they come near to the earth, they are surrounded by grosser bodies, and at last are bound to human flesh; and that the demons themselves, who by their own choice withdrew, with their prince the devil, from the ministry of God, if they begin to repent a little, are clothed with human flesh, so that, penance having then been done, after the resurrection they may return by the same circle by which they came into flesh, back to the nearness of God, freed also from aerial and ethereal bodies, and then every knee shall bow to God, of things heavenly, earthly, and infernal, and God shall be all in all. Since, then, these are the things in question, why do you, leaving aside the very points over which the contest is fought, and going out from the arena and the place of combat, linger in strange and far distant disputations?

You believe that one God made all visible and invisible creatures: Arius too would confess this, who says that all things were created through the Son. If you were accused of the heresy of Marcion, who introduces one God who is good and another who is just, asserting that the former is the creator of invisible things and the latter of visible things, you would rightly satisfy me on such a question. You believe that the Trinity of the universe is the creator. This the Arians and Semi-Arians deny, blaspheming that the Holy Spirit is not creator but created. But who at this time accuses you of being an Arian? You say that the souls of men are not a part of the nature of God—as though you had just now been called a Manichean by Epiphanius. You detest those who assert that souls come to be from angels, and who say that our substance is the ruin of those angels.

Do not pretend not to know what you know, nor feign in simplicity what you do not possess: for Origen never said that souls come to be from angels, since he teaches that the angels themselves are a name of office, not of nature. For in the books "On First Principles," he says that Angels, and Thrones, and Dominations, Powers, and rulers of the world, and of darkness, and every name that is named, not only in the present age but in the age to come, are the souls of those bodies which they have taken on either by desire or by service. He says also that the sun itself and the moon, and the whole choir of stars, are the souls of creatures once rational and incorporeal, which, now subjected to vanity—that is, to fiery bodies, which we, ignorant and untutored, call the lights of the world—shall be freed from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. Whence also every creature groans and travails together.

And the Apostle laments, saying: Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? It is not the business of this present time to write against the doctrine of the Gentiles, in part Platonic. Nearly ten years ago, in the Commentaries on Ecclesiastes, and in the explanation of the Epistle to the Ephesians, I think I set forth my own understanding of this matter to those of prudent judgment.

This I now ask, since you speak of such great matters, since you set forth the truth of all discourses in a single treatise, that you answer those inquiring with a brief and absolute sentence. When God formed man out of clay, and by the grace of his own breathing gave him a soul: did that soul exist before and subsist, and where was it engaged, which was afterward given by the breathing of God; or did it, on the sixth day, when the body was formed from clay, receive both being and life by the power of God? On this point you are silent, and, pretending not to know what is asked, you occupy yourself with superfluous questions. You leave Origen untouched, and rage instead against Marcion, Apollinaris, Eunomius, the Manichean, Arius, and the follies of the other heretics. Men ask for your hand, and you hold out your foot; and yet the doctrine which you hold you insinuate covertly. Thus you soothe us country folk, so as not to displease your own followers in the least.

You say that demons, rather than souls, come to be from angels—as though the demons themselves, according to Origen, are not souls of an aerial body, and are not destined afterward to become human souls out of demons, if they should repent. You write that the angels are mutable, and under the guise of what is pious you introduce what is impious; so that, through many periods, souls come to be—not from angels—but from these very names into which the angels were first changed. I want what I say to be made clearer: imagine someone of tribunician rank, by his own fault demoted, and passed down through each grade of the cavalry service, down to the rank of recruit—does he then become a recruit straightway from a tribune? No; but first he becomes primicerius, then senator, ducenarius, centenarius, biarchus, circitor, eques, and then at last recruit; and although a former tribune has now become a common soldier, still he did not become a recruit directly from a tribune, but a primicerius.

Origen teaches that, through Jacob's ladder, rational creatures gradually descend to the last degree, that is, to flesh and blood; and that it cannot happen that someone should be hurled suddenly from the number one hundred down to the number one, except by passing through each number, as though through the rungs of a ladder, until he comes at last to the bottom; and that they change as many bodies as they change dwellings, from heaven down to earth. These are your tricks and delusions, by which you call us Pelusiotes, and beasts of burden, and merely animal men, because we do not receive the things that are of the Spirit. You men of Jerusalem even mock at angels. Your mysteries are dragged out into the open, and a doctrine woven together from the fables of the Gentiles is proclaimed to Christian ears. This thing you marvel at, we long ago despised in Plato. And we despised it because we received the foolishness of Christ.

We received the foolishness of Christ, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men. Are Christians and priests of God not ashamed, as though dealing with matters for amusement, to cling to dubious words and to weigh ambiguous opinions, by which the speaker is deceived more than the hearer?

When one of your choir was held by me, that he might say what he thought concerning the soul, whether it had existed before the flesh, or had not; he answered that both body and soul came into being at the same time. I knew that the man, being a heretic, was seeking snares in his speech. At length I found that he was saying that from the time when it ensouled the body, it was thenceforth called soul, whereas before it had been called either demon, or angel of Satan, or spirit of fornication, or, on the contrary side, dominion, power, ministering spirit, or messenger. If the soul existed before Adam was formed in paradise, in whatever state and order, and lived and did something (for we cannot suppose an incorporeal and eternal being to be, after the manner of dormice, motionless and torpid), it is necessary that some cause should have preceded, why that which was formerly without body, was afterward surrounded with a body.

And if it is natural for the soul to exist without a body, then it is against nature for it to be in a body. If it is against nature for it to be in a body, then the resurrection of the body will be against nature. But the resurrection will not be against nature; therefore, according to your opinion, the body which rises up against nature will not have a soul.

You say that the soul is not of the substance of God. Beautifully said. For you thereby condemn the most impious Manichaeus, whom it is a pollution even to name. You say that souls are not made from Angels. I agree for the moment, although I know in what sense you have said it. Since, then, we have learned what you deny, we wish to know what you believe. "Having taken," you say, "clay from the earth, God fashioned man, and by the grace of His own breathing bestowed a rational soul; and of free will, not some part of His own nature (as certain persons impiously teach), but His own proper creation." See with what a circuit he utters what we do not ask. We know that God fashioned man out of the earth, we know that He breathed upon his face, and he became a living soul; we are not ignorant that the soul is rational, and of its own free will, and we know that it is God's own creation.

No one doubts that the Manichaean errs, who says that it is the substance of God. This now I ask: this soul, God's creation, of free will, rational, and not of the substance of the Creator—when was it made? Was it at the time when man was made from clay, and the breath of life was breathed into his face? Or was it something which had existed before, and which was and lived among rational and incorporeal creatures, and was afterward bestowed by God's breathing? Here you are silent, here you feign yourself simple and rustic; and under the words of Scripture you hide what Scripture does not mean. In that place where you say—what no one asks—that it is not some part of its own nature (as certain persons impiously teach), you ought rather to have said what all of us ask: that it is not that which had existed before, not that which He had created earlier, which had already for a long time been dwelling among rational and incorporeal and invisible creatures.

Of none of these things do you speak; you bring forward for us the Manichaean, and you hide Origen; and just as nurses offer children who are asking for food certain playthings, to divert their minds, so you divert us rustics to other matters, that while we are held by the novelty of another figure, we may not ask what we wish.

Suppose you do not say this, and that your simplicity has nothing in it which you cunningly conceal. You who had begun once to speak of the soul, and to go back concerning so great a matter from the beginning of the creation of man: why, while the discussion is still pending, do you suddenly leap over to the Angels and to the dispensation of the Lord's body, and, having passed over so great a stumbling-block in the midst, do you allow us, in doubt, to stick fast in the mire? If the breathing of God (which you do not wish, and which you now leave ambiguous) is the creation of the human soul: Eve, upon whose face God did not breathe, whence had she a soul? I say nothing of Eve, who, being built as a type of the Church from the rib of the man, ought not, after so many ages, to endure the calumnies of her descendants. Cain and Abel, the first of the first men, whence had they souls?

The whole human race thereafter, from what beginning of souls is it reckoned? Is it by traducianism, after the manner of brute animals, so that as body is generated from body, so soul is generated from soul? Or have rational creatures, through desire of bodies, gradually slipped down to earth, and at last also been bound to human bodies? Or rather (which is the ecclesiastical view, according to the words of the Saviour) "My Father worketh even until now, and I work". And that of Isaiah: "Who forms the spirit of man within him." And in the Psalms: "Who fashions their hearts individually"—does God daily fashion souls, whose will is to have done, and who does not cease to be a creator? I know what you are accustomed to say against this, and to bring forward before us adulteries and incests; which is a longer battle, and does not admit the constraints of the present time.

The same controversy can be turned back against you also: and whatever seems unworthy of the Creator in the present time, this too, by His granting, is not unworthy. To be born of adultery is not the fault of him who is born, but of him who begets. Just as, in seeds, the earth which nourishes does not sin, nor the seed which is cast into the furrows, nor the moisture and heat by which the tempered grains sprout into bud (rather the thief and robber, for example, who by fraud and force snatches away the seeds)—so in the generation of men, the earth, that is, the womb, receives what is its own; and having received, cherishes it; having cherished, embodies it; having embodied, distinguishes it into members. And amid those secret straits of the womb, the hand of God is always at work: and the same is the Creator of body and soul. Do not despise the goodness of your potter, who fashioned you, and made you as He willed.

He is the power of God and the wisdom of God who built Himself a house in the womb of the Virgin. Jephthah, numbered among holy men by the voice of the Apostle, is the son of a harlot. But hear: from Rebecca and Isaac, Esau was born, rough both in mind and body, degenerating, as it were, from good wheat into darnel and wild oats; because it is not in the seeds, but in the will of the one being born, that the cause of vices and virtues lies. If it is an offense to be born of human bodies, how were Isaac, Samson, John the Baptist, born of promise? Do you understand what it is to profess one's faith boldly and freely? Suppose I err—I openly say what I think. You too, therefore, either freely profess our view, or steadfastly speak your own.

Do not station yourself within my battle-line, so that, with feigned rusticity, you may hold a safe place, from which, when you wish, you may stab in the back one who is fighting. It is not the business of this occasion to write against the dogmas of Origen; that I will devote to another work, if Christ shall grant life. Now the question is, whether the one who is being examined has answered what was asked, and whether his answer is simple and open.

Let us pass hence to the most famous question concerning the resurrection of the flesh and of the body, in which I wish you again, reader, to be reminded that you should know I am speaking with fear and the judgment of God, and that you ought to listen in the same spirit. For I am not of such folly that, if in the exposition of that matter the faith is pure, and there is no suspicion of unfaithfulness, I should seek an occasion for accusation, and, while I wish to mark another with fault, should myself be marked with calumny. Read, then, what has been set down concerning the resurrection of the flesh; and when you have read it, and it has pleased you (for I know it will please the ignorant), suspend judgment, wait a little, restrain your opinion until the end of our reply; and if afterward it still pleases you, then you may note us for calumny.

"His passion also on the cross, and death, and burial, which He kept in all its fullness, and His resurrection, we confess in truth, and not in seeming: who is the firstborn from the dead, having raised up, as the firstfruits of the mass of our bodies, that which was laid in the tomb, and carried it up to heaven, granting us the hope of resurrection in the resurrection of His own body: whence we all hope thus to rise from the dead, as He rose. Not in certain other, foreign and alien bodies, which are assumed in mere appearance: but just as He Himself rose in that body which among us was laid in the holy tomb, so also we hope to rise in these very bodies with which we are now surrounded, and in which we are now buried, by the same reasoning and by the same manner of appearance. For the things which, according to the Apostle, are sown in corruption, shall rise in incorruption; the things which are sown in dishonor, shall rise in glory.

A natural body is sown, a spiritual body shall rise: concerning which the Saviour also spoke in teaching: "For they who shall be accounted worthy of that world, and of the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: but they are as the Angels of God, being children of the resurrection".

Again, in another part of the letter, that is, at the end of his treatises, in order to deceive the ears of the unknowing, he balanced the din and pomp of the resurrection with this ambiguity of words: "But neither have we omitted concerning the second glorious advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is to come in His glory to judge the living and the dead; for He Himself shall raise up all the dead, and shall make them stand before His tribunal; and He shall render to each according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil—namely, either to be crowned in the body, which acted chastely and justly, or to be condemned, because it served alike pleasures and iniquities." That which we read in the Gospel—"At the consummation of the world, if it were possible, even the elect would be deceived"—we prove in this chapter.

The unlearned crowd hears of the dead and the buried; it hears of the resurrection of the dead, in truth and not in seeming; it hears that the firstfruits of the mass of our bodies has arrived at the heavenly places in the body of the Lord; it hears that we shall rise, not in foreign and alien bodies, which are assumed in mere appearance, but that just as the Lord rose in the body which among us lay laid in the holy tomb, so we too shall rise in the very bodies with which we are now surrounded and buried, on the day of judgment.

And lest anyone should think this too little, he adds at the end of the chapter: "And He shall render to each according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil—namely, either to be crowned in the body which acted chastely and justly, or to be condemned, because it served pleasures and iniquities." Hearing these things, the unlearned crowd, amid so great a din of the dead, of the buried body, of the resurrection, suspects no trick, no snares. It believes that what is said is meant. For the ears of the people are more sanctified than the mind of the priest.

Again and again I admonish you, reader, to hold to patience, and to learn what I too have learned through patience; and yet before I unfold the dragon's countenance, and briefly expound Origen's dogma concerning the resurrection (for you cannot know the power of the antidote unless you have examined the poisons), observe this diligently, and carefully rereading, count it: that though naming the resurrection of the body nine times, he did not once insert "flesh"; and let it be suspect to you that he deliberately omitted it.

Origen therefore says in many places, and especially in the fourth book On the Resurrection, and in the Exposition of the First Psalm, and in the Stromata, that a twofold error prevails in the Church; that of our own people, and that of heretics: "We simple folk, and those who play the philosopher, say that the same bones, and blood, and flesh, that is, the countenance and members, and the whole framework of the body, will rise again on the last day: namely, that we may walk with feet, work with hands, see with eyes, hear with ears, and carry about an insatiable belly, and a stomach digesting food. And that it follows, for those of us who believe these things, to say also that we must eat and drink, digest excrement, pour out moisture, take wives, beget children. For why genital members, if there will be no marriages? Why teeth, if there is no food to grind? Why belly and food, if, according to the Apostle, both this and those will be destroyed?

He himself crying out again: 'Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God, neither shall corruption possess incorruption'." This he asserts that we, innocent and rustic, say. "But the heretics, on whose side are Marcion, Apelles, Valentinus, Manes—a name of madness—utterly deny the resurrection of flesh and body: and grant salvation only to the soul, and say that we vainly claim we shall rise after the example of the Lord, since the Lord himself also rose in phantasm: and not only his resurrection, but even his very birth was seen τῷ δοκεῖν, that is, seemed rather in appearance than in reality. But he himself dislikes both opinions, and flees both the fleshliness of our people, and the phantasms of the heretics: because both sides are excessive in opposite directions; some wishing to be the same as they were, others denying altogether the resurrection of bodies. There are, he says, four elements, known also to philosophers and physicians, of which all things and human bodies are composed: earth, water, air, and fire.

Earth is understood in the flesh, air in the breath, water in the moisture, fire in the heat. When, therefore, the soul by God's command has left this frail and cold little body, all things gradually return to their original substances: the flesh slips back into earth, the breath mingles with air, the moisture returns to the depths, the heat flies up to the ether. And just as if you pour a pint of milk and wine into the sea, and wish afterward to separate what has been mixed: the wine and milk which you had put in do not perish, yet what has been poured out cannot be separated: so the substance of flesh and blood does not indeed perish in its original materials, yet it does not return to its former structure, nor can it be entirely the same as it was." Yet when these things are said, the solidity of the flesh, the fluidity of blood, the thickness of sinews, the intertwining of veins, and the hardness of bones are denied.

"We confess the resurrection of bodies on another principle—of those bodies which have been laid in tombs, and have crumbled into ashes: of Paul, Paul's; and of Peter, Peter's; and each one his own; for it is not right that souls should have sinned in one set of bodies, and be tormented in others: nor that it befit a just judge for one body to have shed blood for Christ, and another to be crowned." Who, hearing these things, would think that he denies the resurrection of the flesh? "And," he says, "in each seed there is inserted by God the artificer a certain principle, which holds in the beginnings of the marrow the future substances.

And just as the whole greatness of a tree—trunk, branches, fruit, leaves—is not seen in the seed, yet exists in the principle of the seed, which the Greeks call σπερματικὸν λόγον: and in a grain of wheat there is within it either a marrow or a little vein, which, when it has been dissolved in the earth, draws to itself the neighboring substances, and rises up into stalk, leaves, and ears: and one thing dies, and another rises. For in the grain of wheat the roots, stalk, leaves, ears, chaff were not dissolved: so also in the principle of human bodies certain ancient principles of rising remain, and, as it were, an ἐντεριώνη, that is, a seed-plot of the dead, is cherished in the bosom of the earth.

But when the day of judgment shall come, and at the voice of the Archangel, and at the last trumpet, the earth shall tremble, the seeds will at once be stirred, and in a moment of time will bring forth the dead as sprouts: yet they will not restore the same flesh, nor in the same forms which they were. Do you wish to know that what we say is true? Hear the Apostle: But someone will say: How do the dead rise? And with what body will they come? Foolish man, what you sow is not the body that shall be, but a bare grain; say, of wheat, or of a vine, or of some tree. And since we have already spoken in part about the grain of wheat and the seed of trees, let us now discuss the grape-seed. The grain is small, so that it can scarcely be held with two little fingers. Where are the roots? Where is the twisted intertwining of roots and trunk and shoots?

Where the shady canopies of vine-leaves, and the beauty of the grapes, giving birth to future wines? What is held is dry, and can scarcely be discerned: but from that dry grain, by the power of God and the hidden principle of the seed, foaming musts will be poured forth. Will you grant this to wood, and not grant it to man? What is destined to perish is thus adorned; what is destined to remain will not receive back its former baseness. And do you wish again flesh, bones, blood, members, so that as your hair grows you need a barber, your nose discharges phlegm, the growth of nails must be trimmed, so that through the lower parts either excrement or lusts may flow out? If you bring forward these absurdities of rustics, you forget the flesh, in which we cannot please God, as though it were an enemy, and also the resurrection of the dead: It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory.

It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power. It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body. Now we see with eyes, hear with ears, act with hands, walk with feet. But in that spiritual body we shall see wholly, hear wholly, work wholly, walk wholly: and the Lord will transfigure the body of our lowliness, made conformable to the body of his glory. When he said 'will transfigure', that is, μετασχηματίσει, the diversity of the members which we now use is denied. Something else, spiritual and ethereal, is promised us: which is subject neither to touch, nor discerned by eyes, nor weighed down by heaviness: and it will be changed according to the variety of the places in which it shall be. Otherwise, if the same flesh and bodies which were will exist again, there will again be males and females, again marriages; men will have shaggy eyebrows, long beards; women smooth cheeks, and narrow chests, and their bellies and thighs must be widened for conceiving and bearing offspring.

Infants too will rise, and old men will rise: the former to be nursed, the latter to be propped up with staffs. Nor let the resurrection of the Lord deceive you, O simple ones, because he showed his side and hands, stood on the shore, walked on the road with Cleopas, and said he had flesh and bones. That body is endowed with other privileges, which was not born of a man's seed and the pleasure of the flesh. He ate after his resurrection and drank, and appeared clothed, and offered himself to be touched, that he might give faith of the resurrection to the doubting Apostles. But nevertheless he does not disguise the nature of an airy and spiritual body. He enters though doors are shut, by which man is generated, which are called λόγοι σπερματικοὶ λογικοῦ." for he enters through doors, and vanishes from sight in the breaking of bread. Will we, then, also after the resurrection have to drink and eat, and after food excrete waste? And where then will be that promise: This mortal must put on immortality?

This is the whole reason why, in the exposition of your faith, to deceive the ears of the ignorant, you name "body" nine times, and never once name "flesh": while men suppose that you confess flesh in bodies, and that flesh is the same thing as body. If it is the same, it does not signify something different. For I know you will say this: I thought that body was the same as flesh; I spoke simply. Why then do you not rather name flesh, to signify body, and use now flesh, now body indifferently, so that body may be shown in flesh, and flesh in body? But believe me, your silence is not simple. For the definition of flesh is one thing, of body another: every flesh is a body, not every body is flesh. Flesh, properly speaking, is that which is bound together by blood, veins, bones, and sinews. Body, although it too is called flesh, is sometimes named ethereal, or aerial, which is not subject to touch or sight, and yet is often visible and tangible.

A wall is a body, but not flesh: a stone is a body, but is not called flesh. Hence the Apostle calls certain bodies celestial, and others terrestrial. Celestial body: that of the sun, moon, stars. Terrestrial: fire, air, water, earth, and the rest which are reckoned among these elements without soul. Do you see that we understand your subtleties, and the secrets which you speak in your chambers and among the "perfect," and bring into the open what the people standing outside do not deserve to hear? This is that thing which, with hand drawn back to the ear, and fingers snapping, you say laughingly: All the glory of the king's daughter is within. And the king brought me into his chamber. It is plain why you spoke of the resurrection of "body," and not of "flesh": namely, so that we, the unlearned, might suppose you meant flesh within body, while those who are "perfect" would understand that flesh is denied within body.

Finally, the Apostle in his Epistle to the Colossians, wishing to show that the body of Christ was fleshly, and not spiritual, airy, and tenuous, spoke significantly, saying: And you, when you were once alienated and enemies in mind by wicked works, he has now reconciled in the body of his flesh through death. And again in the same Epistle: In whom also you were circumcised with a circumcision not made by hand, in putting off the body of the flesh. If "body" signifies flesh alone, and is not an ambiguous term, nor can be drawn to different meanings, it is quite superfluous for him to say "bodily" and "fleshly," as though flesh were not understood in body.

In the Symbol of our faith and hope, which was handed down by the Apostles, and is not written in paper and ink, but on the fleshly tables of the heart, after the confession of the Trinity and the unity of the Church, the whole sacrament of Christian doctrine is concluded with the resurrection of the flesh. And you dwell only upon "of body," and again "of body," and a third time "of body," and up to nine times upon "of body," whether in speech or in number, and you never once name "flesh"; whereas they always name "flesh," but are silent about "body." But also that which you subtly append, and, cautiously guarding yourself, dissemble, know that we understand it. For by these testimonies you prove the truth of the resurrection, by which Origen denies it, and, confirming uncertain things by doubtful ones, you overturn with a sudden storm the sure house of faith. It is sown, he says, a natural body: it shall rise a spiritual body.

For they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but they shall be as the angels in heaven. What other examples would you take up, if you were denying the resurrection?

You wish to confess the resurrection of the flesh in truth, and not, as you say, "putatively." After those things by which you have flattered the ears of the ignorant, that we shall rise in the very bodies in which we died and were buried, add rather this, and say: How the Lord after the resurrection showed the marks of the nails in his hands, displayed the wound of the spear in his side, and to the doubting Apostles, who thought they were seeing a phantasm, replied, Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see me having, and expressly to Thomas: Put your finger here into my hands, and reach out your hand and put it into my side, and be not unbelieving, but believing; so too we, after the resurrection, will have the same members which we now use, the same flesh and blood and bones: whose works, not their nature, are condemned in the Holy Scriptures.

Finally, it is written in Genesis: My Spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh. And the Apostle Paul, concerning the wicked doctrine and works of the Jews, says: I did not acquiesce to flesh and blood. And to the Saints, who indeed were in the flesh, he says: But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit: if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. For in denying that those were "in the flesh" who were manifestly in the flesh, he was condemning not the substance of the flesh, but its sins.

This is the true confession of the resurrection, which so grants glory to the flesh that it does not take away its truth. But as for what the Apostle says, this corruptible and mortal thing, he shows this very body, that is, the flesh, which was then seen. And when he joins together the putting on of corruption and immortality, by that clothing, that is, that garment, he does not say that the body which he adorns in glory is cast off; but that what before was without glory is made glorious; so that, the meaner garment of mortality and infirmity being laid aside, we may be clothed with the gold of immortality, and, so to speak, with the blessedness of firmness and virtue; wishing not to be stripped of the flesh, but to be clothed over in glory, and desiring to be clothed over with our dwelling which is from heaven, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Certainly no one is clothed over except one who is already clothed.

So also our Lord was transfigured on the mountain in glory, not that he should lose his hands and feet and his other members, and suddenly be rolled into the roundness either of the sun or of a sphere: but that those same members, glowing with the brightness of the sun, might dazzle the eyes of the Apostles; whence also his garments were changed into whiteness, not into air; unless perhaps you would assert that his garments too were spiritual. And his face, it says, shone like the sun. But where the face is named, I judge that the other members too were seen. Enoch was translated in the flesh. Elijah, in the flesh, was caught up into heaven: not yet dead, and already dwellers in paradise, they have the members with which they were caught up and translated. What we imitate by fasting, they possess by fellowship with God. They feed on the heavenly bread, and are satisfied with every word of God, having the same Lord whom they also have as food.

Hear the Saviour saying: And my flesh shall rest in hope. And in another place: His flesh has not seen corruption. And again: All flesh shall see the salvation of God. And do you keep repeating "body" over and over? Bring forth rather Ezekiel, who, joining bone to bone and bringing them out of their graves, and making them stand upon their feet, binds them together with flesh and sinews, and covers them over with skin.

Job thunders, victor over torments, and, scraping with a potsherd the corruption of his putrid flesh, consoles his miseries with the hope and truth of the resurrection: Who will grant me, he says, that my words be written? Who will grant that they be inscribed in a book with an iron pen, and a plate of lead, or be graven with a chisel in flint? For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that on the last day I shall rise from the earth, and again I shall be clothed round about with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God: whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. This hope of mine is laid up in my bosom.

What is more manifest than this prophecy? No one after Christ speaks so openly of the resurrection as this man before Christ. He wishes his words to endure forever: and that they may not be able to be erased by any age, he wishes them to be engraved on a plate of lead, and carved in flint. He hopes for the resurrection—nay, he knows and has seen—that his Redeemer Christ lives, and that on the last day he is to rise from the earth. The Lord had not yet died, and the Athlete of the Church was seeing his Redeemer rising from the dead. But as for what he adds: And again I shall be clothed round about with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God, I think he does not speak as a lover of flesh, which he perceived as putrid and stinking; but out of confidence in rising again, he despises the present things, with the consolation of the future. Again he says: I shall be clothed round about with my skin.

Where here is the ethereal body? Where the airy body, like unto spirit and breeze? Surely where there is skin and flesh, where there are bones and sinews, and blood and veins, there is the structure of the flesh, there is the property of sex. And in my flesh, he says, I shall see God. When all flesh shall see the salvation of God, and Jesus God, then I too shall see my Redeemer and Saviour, and my God. But I shall see him in this very flesh, which now tortures me, which now drips because of pain. Therefore shall I behold God in the flesh, because by his resurrection he has healed all my infirmities. Does it not seem to you that Job even then was writing against Origen, and, on behalf of the truth of the flesh in which he endured torments, was waging another battle against the heretics? For he grieves, if he has suffered so much in vain, and while one thing rises spiritually, this thing was tormented in the flesh in vain.

Whence he presses the point and heaps it up, and concludes with an open voice all the hidden secrets of a slippery confession, saying: Whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. If he is not to rise in his own sex, if not in the same members which lay in the dung, if he does not open the same eyes to see God with which he then saw the worms, where then will Job be? You take away the things in which Job consisted, and give me an empty word of one rising: just as if, after a shipwreck, you should wish the ship restored, and yet deny the individual pieces of which the ship is constructed.

I will speak freely, and although you twist your mouths, tear your hair, and stamp your foot, and demand the stones of the Jews, I will confess most openly the faith of the Church. The truth of the resurrection cannot be understood without flesh and bones, without blood and members. Where there is flesh and bones, and blood and members, there necessarily is difference of sex. Where there is difference of sex, there is John John, and Mary Mary. Do not fear their marriages, who even before death lived in their own sex without the work of sex. When it is said: In that day they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, this is said of those who are able to marry, and yet will not marry. For no one says of the Angels: They shall neither marry nor be given in marriage. I have never heard that marriages of the spiritual Powers are celebrated in heaven: but where there is sex, there is male and female.

Whence you too, even unwillingly, compelled by the truth, have confessed, and have said: "Either it is to be crowned in the body, which acted chastely and justly, or to be condemned in the body, which served pleasures and iniquity." Take away "body" and put "flesh," and you have not denied male and female. For who lives with the glory of chastity who has no sex, through which unchastity could be committed? For who ever crowned a stone because it remained a virgin? The likeness to the Angels is promised us, that is, that blessedness in which the Angels are without flesh and sex, will be given to us in our flesh and our sex. My rusticity believes this, and thus understands the confession of sex without the works of sex: that men rise again, and thus are made equal to the Angels. Nor will the resurrection of the members immediately appear superfluous, though they will lack their office; since even now, placed in this life, we strive not to fulfil the works of the members.

But the likeness to the Angels is not a transformation of men into Angels, but a progress of immortality and glory.

Those arguments of yours about children and infants, and old men, and foods, and dung, which you use against the Churches, are not your own: they have flowed from the source of the Gentiles. For the Pagans object the same things to us. You who say you are a Christian, lay down the weapons of the Gentiles. Let them rather learn from you to confess the resurrection of the flesh, than you learn from them to deny it. Or if you too are of the number of the enemy, show yourself openly an adversary, that you may receive the wounds due to the Pagans. I grant you your nurses, lest infants wail; I grant you decrepit old men, lest they shrink in the winter cold. In vain, too, have barbers learned their craft, since they know that the people of Israel, for forty years, felt no growth either of nails or of hair: and, what is more than this, their garments were not worn out, nor did their shoes grow old.

Enoch and Elijah, of whom we have spoken before, remain for so long a time in the same age at which they were taken up. They have teeth, a belly, genitals, and yet they need neither food nor wives. Why do you slander the power of God? He who can, from that marrow and from your seed-bed, ἐντεριώνη, bring forth not merely flesh from flesh, but a body, and make one thing out of another; and can change water, that is, the vileness of flesh, into precious wines of an airy body: he certainly can, by the same power by which he fashioned all things out of nothing, restore what they were: because it is much less to restore what has been, than to make what has not been. Do you marvel if from infants and old men there be a resurrection into the age of a perfect man, when out of the slime of the earth, without any increase of ages, a full-grown man was made?

A rib is changed into a woman; and in the third manner of the human condition, the vile and shameful elements of our birth are changed into flesh: they are bound into members, run through into veins, harden into bones. Do you wish to hear also a fourth kind of human generation? The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God. Adam is one way, Eve another, Abel another, and the man Jesus Christ another. And in all these differing origins, the one nature of man does not differ.

If I should wish to prove the resurrection of the flesh, and of all the members, and to add explanations to each testimony, many books would be needed: but the present case does not require this. For I have proposed, not to answer Origen in all things, but to lay open the mysteries of his fraudulent satisfaction. Yet since I have been lengthy in my contrary assertion, and fear lest, while I strive to disclose his frauds, I may have left a stumbling-block for the reader, I will set the testimonies together in a heap, and touch upon them briefly in passing, that we may contend with the whole weight of Scripture against this poisoned argumentation. He who does not have the wedding garment, nor has kept that commandment: Let your garments be always white, is bound hand and foot, lest he recline at the banquet, sit upon the throne, stand at the right hand of God; he is cast into gehenna, where there is weeping of the eyes, and gnashing of teeth.

The hairs of your head are numbered. If the hairs, I think the teeth more easily so. But they would be numbered in vain, if they were at some time to perish. The hour will come, in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and will come forth. They will hear with ears, they will come forth with feet. This Lazarus had already done before. They will come forth from the tombs, that is, those who had been brought into tombs; the dead will come, and will rise from their graves. For the dew that is from God is medicine to their bones. Then will be fulfilled what the Lord speaks through the Prophet: My people, enter into your storerooms for a little while, until my wrath pass over. The storerooms signify the tombs, from which surely that is brought forth which had been laid up. And they shall go out from their tombs, like fawns loosed from their bonds.

Their heart shall rejoice, and their bones shall rise up like the sun: all flesh shall come into the sight of the Lord, and he shall command the fishes of the sea, and they shall belch up the bones which they had eaten, and he shall make joint to joint, and bone to bone: and those who slept in the dust of the earth shall rise: some to eternal life, some to eternal reproach and confusion. Then the just shall see the punishments and torments of the wicked: for their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be extinguished, and they shall be in the sight of all flesh. As many of us therefore as have this hope, just as we have presented our members as servants to uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so let us present them as servants to righteousness unto sanctification: that, rising from the dead, we may walk in newness of life.

Just as also the life of the Lord Jesus is manifested in our mortal body: and he who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies, on account of his Spirit dwelling in us. For it is right that we, who always bear about the mortification of Christ in our body, should also have the life of Jesus manifested in our mortal body, that is, in flesh mortal according to nature, but eternal according to grace. Stephen also saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father, and the hand of Moses was changed into the whiteness of snow, and afterward restored to its former color. In both cases there was diversity in the hand.

That potter of Jeremiah, whose vessel, which he had made, was broken through the hardness of the stones, remade from the same clay and the same mass what had fallen: but the very word "resurrection" signifies that one thing falls, another is raised up: and what is added, "of the dead," points to one's own flesh: for what dies in a man, this same thing is also brought to life. That wounded man of the road to Jericho is wholly brought to the inn, and the wounds of sins are healed by immortality.

The tombs also were opened at the Lord's passion, when the sun fled, the earth trembled, and many bodies of the Saints arose, and were seen in the holy city. Who is this, says Isaiah, who comes up from Edom: his garments shining from Bosor, so beautiful in a white robe? Edom is interpreted either "earthly" or "bloody." Bosor, either "flesh" or "in tribulation." In few words he shows the whole mystery of the resurrection, that is, both the truth of the flesh and the increase of glory. And the sense is: Who is this who comes up from the earth, comes up from blood? Whose garments, according to the prophecy of Jacob, who bound his colt to the vine and trod the winepress alone, are red with new wine from Bosor, that is, from the flesh, or the tribulation of the world: for he has overcome the world.

Therefore his garments are red and shining; because he is beautiful in form above the sons of men: and, because of the glory of the one triumphing, they are changed into a white robe; and then it is truly fulfilled of Christ's flesh: Who is this who comes up made white, leaning upon her kinsman? And what is written in the same book: My kinsman is ruddy and white. These are imitated by those who have not defiled their garments with women; for they remain virgins who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Therefore they shall be in white garments. At that time the sentence of the Lord shall be shown fulfilled in deed. All that the Father has given me, I shall not lose any of it, but I shall raise it up on the last day. That is, evidently, the whole man, whom he had wholly received in being born.

Then the sheep that had perished, and had strayed among the lower regions, shall be borne wholly upon the shoulders of the Savior: and she who was weak with sins shall be sustained by the clemency of the Judge. Then they shall see him whom they pierced, who cried out: Crucify, crucify such a one. Tribe by tribe they shall beat their breasts, they themselves and their women. Those women, to whom the Lord spoke while carrying the cross: Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me, but weep over yourselves and over your children. Then the prophecy of the Angels shall be fulfilled, who spoke to the astonished Apostles: Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.

What manner of thing is it, then, for the Lord to be said to have eaten with the Apostles for forty days after the resurrection, lest he be thought a phantasm; and by this very act of eating, seen in flesh and in members, to be confirming a phantasm? Either what was seen was true, or false. If it is true, then he truly ate, and truly had members. But if false, how did he wish to show false things, in order to prove the truth of the resurrection? For no one proves what is true by what is false. Then, you will say, are we too to eat after the resurrection? I do not know. For it is not written: and yet if it be asked, I do not think we shall eat. For I have read that the kingdom of God is not food and drink, promising us those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man. Moses and Elijah fasted forty days and nights.

This human nature does not endure, but what is impossible for man is not impossible for God. Just as one who foretells future things, it makes no difference whether he announces what is to come after ten years, or after a hundred, because there is one knowledge of future things: so he who can fast forty days and live—nay, cannot fast, but lives by the power of God—shall be able for eternal time to live without food and drink. Why did the Lord eat honeycomb? To prove the resurrection; not to indulge honey to your throat. He asked for a broiled fish on the coals, to confirm the doubting Apostles, who did not dare to come near him, thinking they saw a spirit, not a body. The daughter of the ruler of the synagogue is raised, and takes food: Lazarus, dead four days, rises again, and is brought in to dine: not because he hungered among the dead, but because the difficulty of the deed required the scruple of faith.

As he showed true hands and a true side: so he truly ate with the disciples: truly walked with Cleopas: truly spoke with men with his tongue: truly reclined at table in the true posture: with true hands he took bread, blessed, and broke it, and handed it to them. But that he vanished suddenly from their eyes is the power of God, not of shadow and phantasm. Otherwise even before the resurrection, when they had led him out from Nazareth to cast him down from the brow of the mountain, he passed through the midst, that is, he slipped from their hands. Can we say, as Marcion does, that his nativity too was in a phantasm, because he who was held escaped contrary to nature? Is it permitted to the Magi, but not to the Lord? Apollonius of Tyana is recorded as, while standing before Domitian in the council chamber, suddenly having disappeared.

Do not equate the power of the Lord to the tricks of Magicians, so that it may seem that he was what he was not, and be thought that he ate without teeth, walked without feet, broke bread without hands, spoke without a tongue, and showed his side without ribs.

And how, you will say, did they not recognize him on the road, if he had the same body which he had before? Hear Scripture saying: Their eyes were held, that they might not recognize him. And again: Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. Was he then someone else when he was not recognized, and someone else when he was recognized? Certainly he was one and the same. To recognize, therefore, and not to recognize, belonged to the eyes, not to him who was seen, though it belonged to him too. For he held their eyes, lest they recognize him. Finally, that you may know that the error which prevailed in the matter belonged not to the Lord's body but to closed eyes: Their eyes were opened, it says, and they recognized him. Hence too Mary Magdalene, as long as she did not recognize Jesus, and sought the living among the dead, thought him the gardener. She recognizes him, and calls him Lord. After the resurrection Jesus stood on the shore, the disciples were in the boat.

While the others did not recognize him, the disciple whom Jesus loved says to Peter, It is the Lord. For virginity is first to recognize the virginal body. He was the same, and yet did not appear the same to all. And immediately it is added: And no one dared to ask him, Who are you? Knowing that it was the Lord. No one dared, because they knew it was God. They ate together with him as he dined, because they saw a man and flesh, not that one was God and another man, but that one and the same Son of God was recognized as man, was adored as God. No doubt I must now philosophize, that our senses are uncertain, and especially sight. Some Carneades must be roused from the dead, to bring forth the truth—that the oar appears broken in the water, that porticoes seem narrower at a distance, that the round corners of towers seem angular from afar, that the necks of doves change color at each turning.

When Rhoda announced Peter, and told the Apostles that he had escaped, given the greatness of the danger, they do not believe, they suspect a phantasm. Furthermore, that he entered when the doors were shut was of the same power as his vanishing from their eyes. Lynceus (as the fables tell) could see through a wall: shall the Lord, with doors shut, not be able to enter, unless he was a phantasm? Eagles and vultures perceive corpses across the sea. Will the Savior not see his Apostles, unless the door be opened? Tell me, most acute disputer, which is greater: to hang so great a mass of earth upon nothing, and to balance it upon the uncertainty of the waters; or for God to pass through a closed door, and for the creature to yield to the Creator? What is greater, you grant; what is lesser, you slander. Peter walks upon the waters with a body heavy and solid.

The soft wave does not yield: his faith wavers a little, and at once his body knows its own nature: so that we may know it was not the body that walked upon the waters, but faith.

I beg you, who employ so many arguments against the resurrection, to speak plainly with me. Do you truly believe that the Lord rose again in the same body in which He died, in which He was buried, or do you not believe it? If you believe it, why do you propose these things, by which the resurrection is denied? If you do not believe it, why do you thus suckle the minds of the unlearned, and toss about the resurrection as an empty name? Listen. Lately a certain man of Marcion's school said: Woe to him who shall rise again in this flesh and in these bones. My mind rejoicing at once answered: For we are buried together with Him, and have risen together with Christ through baptism. Do you speak of the resurrection of the soul, or of the flesh? I answered, not of the soul alone, but of the flesh, which is reborn together with the soul in the laver. And how shall that perish which has been reborn in Christ?

Because it is written, he says: Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God. Attend, I beg you, to what is said: Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God. Shall they not rise again? Far from it; but they shall not possess it. Why shall they not possess it? Because it follows, neither shall corruption possess incorruption. So long, then, shall they not possess the kingdom of God, as long as they remain mere flesh and blood. But when the corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and the mortal shall have put on immortality, and the clay of the flesh shall have been baked into an earthen vessel—clay which before was pressed down to the earth by a heavy weight—having received the wings of the spirit, by change, not by abolition, it shall fly with new glory to heaven; and then shall be fulfilled that which is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your contention? Death, where is your sting?

In reversed order have we answered concerning the state of souls and the resurrection of the flesh: and having omitted the beginnings of the Letter, our whole dispute has been directed against his notable treatises. For we preferred to speak of the things of God rather than of our own injuries. If a man sin against a man, they shall pray for him to the Lord. But if he sin against God, who shall pray for him? Now, on the contrary, above all things we pursue our adversaries with undying hatred: while to those who blaspheme God we stretch out a merciful hand. He writes to bishop Theophilus an apology, whose opening is this: "You indeed, as a man of God, and adorned with apostolic grace, bear the care of all the Churches, especially of that which is at Jerusalem, though you yourself are burdened with the many cares of the Church of God which is under you." He praises the face, he is drawn to the person of the great.

You who seek ecclesiastical rules, and appeal to the canons of the Council of Nicaea, and strive to usurp to yourself clergy belonging to others, dwelling with their own bishops—answer me, what has the bishop of Alexandria to do with Palestine? Unless I am mistaken, it is decreed there that the metropolis of Palestine is Caesarea, and of the whole East, Antioch. Therefore you ought either to have referred the matter to the bishop of Caesarea, with whom, spurning communion with you, you knew that we communicated; or, if judgment were to be sought from afar, letters should rather have been directed to Antioch. But I know why you were unwilling to send to Caesarea, why to Antioch. You knew what you were fleeing, what you were avoiding. You preferred to trouble busy ears rather than render to your Metropolitan the honor due him.

Nor do I say this because, apart from the friendships which breed suspicion, I find anything to blame in the embassy; but because you ought rather to have cleared yourself before those who question and are present. You sent that most devout man of God, the presbyter Isidore, a man powerful as much by the very dignity of his bearing and habit as by his divine understanding—capable of curing even those who are grievously sick in mind, if only they have any sense of their own malady. A man of God sends a man of God. There is no difference between presbyter and bishop; the same dignity belongs to sender and sent: this is quite unskillfully done—shipwreck, as they say, in the harbor. This Isidore, who is lifted to the skies by your praises, is defamed at Alexandria for the very thing you are at Jerusalem; wherefore he seems to have come not as a legate, but as an accomplice.

Besides, letters written in his own hand, which had been sent three months before this embassy to us, carrying error, were delivered to the presbyter Vincent, and are kept by him to this day—letters in which he exhorts the leader of his army to stand firm upon the rock of faith, and not to be frightened by our dirges. He promises that, before there was any suspicion of an embassy, he would come to Jerusalem, and that at his arrival all the ranks of his adversaries would immediately be trampled down. And among other things he uses these very words: "As smoke dissolves in the air, and wax melts near the fire, so shall those be scattered who, always resisting the faith of the Church, now try, through simple men, to disturb that same faith."

I ask you, reader, one who writes this before he even arrives—what does he seem to you? An adversary, or a legate? This is the man whom we may call most pious or most devout, and, to render the word for word, a "God-fearer" θεοσέβατον. This is the man of divine understanding; so powerful, and of such dignity in bearing and habit, that, like a spiritual Hippocrates, he could by his very presence soothe the sickness of our souls—if only we were willing to submit to his medicine. Let him who is accustomed to cure others cure himself with such medicine. To us that divine understanding is, for Christ's sake, foolishness. We are content to be sick with our own rusticity, lest we learn through your eye-salve to see impiously. But as for your holiness, since your good will has, as it were, been carried through to its very end, we pray the Lord night and day in the holy places, that He render you full reward, and grant you the crown of life.

Rightly do you give thanks; for had Isidore not come, you would not have found so faithful a companion in all Palestine. Had he not brought you the promised aid, heresies would have prevailed among the crowd of rustics, who could not understand your wisdom. This very apology, of which we now speak, was dictated with Isidore present and laboring hard, so that the same man was both dictator and bearer of the letter.

"When therefore he had come here, and had approached us on three occasions, and had applied words possessing the healing power both of your divine wisdom and of his own understanding, it profited no one, nor did anyone profit him." This man, who is said to have come to us three times—so as to preserve the mystic number in his coming—who spoke to us bishop Theophilus's mandate, refused to deliver the letters sent to us by him. And when we said: If you are a legate, deliver the letters of your embassy; if you have no letters, how will you prove yourself a legate? He answered that he did indeed have letters for us, but that he had been adjured by the bishop of Jerusalem not to deliver them to us. Behold the constancy of a legate, who, in order to make peace, and to exclude suspicion of favor toward either side, made himself equally fair to both! And because he had come without any plaster, and had no surgeon's instruments, therefore his medicine profited nothing.

Jerome and those with him, "both in secret and before all, most frequently and under the testimony of an oath, gave him full satisfaction that they never had any doubt whatsoever concerning our faith, saying: As at the time when we were in communion with him, so now likewise we have the same regard concerning the matter of faith." See what harmony of doctrine effects! Isidore, to signify this, was his accomplice, a man of God and a most God-fearing presbyter, θεοσεβέστατος, a powerful man, of sacred and venerable bearing, of divine understanding, and called the Hippocrates of the Christians. I, poor wretch, while I hide away in solitude, suddenly cut off by so great a pontiff, have lost the name of presbyter. And yet this Jerome, with his ragged crowd and squalid flocks, what did he dare to answer that thunderbolt Isidore?

But lest perchance he should not yield, and should overwhelm them by his presence and the bulk of his body, not once, not thrice, but very often they swore that they knew the man in question to be orthodox, and had never held him in suspicion of heresy. O manifest and shameless lie! O testimony for oneself, not even believed of Cato! For in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand. Was it ever said anywhere, or was it ever anywhere commanded you, that we should submit to communion with you without satisfaction concerning the faith? When, through that most eloquent and most Christian count Archelaus, who was mediator of peace, a place for the compact was agreed upon, was not this among the first things demanded, that the foundations of the future concord should rest upon faith? He promised that he would come. The day of Easter was pressing; a great crowd of monks had gathered; you were expected at the place; you did not know what to do.

Suddenly you sent word that some woman or other was ill: that on that day you could not come. Does a mime or a bishop speak thus? Suppose what you say is true—that for the delights of one little woman, lest her head ache in your absence, lest she suffer discomfort, lest her stomach grow chill—do you neglect the cause of the Church? Do you despise the presence of so many men, both Christians and monks? We were unwilling to give occasion; for we saw the trick of your delay, and by patience we conquered the wrong. Archelaus writes back: he urges you to remain a second and a third day, if you wished to come. But he was occupied: for the little woman did not cease vomiting; and once the nausea had passed, he utterly forgot about us. After two months, then, at last, the long-awaited Isidore came—who did not, as you pretend, hear testimony in your favor, but heard the matter of the satisfaction demanded.

For when he objected to us, saying, "Why did you communicate with him, if he was a heretic?" he heard from all: we communicated, suspecting nothing of heresy. But after he, being approached by the blessed Pope Epiphanius, both by word and by letter, scorned to answer: letters came from the same Epiphanius to all the monks, that without satisfaction concerning the faith, no one should rashly communicate with him. The letters are at hand, nor can there be any doubt on this matter. This is what the crowd of brethren answered—not, as you argue, to prove that you are not a heretic because you were once not called one. For by this reasoning, he who was healthy before his sickness ought never to fall sick.

"But when the question of the ordination of Paulinianus and of the others who are with him began to be discussed, seeing themselves reproved—since for charity's and concord's sake all things were conceded to them, and only this alone was demanded, that, although they had been ordained by others contrary to the canons, they should nevertheless submit themselves to the Church of God, so as not to rend it, nor make for themselves a separate primacy—not agreeing to this, they began to bring forward matters of the faith, and to make known to all, that if those who were with the presbyter Jerome were not to be found at fault, nothing would be blamed in us.

But if they should be found guilty of error and fault, since they are utterly unable to dispute concerning such questions, not finding satisfaction for their own error, they would take refuge in these matters—not because they hoped that we could be convicted, but that they might strive to injure our reputation." That this is a confused statement, let no one think a fault of translation. For such it is also in the Greek. Meanwhile I rejoice, that I who thought myself beheaded, suddenly see my presbyteral head restored to me. He says that we cannot possibly be convicted, and yet he shrinks in horror from coming to the contest. If the cause of discord is not from a disagreement of faith, but arises, as you say, from the ordination of Paulinianus, what folly is it, when willing to give occasion, to be unwilling to answer? Confess the faith; but nevertheless answer what you are asked, so that it may be clear to all that the contest is not about faith, but about ordination.

For as long as, being questioned about the faith, you have remained silent, your adversary can say to you: It is not a matter of ordination, but of faith. If it is a matter of ordination, you act foolishly in remaining silent when questioned about the faith. If of faith, you foolishly put forward ordination as a pretext. Further, as to what you say—that you asked that they should be subjected to the Church of God, and not rend it, nor make for themselves a separate primacy—I do not well understand of whom you speak. If of me and of the presbyter Vincent, you have slept a very long time, since after thirteen years you now, roused up, say these things. For it was on this very account that I forsook Antioch, and he Constantinople, most celebrated cities—not that we might praise you preaching among the peoples, but that, weeping over the sins of our youth in the fields and in solitude, we might turn Christ's mercy toward us.

But if your speech is of Paulinianus: you see that he is subject to his own bishop, that he dwells in Cyprus, and comes sometimes to visit us—not as your subject, but as another's, namely his by whom he was ordained. But if he should also wish to be here, and to live quietly in solitude in our exile, what does he owe you, save the honor which we owe to all bishops? Suppose him ordained by you: you will hear from him the same thing that the bishop Paulinus, of holy memory, heard from me, poor wretch that I am. Did I ever ask you to ordain me? If you grant the presbyterate in such a way that you do not take away from us the monk, you may judge as you see fit. But if under the name of presbyter you take from me that for which I forsook the world, I have what I always had: you have suffered no loss in the ordination.

"That they should not tear it asunder," he says, "nor make for themselves a private headship." Who tears the Church asunder? We, whose whole household of Bethlehem communicates within the Church? Or you, who either believe rightly, and proudly keep silent about the faith; or believe wrongly, and truly tear the Church asunder? Do we tear the Church asunder, we who a few months ago, around the days of Pentecost, when the sun was darkened and the whole world was dreading that the Judge was even then about to come, offered forty persons of different ages and sexes to your priests for baptism? And indeed there were five priests in the monastery who had every right of their own to baptize; but they were unwilling to do anything against your bile, lest even in this an occasion should be given you for keeping silent about the faith.

Or is it not rather you who tear the Church asunder, you who ordered your priests at Bethlehem not to administer baptism at Easter to our candidates, whom we sent to Diospolis (Lydda) to be baptized by the confessor and bishop Dionysius? Are we said to tear the Church asunder, we who have no place in the Church outside our own cells? Or is it not you who tear the Church asunder, you who instruct your clergy that if anyone should call Paulinian a priest consecrated by Bishop Epiphanius, he should be forbidden to enter the church. From that time until the present day we behold only the Lord's cave from afar; and while heretics go in, we, standing far off, sigh.

Are we the ones who tear the Church asunder: or is it he who denies a dwelling to the living, a tomb to the dead, who demands the exile of the brethren? Who has specifically incited that most powerful beast, looming over the necks of the whole world, against our necks? Who allows the bones of the Saints, and their harmless ashes, to be beaten by the rains even to this day? By these blandishments the good Shepherd invites us to peace, and accuses us of making a private headship for ourselves—we who are joined in communion and charity with all bishops who hold the right faith at least. Or are you alone the Church, so that whoever offends you is excluded from Christ? If we are defending a private headship, show that we have a bishop within your diocese. That we did not communicate with you is a matter of faith: answer to that, and it will become a matter of ordination.

"They also fabricate an occasion out of certain other letters, which they say Epiphanius wrote to them. Although he will give account for all that has been done before the tribunal of Christ, where great and small alike will be judged without any respect of persons. Yet how can they rely upon that letter of his, which he wrote about the unlawful ordination of Paulinian and of those who are with him, after being refuted by us: as his own letter itself signifies at its very outset?" I ask, what blindness is this, wrapped, as they say, in Cimmerian darkness? He says that we fabricate an occasion, and that we have no letter of Epiphanius against him, and then immediately adds: "How can they rely upon that letter of his, which he wrote about the unlawful ordination of Paulinian and of those who are with him, after being refuted by us: as his own letter itself signifies at its very outset?" We do not have the letter. And what is that letter which speaks of Paulinian at its very outset?

There is something after the outset, the mention of which you are afraid to make. He was refuted by you concerning the age which Paulinian was. You ordain him a priest, and send him as a legate and companion; and you have such confidence in him that where you falsely called Paulinian a boy, there you send that boy as a priest. Likewise you make Theosebas, a deacon of the church of Thyre, a priest, and arm him against us, and abuse his eloquence against us. To you alone is it permitted to trample upon the rights of the Church: whatever you do is the rule of doctrine; and you do not blush to summon Epiphanius to be judged with you before the tribunal of Christ.

What follows after this chapter is this: He charges Epiphanius with the fellowship of his table and house, and writes that he never spoke with him about the dogmas of Origen, and confirms this under the testimony of an oath, saying: "Not even a suspicion, as God is my witness, did he show of having toward us a perverse faith." I do not wish to reply and to argue sharply, lest I seem to be convicting a bishop of perjury. There are at hand several letters of Epiphanius: one to the man himself, others to the bishops of Palestine, and recently to the bishop of the city of Rome: in which he says that when he charged him with these dogmas in the presence of many, he did not deserve a reply, and the whole of our own humble monastery is witness to this.