Letters 91 to 100: The Origenist Controversy

To his most beloved lords, brothers and fellow bishops Eulogius, John, Zebianus, Auxentius, Dionysius, Gennadius, Zeno, Theodosius, Dicterius, Porphyrius, Saturninus, Alanus, Paul, Ammonius, Helianus, another Paul, Eusebius, and to all who have gathered at the Dedication feast in Aelia, the Catholic bishops, Theophilus sends greeting in the Lord.

To his most beloved lords and brothers and fellow bishops Epiphanius, Marcianus, Agapetus, Boethius, Helpidius, Eutasius, Norbanus, Macedonius, Aristo, Zeno, Asiaticus, Heraclides, another Zeno, Kiriacus, Aphroditus, Theophilus sends greeting in the Lord.

1. I suppose that before our letter, a swift rumor has reached you, that certain persons in the monasteries of Nitria are sowing the heresy of Origen, and are giving a turbid draught to the most pure gathering of monks. Wherefore we were compelled, fearing for those very places, at the prayers of the saints, and especially of the fathers and presbyters who preside over the monasteries, lest, while we delayed to go, those who flatter itching ears should pervert the hearts of the simple. Their nobility lies in wickedness, and so rabid is their fury toward every crime that ignorance and pride suggest, that they rush headlong, not understanding their own measure, but, wise in their own eyes—which is the fountain of error—thinking themselves the greatest, though they are not.

At last, bursting forth into such madness that they turned their hands against themselves, and cut off their own limbs with iron; thinking, by the judgment of foolish thought, that they would thereby prove themselves religious and humble, if they walked about with mutilated foreheads and cut-off ears. And one of them, a physician, cut off part of his own tongue, so that he might show even to the ignorant how timidly he kept God's laws of speech, and with what fury of heart he was seething.

Since I found that these men, together with certain foreigners who dwell for a little while in Egypt, had migrated to your province, and poor men, enticed by favor and money, who ought to have sought their living by the labor of their hands—so that there might be fulfilled in them what is written, "The wicked walk about in a circle"—wish, in imitation of the Jews, to be consumed by fire rather than see the writings of Origen condemned: crying out, as it were, "We have placed our hope in a lie, and by a lie let us be protected": lest perhaps in those regions too they disturb the minds of the people and of the monks, and those who ought to have been corrected for their crime and to do penance, strive instead against us, and by the mines of falsehood overturn the truth;

I have judged it most just to write to your Holiness, and briefly to announce, that, with bishops gathered from the neighborhood, who nearly filled the number of a synod, I went to Nitria: and in the presence of many fathers, who had come together from almost all of Egypt, the books of Origen were read, in which he labored with impious toil, and were condemned by the consent of all.

2. For when the volume On First Principles was read, in which it is written that the Son, compared to us, is truth, but compared to the Father, is a lie: and again, As much as Paul and Peter differ from the Savior, so much is the Savior less than the Father: and again, The kingdom of Christ will at some time come to an end, and the Devil, freed from all the filth of sins, will be adorned with what honor, and will be subjected together with Christ: and in another book, entitled "On Prayer": We ought not to pray to the Son, but to the Father alone, nor to the Father together with the Son—we stopped our ears, and with one voice condemned both Origen and his disciples, lest a little leaven should corrupt the whole lump.

What shall I say of the resurrection of the dead, in which he plainly blasphemes, saying that after many returns of ages our bodies are gradually reduced to nothing, and dissolved into thin air; and, lest we should think this a small matter, he added: The risen body will be not only corruptible, but mortal. As if, forsooth, the Lord and Savior had destroyed the Devil in vain, who held the empire of death; since even after the resurrection corruption and mortality would dominate human bodies dissolved into nothing. Concerning the angels also he has fashioned certain rash notions, as though all the ministries of service to God in heaven were not created in heaven, but through various falls and ruins have obtained different names of offices; and that ancient causes preceded, by which they increased or decreased. And amid these things, as though impatient of grief, while the people cry out, "The Jerusalem which is above is free," he contends that nothing in her is pure, nothing free from vice and secure by perpetual virtue.

Nor did this profane disputation about angels stop here, but, advancing in wickedness, he says: Just as the demons, delighting in the odor of sacrifices, sat by the altars of the Gentiles and were fed, so also the angels, delighted by the blood of the victims which the spiritual Israel offers as a type, and by the smoke of incense, hovered near the altars, and were nourished by such food. Who would not think that he could find nothing further into which his mad mind might fall? He also attributes to the motions of the stars the foreknowledge of future things, which is known to the Lord alone, so that from their course and the variety of their forms the demons might know future things, and either do certain things themselves, or command others to do them. From which it is clear that he approves idolatry and astrology, and the various deceitful tricks of pagan divination.

3. These and such things, certain persons, under the name of monks, holding and teaching, were living in the monasteries.

And when they took it ill that the author of so great an evil should be condemned along with his error, they drew to their company certain poor men and slaves, enticed by hope of gluttony, and, forming a wedge, attempted to use force against him who was sitting at Alexandria; wishing to bring forward publicly the case of Isidore, which we, out of regard for shame and the discipline of the Church, were keeping for the judgment of the bishops, and to pour into the ears of pagans things shameful to utter, so that sedition and tumult might be mingled against the Church; whose counsels God destroyed, as he did those of Achitophel. Now their whole effort was this: that under the name of Isidore they might defend heresy—Isidore, who by many bishops, for various reasons, had been separated from the communion of the saints.

Meanwhile a woman and her young son are brought forward by them into public view, and placed in the most crowded part of the city, which, if I am not mistaken, they call the Genium. They shout out whatever they believed would bring us into hatred, stirring up the pagan populace against us, saying those things which the ears of unbelievers would gladly hear. Among these they cry out about the destruction of the Serapeum and of other idols, warning those responsible to flee. Not so in the rights of the temples in the monasteries of Nitria.

But they were doing all these things, thinking that in this way they could unite the crowds of unbelievers, and snatch Isidore from the judgment of the bishops; lest he should be heard together with the mother and the boy, and lest they should stir up hatred against us, who wished him to be heard patiently, in the presence of the clergy and the faithful people, in the church, and that the ecclesiastical rule should be preserved in his case with all fear of God and gentleness. For we are not his enemies, nor have we in any matter done harm either to him, or to the few slaves and fugitives who are his accomplices in this business; but we have preferred the fear of God and the standard of evangelical rigor to former familiarity and close relationship.

And when he was summoned to answer the charge before the bishops and all the clergy, and was repeatedly called to the case, he began to evade, and to put off day after day: in the hope, as the report of many had it, that he might gradually buy the silence of the woman. And in doing this he wounded the hearts of the holy brothers. For who doubts that confidence is a mark of a good conscience; but flight and dissimulation—to speak more sparingly, and openly to declare what I think—are judged by most people to be a kind of confession? Especially since the woman, having given written statements, laid a grave charge against him, and it was rumored among the people that he was working hard to have the matter settled by any means rather than by the judgment of the bishops. This woman, without my knowledge, through the efforts of his friends, was entered in the roll of widows, so that the relief of alms might soothe the pain of her wound.

When I learned this from a certain deacon, who fearlessly reported that the woman had been entered in the number of widows so that she would keep silent about what she had alleged: I immediately, through many persons, sent word to Isidore, and warned him to prepare himself for the judgment of the bishops, the woman meanwhile being separated from the company of the others, until we should see the outcome of the case. For it was not lawful that she should be supported by the resources of the Church, who had either rashly made so grave a charge, or had kept silent about it. This man is the standard-bearer of the heretical faction. They use as their leader one who is very wealthy, of those whom we described at the beginning of the letter: who is able to provide food, and to sustain the hardships of their wandering. Where fury and slaughter are needed, they require no other help; where there are expenses and various costs, nothing is more suitable than a benefactor.

4. They grieve and rage against me, because I have not permitted the solitudes and dwellings of the monks, in which holy conversation is practiced, to be polluted by the impious dogmas of Origen. Among which, to pass over the rest, in the books on the Resurrection which he wrote to Ambrose, imitating the dialectical manner of disputation, in which there is question and answer, he is a preacher of the magic art, in these words: The magic art does not seem to me to be the name of anything subsisting; but even if it is, it is by no means a work of evil, nor something that can be held in contempt. In saying this he plainly contradicts the Lord, who speaks through the Prophet: Stand now with your enchantments, and with the multitude of your sorceries, in which you have labored from your youth, if perhaps they may profit you.

You have labored in your counsels: let the astrologers of the heavens stand up and save you, who have gazed at the stars, let them announce to you what shall come upon you. Moreover, in the books On First Principles he attempts to persuade us of this also, that the living Word of God did not assume a human body, and, going against the Apostle's judgment, he wrote that He who, being in the form of God, was equal to God, was not the Word of God, but a soul descending from the heavenly region, and, emptying itself of the form of eternal majesty, assumed a human body. In saying this he most openly contradicts John, who writes, "And the Word was made flesh." Nor can it be believed that it was the soul of the Savior, and not God the Word, that had the form and equality of the Father's majesty.

He rages on into other impieties also, wishing that He who, at the consummation of the ages, and for the destruction of sin, suffered once—our Lord Jesus Christ—should at some time suffer the cross again, even on behalf of the demons and the spiritual forces of wickedness. Nor does he remember Paul writing: It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and have fallen away, to be renewed again to repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to open shame.

If he had wished to know this—nay, if he had not despised what he does know—he would never, contradicting the Apostle, have said that Christ would suffer even for the demons, and would be held up to open shame: passing by, with closed ear, what we read: Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more; death shall no longer have dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he lives, he lives unto God. For this word "once" admits neither a second time, nor a third: whence the Apostle, knowing that he was crucified once, affirms with all boldness to the Hebrews: For this he did once, when he offered up himself.

5. For these and many other reasons, of which the manner of an epistle does not permit us to write, they have been condemned and cast out of the Church; but with pride joined to folly, they contradict the judgments of the Bishops, striving by sedition to defend their fellow-heretic, and wandering through foreign provinces, though condemned, they have a condemned man for their leader, and are puffed up over this work. I beseech you therefore, dearest brethren, that if they come to you, you provoke them to tears by the precepts of the Gospel. It is our wish that both they and others may correct their errors by penitence, and, living worthily of their name, that those who are called Monks, if indeed they desire to be what they are called, may love silence and the Catholic faith, to which nothing whatsoever is to be preferred. But, as I hear, imitating the Devil, they run hither and thither, and seek whom they may devour by their impieties.

For they think madness to be faith, and audacity to be fortitude; and therefore, puffed up into pride, they prefer the doctrine of Origen, which is mixed with idolatry, to the preaching of the Church. If then, brethren, they attempt to trouble you and the people entrusted to you, guard the flock of the Lord, and repress their mad assaults. We have done them no harm, we have taken nothing from them: the sole cause of their hatred against us is that we are ready to defend the faith even unto death.

6. I pass over the rest—how they attempted to bring death upon us, and by what plots they contrived this, when, after they had been condemned, they even seized the church which is in the Monastery of Nitria; so that both we, and many bishops with us, and the fathers of the monks, venerable both in life and in age, were prevented from entering it, by hired freedmen and slaves, who for the sake of gluttony and the belly were armed for every crime.

And when they held the more advantageous places of the church, as though besieging a city, they concealed clubs and staves under branches of palm, so as to disguise, under the emblems of peace, minds prepared for slaughter. And that their faction might be stronger, and their band more ready for boldness, they distributed money to many freeborn men, who received it not in order to consent to the crime, but in order to provide for us by revealing their attempts, and to disclose the ambushes prepared, so that we might be on our guard. And when the innumerable multitude of monks perceived this, they all began to cry out, and with united clamor to terrify the fury of the few, so that at least out of fear they might allow the Collecta to be held, and the rights of the Church to be preserved.

And had not the grace of God restrained the impulse of the multitude, something would have happened such as usually occurs in seditions; for these wicked men had rushed into such rashness, nay madness, that even monks of holy life, and men always most gentle, could not endure their fury. All these things we have borne patiently and humbly in the ears of God, providing for the salvation of those who fought against us as enemies: only in this respect, that we should not surrender the ecclesiastical rules and the right faith to anyone's friendship: which the Lord is able to grant both to us and to all his servants in common, that we may prefer the unity of the faith to human ties of kinship.

And likewise we ask you, that each of you, together with the peoples entrusted to you, pray more earnestly, and beseech God's mercy, that we may be able, resisting the snares of heretics, to have peace with those who have always fought for the truth, and that we may all together await the crown of righteousness. The brethren who are with you, the people who are with me, greet you in the Lord.

You know, my lord, that all things are being accomplished praiseworthily, even before our letters informed you, that almost all of Palestine, by the grace of Christ, is free from the scandal of heretics, except for a few, who, acquiescing in the errors of Apollinaris, meditate upon the harmful writings of their teacher. And would that, by the prayers of the saints, the Jewish serpents did not disturb us, nor the incredible folly of the Samaritans, nor the most manifest impieties of the Gentiles, a very great crowd of whom, stopping their ears altogether to the truth of preaching, going about the flock of Christ in the likeness of wolves, cause us no small watchfulness and labor, while we wish to guard the sheep of the Lord lest they be torn by these.

And because your Holiness wrote to us that certain men have been found in Egypt who wish to introduce, from the dogmas of Origen, certain pestilent things into the Churches, and to deceive the hearts of the simple: therefore we thought it necessary to signify to your Holiness, that preaching of this kind is foreign to our ears. For we have never heard men teaching that the kingdom of Christ is at some time to be brought to an end. Far be this from the ears of the faithful, since the Angel Gabriel, speaking to Mary of him who was to be born, Christ, says: He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Nor that the Devil, freed from all the vices of sin, shall obtain the dignity which he had before he fell, so that both he and Christ should be brought under the one dominion of God the Father.

For those who believe thus shall go into the darkness that has been prepared for the Devil and his angels. But if there are some who have handed down in their treatises that the Son, compared to us, is truth, but compared to the Father, a lie: and that, as they say, what Peter and Paul are to the Savior, this the Only-begotten Son and Word of God is compared to the Father: and, to declare our judgment briefly (for it is not necessary to treat the same matters again), whoever preaches this, which your Beatitude rightly signifies must be condemned, and whatever things disagree with that faith which our Fathers, in a devout sense, wrote at the city of Nicaea, let both these men themselves and their dogmas be anathema to the Church, together with Apollinaris, who, going against the holy Scriptures, says that an imperfect man was assumed by our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the full salvation of both soul and body was not given by his assumption.

For we, following in the footsteps of the Fathers, and instructed by the words of the Scriptures, teach and preach in the Churches, and confess, the Trinity to be uncreated, eternal, one in three subsistences, and worship it in one Godhead. But if your Reverence separates anyone from communion, either on account of the wickedness of their dogmas, or for other causes, as you have deigned to indicate to us, know that they are not to be received into our Churches, until you grant pardon to their penitence, if indeed they are willing to condemn their perverse opinions. Greet all who are with you of the priestly order.

To the Most Blessed Lord Theophilus, Dionysius, Bishop of Lydda. Our good God, who is glorified in the assemblies of the saints, and prepares for himself friends and prophets in each age, if you look at the order of our generation, has raised you up, most blessed lord and brother, as a zealot of the right faith, so that you might crush, with apostolic rigor, the heretical superstition flowing from a pagan source, and might lead back to its own Shepherd the human race, which is drawn away by many errors, and the scattered flock of Christ; who at the time of his passion gave his soul for all, that we, now believing, might be able to say, Truly God is in us.

For who is so foolish or so impious as not to confess that you have given the greatest gift to the world, by destroying the most wicked blasphemous disciples of Origen, lest the Church of Christ be polluted by them, whose cancer and incurable leprosy has so pervaded the hearts of many, that even those who feign penitence join perjury to heresy; and they, whom they force to be silent, do not cease to hate us. 2. Take courage, therefore, and act manfully, servant of God, and pursue the fictions of Origen even unto the end, lest the minds of the simple be captured, under the shadow of wisdom, by his charming allurements, and a rending division come about in the body of Christ. For all who savor the things that are above, joyfully profess you as father, and hope, and crown of the faith, because you have pierced with the sword of the Gospel the teacher of Arius and his disciple. The brethren of my cell greatly greet you, and the brethren who are with you.

To Lord Brother Simplicianus, Anastasius. A shepherd is shown to have great solicitude and watchfulness over his flock.

Likewise also from a high tower a watchful sentinel, for the sake of the city, observes day and night. A prudent captain of a ship, in the hour of storm and danger, suffers great tossing of mind, lest the ship be dashed upon the rocks by the tempests and the roughest waves. With like mind the holy and honorable man Theophilus, our brother and fellow-bishop, does not cease to keep watch over matters concerning salvation, lest the people of God, through the various churches, by reading Origen, fall into great blasphemies.

Summoned by the aforementioned letters, I call upon your Holiness, that just as we, situated in the city of Rome, which the prince of the apostles founded, and confirmed by his faith, the glorious Peter—that no one should read against the precept those things which we have mentioned—we have condemned them, and with great entreaties have asked that the institutions of the Gospels, which the censure of God and Christ taught by his own mouth, ought by no means to be departed from, but that it be brought to mind what the venerable apostle Paul foretold and admonished: If anyone preach to you a gospel other than that which has been preached to you, let him be anathema. Holding, therefore, to this precept, we have declared whatever is contrary to our faith, once written by Origen, to be foreign to us and condemned.

3. This we have written to your Holiness through the presbyter Eusebius, who, bearing the warmth of faith and having love toward the Lord, presented certain chapters of blasphemy, which we not only abhorred and judged, but also, if there are any other things set forth by Origen, know that these, together with their author, have likewise been condemned by us. May the Lord keep you unharmed, lord brother, deservedly honorable.

Let us again praise Christ Jesus, the Lord of glory, dearest brethren, with united voice, and rejoicing let us worship, fulfilling the words of the prophet who says: Sing to the Lord a new hymn; let as many of us as are partakers of the faith leading to the kingdoms of heaven, receive the approach of the holy solemnity, and celebrate, together with the whole world, the coming festivals with festivity, while one of the wise cries out: Come, eat your bread with gladness, and drink your wine with a good heart, for God has already been well pleased with your works. For those who are of good works, and, having left behind the milk of infancy, take up the nourishment of more solid food, look more deeply into divine perceptions, and, being satisfied with spiritual food, have God as the praiser and witness of their life; and to such guests Ecclesiastes speaks: At all times let your garments be white, and let not oil be lacking on your head.

That, girded about with the garment of virtues, we may imitate the brightness of the sun, and, by the daily reading of the holy Scriptures, each one may pour oil upon his own understanding, and prepare the lamp of his mind, which, according to the precept of the Gospel, may shine upon all who are in the house.

2. Therefore, emulating such guests, and those who thus celebrate together the feasts of the Lord's passion, let us say with the saint: I will praise the Lord in my life, I will sing psalms to my God, as long as I am; and let us hasten toward the metropolis of the Angels, which is free, and stained by no filth of malice, in which there are neither dissensions, nor ruins, nor migration from one to another, and, all pleasure being trodden underfoot, and the waves of luxury, which very often swell up against us, being suppressed, let us be mingled with the heavenly choirs, so that, already now transported thither in mind, and beholding the more august places, we may be what we shall be. Of this blessedness the Jews have made themselves unworthy, who, having abandoned the riches of holy Scripture, and acquiescing in teachers of poor understanding, today hear: They always err in heart; and, though Christ is present, are unwilling to say: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Especially since his works, more clearly than any voice, testify that he is God, and he never says: Thus says the Lord, but, I say to you: by which he shows himself to be the giver of laws, and the true Lord God, and not merely one of the prophets.

3. For neither could the assumption of the form of a servant obscure his divinity, which is circumscribed by no bounds of place, nor could the narrowness of a human body set a limit to the ineffable power of his majesty, whom the greatness of his works proved to be the Son of God.

For when he had restored to sudden calm the raging surges of the sea, swelling up like mountains, and the little boat of the Apostles had been freed from shipwreck, and the depths of the waters had felt the command of the present Lord, and when, while the winds strove together and the waves were stirred up on every side, so great perils had ceased at the Saviour's command, those who were sailing together, as though breathed upon by the divine Spirit, said: "Truly thou art the Son of God"; not doubting concerning the divinity whose greatness the works declared. For of him is the prophet's utterance: "Thou rulest the power of the sea, and thou stillest the motion of its waves." And the prophet himself marks the song with a seal, that he might be believed to be true God not only in word but in power, the excellence of his works showing forth what lay hidden.

Perfect God, taking up of his own will whatever belonged to human nature and condition, apart only from sin and malice, which have no substance, is born an infant, is adored as EMMANUEL, the Magi come from the East, and confess, bending the knee, the God who is the Son of God: he who also, at the time of his passion, hanging on the cross, darkened the rays of the sun, expressing by a new and unheard-of miracle the greatness of his divinity. And undivided and inseparable, he is not, by the error of some, split into two saviours. Whence also he said to his disciples: "Call no man master upon earth; for one is your master, Christ." For when he said these things to the apostles, he did not separate the excellence of his divinity from the body which lay open to sight.

Nor, when he testified that he was one Christ the Son of God, did he divide soul and flesh: not one and another, but one and the same subsisting as both, God and man, while he is seen as a servant and adored as Lord: since in the vileness of a human body he concealed the ineffable God, and again by his divine works he surpassed the frailty of the flesh: and lest he be thought to be, as many have supposed, some one of the saints, but that one whom Paul also, wishing to show, writes: "One God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus"; and again, "Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one"; because he is the one Son of the Father and mediator of ours, he neither lost his equality with the Father, nor was he separated from our fellowship, invisible God and visible man: hidden in the form of a servant, and proved to be the Lord of glory by the confession of believers.

4. For the Father did not deprive him of the name of his own nature after he was made man and poor for us, nor did he call him by another name when baptized in the river Jordan, but his only-begotten Son: "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Nor was our likeness changed into the nature of divinity, nor was divinity turned into the likeness of our nature: but remaining what he was from the beginning, God the Word, and glorifying us in himself, he did not come, as Jeremiah says, to say: "Woe is me, my mother, why hast thou borne me?

A man to be judged and discerned by the whole earth": he did not profit, nor did anyone profit him, who had come to grant liberty; nor did he cry out, as Isaiah says: "Woe is me, because being a man and having unclean lips, and dwelling in the midst of a people having unclean lips, I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts." For he himself was the King of glory, as it is written in the twenty-third Psalm: existing victor on the gibbet, and quelling hostile wars, that he might make the man fashioned from clay a dweller in the heavens, and grant him a share of his trophy.

5. Therefore, although those who suppose him changed into another do not wish it, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever, never to have an end of his kingdom, contrary to the wicked error of Origen, lest, his kingdom ceasing, he also be deprived of eternity—but speaking before all: "I am in the Father, and the Father in me." And wishing to teach us that both the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, ruling over all creatures, and confirming this very point, he added: "I and the Father are one," lest anyone should divide his own kingdom, and that of the Father, on the occasion of human flesh. But if, according to the madness of Origen, Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, is at some time to lose his kingdom, how did he himself say to the Apostles: "I and the Father are one," not afterward to have one and the same rule? As though he should have here the glory which he must there lay aside.

And where will it stand true that always the Son is in the Father, and the Father in the Son, if the kingdom of the Son will not be certain? But let those who contend that this is so, if they do not do penance, perish, and let Moses, moved by zeal of faith and piety, speak against them: "Cursed art thou in the city, and cursed in the field"; with the Psalmist likewise rebuking: "Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and the wicked, so that they be no more." 6.

Indeed I cannot know with what rashness Origen, contriving such things, and following not the authority of the Scriptures but his own error, dared to bring forth into the midst things that would harm all, nor did he ever think there would be any man to oppose his assertions, if he mixed the subtleties of the philosophers into his own treatises, and proceeding from a bad beginning into certain fables and ravings, made Christian doctrine a game and a jest, using not at all the truth of divine teaching, but the judgment of the human mind, and swelling, with himself as teacher, into such pride that he did not imitate the humility of Paul, who, full of the Holy Spirit, conferred with the former apostles concerning the gospel, "lest perhaps he should run, or had run, in vain": not knowing that it is the prompting of a demonic spirit to follow the sophistries of the human mind, and to think something divine outside the authority of the Scriptures.

Let them therefore at some time be still, who, dreaming of an end to the kingdom of Christ, wish to be parasites of Origen's verbosity, and, walking not with the faithful, feign a faith which they do not have. Rather let them learn that all guile and deceit is one thing and shows itself as another, so that it strives to hide vices under the appearance of virtue.

For since, in the ignominy of the cross which he suffered for us, Christ did not lose being the Lord of glory, according to the blessed Apostle, while the Jews cried out against him: "Thou who destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself; if thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross"; and, suffering in the flesh, and hanging on the gibbet, he showed the strength of his own majesty, making the sun stand still in its course, and wringing from the thief, by the greatness of the signs, the full voice of faith: "Remember me, Lord, when thou comest into thy kingdom." Never, after the glory of the resurrection, will he lose the kingdom, though Origen hurl countless stones of blasphemy against him. Or with what consistency does he promise perpetuity of kingdom to the disciples, saying: "Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world," and yet himself lack that which he grants to others?

Or how, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, "Ye reign without us, and I would that ye did reign, that we also might reign with you," can it be understood that the kingdom of Christ is to be ended after many ages? Especially since John cries: "And he that cometh from above is above all"; and the Apostle writes: "Whose are the fathers, and of whom according to the flesh is Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever." 7. And so there is no doubt to anyone, that he who remains God forever also has the kingdom at the same time, and is called eternal King even over those to whom he has granted possession of the kingdom, having a rule congruous with his divinity, with nothing rude or new in himself except the assumption of human frailty.

For if, according to the madness of Origen, after the cycles of many ages, the kingdom of Christ is to be ended, it follows, by his impiety, that one must say that God also at some time ceases to be: and he who sets bounds to the kingdom is compelled to think the same about the divinity, which naturally possesses perpetuity of rule. But if the Word of God reigns, he is certainly God, and by this reasoning it is gathered that whoever attempts to put an end to his kingdom is driven to this, that he is compelled to believe that Christ ceases to be God.

But let the unlearned teacher chatter these things with his impious followers; let us believe the kingdom of Christ eternal, and on the solemn day sing with the Angel, and say: "Of his kingdom there shall be no end." For if he is one with the Father, he will never, by reason of that oneness, cease; and the union of Father and Son will never be divided into parts, lest that which is said, "they are one," should at some time cease to be one. 8. Let therefore the most foolish of mortals depart, nay, let them go down alive into hell, as the Psalmist testifies, and seeing there the teacher of their impiety, let them cry out: "And thou art taken as we also are; thou art reckoned among us: thy glory has gone down into hell," and the rest.

Such a shepherd of a diseased flock everywhere insults Christ with injuries, and lifts up the devil with honor, while he asserts that the devil, purged of vices and sins, will one day receive back his former glory, and that Christ will cease to reign, and be reduced together with the devil under the rule of the Father; so that the prophet, marveling more at the blasphemies of Origen than at the shouting of the Jews, exclaims: "Heaven was astonished at this, and shuddered greatly, says the Lord, because it has done two evils." Origen, asserting that Christ will cease to reign, and that the devil will ascend again to the summit from which he had fallen, digs such a deep lake of his own wickedness as cannot hold water: he makes the Son of God, so far as in him lies, equal to the devil, while he takes from him the eternal glory of the kingdom, and subjects him to the Father's rule together with the demons.

But let such an impious voice be trodden underfoot, that we may know the kingdom of Christ to be perpetual, he himself speaking to his disciples: "You have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a testament, as my Father hath appointed unto me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom always." For how can this word "always" be fulfilled, unless the kingdom be perpetual and to be closed by no end? This also the Magi, understanding, turned to repentance, and inquired more eagerly: "Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and are come to worship him." The Magi confess Christ as king, and Origen denies it, saying that he will not reign forever, not perceiving that he is like the blasphemies of the Jews.

9. We read in the Gospel: when the Lord and Saviour, showing forth a notable example of his strength and patience, mounted the cross, Pilate wrote a title, and put it over his head: and it was written, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." Many of the Jews read this title, which was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The chief priests of the Jews said therefore to Pilate: "Write not that he is King of the Jews, but that he said, I am King of the Jews." Pilate answered: "What I have written, I have written." Since therefore Pilate could be led, neither by sedition nor by entreaties, to remove the kingdom of Christ from the title: let Origen know that without any necessity he is doing what the Jews did, in thinking that the kingdom of Christ is to be ended.

And they indeed denied him, set upon the earth, to be king; this man, so far as in him lies, strives to detract from him reigning in heaven, so that he has Pilate as the accuser of his crime, who answered the Jews: "What I have written, I have written." Let the prophetic word also come into the midst, and proclaim the kingdom of Christ with full freedom: "Rejoice, daughter of Sion, proclaim it, daughter of Jerusalem, be glad and exult with all thy heart, daughter of Jerusalem: the Lord has taken away thine iniquities, he has redeemed thee from the hand of thine enemies, the King of Israel is in the midst of thee, thou shalt see evils no more." For those whom he has once saved he will not again cast down from heaven, and let go, according to the ravings and fables of Origen, so that they should fall again from the heights.

And this that is said, "Thou shalt see evils no more," is a token of eternal security, that those who have once been freed, and have enjoyed possession of the kingdom of heaven, shall by no means be drawn down to earth by vices, nor be deprived of the help of God, who, according to the prophetic word, will set for them a wall and an outer wall, surrounding them with his own power. Whence the Psalmist also sings: "He that dwelleth in Jerusalem shall not be moved forever." And the Lord affirms: "I will not leave thee, nor forsake thee." And it is in vain that he dreams that souls ascend into heaven, and descend, and now advance, now fall to the lower regions, so that through countless ruins they should often die, and the passion of Christ be made void. For he who once died for us has given us the eternal joy of his victory, which is diminished by no weight of vices.

Nor does any man die more often, as Origen has dared to write, wishing to establish, by the authority of the divine Scriptures, the most impious doctrine of the Stoics. 10. But why do we call these things to mind? Since he has broken forth into such madness—nay, dementia—that he lays another crime upon the Saviour, saying that he is to be crucified in the world above also for demons and spiritual wickednesses. Nor does he understand into how deep a pit of impiety he is falling.

For if Christ suffered for men, and was made man, as the words of the Scriptures testify, it will follow that Origen must say, And he is going to suffer also for demons, he will become a demon: for he will be forced by necessity to draw this inference, lest he seem to depart from what he has begun; that he may imitate the blasphemies of the Jews, whom he always imitates; for they too spoke likewise to Christ: Thou hast a devil: And, By Beelzebub the prince of the devils casteth he out devils. But far be it that Christ should suffer for demons, lest he himself also become a demon. And those who believe this crucify him again, and hold up to shame the Son of God, who did not so take upon him the seed of the demons as he took upon him the seed of Abraham, that he should be crucified for them also.

Nor will the demons, beholding God in his passion on their behalf, cry out with the Prophet: He has borne our sins, and grieves for us. Nor will they say with Isaiah: By his stripes we are healed. Nor will Christ, as a sheep, be led to the slaughter for demons as he was for the race of men; nor will it be said for their salvation: He spared not his own Son; since the demons will not cry out: He was delivered for our offences, and rose again for our justification. Paul indeed writes: For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures: calling them to witness, and wishing by their authority to confirm what is in doubt; but Origen, without any testimony of the divine voice, strives to do violence to the truth, and, having extinguished the lamp, to find it.

11. A patron of demons and not of men, he assails the Son of God with repeated calumnies, and crucifies him anew, not understanding into how deep and horrible an abyss of impiety he is dragged down. For it follows that he who has accepted the former things must accept also what follows: and he who has said that Christ was crucified for demons must accept that it must be said to them also: Take and eat: this is my Body. And: Take and drink: this is my blood. For if he is crucified for demons also, as the champion of new doctrines affirms, what privilege will there be, or what reason, that men alone should share in his body and blood, and not demons also, for whom in his passion he poured out his blood?

But the demons will not hear: "Take and eat"; And, "Take and drink"; nor will the Lord dissolve his own precepts, who said to his disciples: "Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." For the Apostle also writes, "I would not that ye should have fellowship with demons. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of demons": by these words he shows it to be impossible that demons should drink of the cup of the Lord, and be partakers of his table. The food of the devil are the deniers of God, as Habakkuk says: His meat is choice; but the food of all the impious is the devil himself, according to the utterance of the Prophet: Thou hast given him as food to the peoples of the Ethiopians.

From all of which it is proved that Christ cannot be crucified for demons, lest demons become partakers of his Body and Blood. 12. Since therefore the Apostle also signifies concerning the Saviour: For this he did once, offering up himself; and Origen with such great confidence contradicts that sentence, it is time to bring in that saying: Earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord, write this man down as disowned. For what hell can receive such evils? What Tartarus can conceive of things of this sort? What madness of giants has ever proved so rebellious, and built up a tower of impiety? What wanton lust, perishing with love of demons, has thus spread wide the legs of its mind for the whole doctrine passing through it? Who has drunk so deeply of the Sodomitic vine, that, inebriated with the wine of its fury, he has collapsed with his whole heart? Who, so drenched in the whirlpools of the rivers of the Babylonians, has abandoned the living fountains of Israel?

Who, going out from Jerusalem, and becoming an imitator of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, has built so many altars of errors, and kindled profane incense upon unholy altars? Why do not Dathan and Abiram, who sinned less, come before the tribunal of Christ, and by comparison with themselves condemn him who, outside the Church of the Saviour, has filled the censers of various doctrines with diabolical fire? For neither did the Lord, who speaks through the Prophet: I have multiplied visions, and have been likened in the hands of the Prophets, teach him to bring forth adulterate doctrines, nor did those who from the beginning saw him themselves, and were ministers of the word of God, nor the chorus of Prophets, who once were called Seers, instruct him in these things: but he himself, by the judgment of his own mind, serving the fury of demons, and deceived by the flattering error of his thoughts, has sent forth throughout the whole world into the minds of the unlearned a flock, and, so to speak, a swarm of perverse doctrines.

This is he who has opened his mouth to the rivers of the Assyrians and Babylonians, who has tried to overwhelm with waves the ship of the Church, full of the good merchandise of saving doctrine: while he is lifted up by the praise of the unlearned, and, expounding the sense of the Scriptures otherwise than the truth holds it, glories in his own confusion. For who has composed books so innumerable, so garrulous, so full of verbosity and ignorance, and joined days and nights together with untiring zeal, so as to deserve, by leaving behind monuments of errors, to hear: Thou hast been deceived in thy many ways? For he has used the worst of guides, popular favor, and, having written out very many volumes of false knowledge, and fighting with a mind rebellious against God, has mixed into the ointment of heavenly doctrines a kind of corrupt matter and the stench of his own foulness, so that it might again be said to his soul: Unclean and infamous, and abounding in iniquities.

For he was unwilling to hear the Prophet admonishing: Why do you love vanity and seek after a lie?—he who fastens Christ to the cross for demons, that he may become mediator not only of God and men, but of demons also. But far be it to believe so monstrous a wickedness of the Saviour, that he, about to lose the temple of his own body, which he deigned to raise up for us, should fasten to himself another temple of demonic condition, so that, having taken on their likeness also, he should undergo the gibbet for them as well. 13. I beseech you, dearest Brothers, to pardon my grief as I resist impious teachings: for while we strive to beat back the shamelessness of his followers, we have brought into public view the very framework of his breastplate and the deceits of his poisoned breast, that this too might be fulfilled in him: I will reveal thy shame, and show it to thy lovers.

For among other things he so corrupts and violates the resurrection of the dead, which is the hope of our salvation, that he dares to say that our bodies will indeed be raised, but in such a way that they will again be subject to corruption and death. Answer me, O head of impiety, how, according to the Apostle Paul, has Christ conquered him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, if corruptible and mortal bodies are again going to rise? What has Christ's passion profited us, if death and corruption are once more going to possess our bodies? Or what does the Apostle mean, writing: For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive, if savage death is going to lord it over those who rise again? Or how can those who believe such things say from the heart: Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God?

Wishing death to be stronger than he, since death will destroy the bodies raised by him, nor will it be proved altogether conquered? But indeed against Origen, resisting so impiously, our Lord Christ has both conquered death, and by his own power destroyed the devil who held the power of death, having prepared for us in heaven the triumph of his victories. Nor will he raise up bodies so that they may perish again, but he has abolished death and corruption for the sake of their perpetual incorruption.

14. Wherefore, freed from all evils, let us celebrate the feasts of the Lord's passion, and, according to the parable of the Gospel, seeing bulls and fatlings slain by Wisdom, let us feed on stronger foods, full of sinew, and richer nourishment of doctrines, so that, leaving behind the milk of infancy, we may take up more solid food, and flee the cause of all evils, ignorance, which, having bound the feet of many in diverse heresies, enjoys most of all Origen as its lover, who among other things dared to declare it lawful. That the Son ought not to be prayed to, nor the Father with the Son: and after many ages he has renewed the blasphemy of Pharaoh, who said: Who is he that I should hear his voice? I know not the Lord, and I will not let Israel go. And it is nothing other to say, I know not the Lord, than what Origen says, that the Son ought not to be prayed to, whom he nevertheless confesses to be Lord.

And although he has burst forth into so open a blasphemy, yet he ought to be prayed to, of whom the Prophet testifies, saying: And they shall adore thee, and shall make supplication in thee, because God is in thee, and there is no God besides thee. And again, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. And Paul, disputing, says: How shall they call upon him, in whom they have not believed? It is necessary first to believe that he is the Son of God, so that his invocation may be right and consistent. And just as he who is not God ought not to be prayed to, so on the contrary, he who is established to be God ought to be adored and prayed to. Whence also Stephen, on bended knees, and beseeching for those who were crushing him with stones, said to the Son: Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. Also in the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.

But that which is said, Every knee shall bow, is a sign of anxious and most humble prayer. Thus Origen neither believes the Son of God to be God, whom he thinks ought not to be prayed to, and he tears him with reproaches; and though he flatters himself in his memory of the Scriptures, and thinks he understands them, he does not hear Moses speaking against him: The man who curses God shall bear his sin, and he who names the name of the Lord shall surely die: the whole multitude shall stone him. But who has ever heaped such insults upon Christ as this man, who has dared to say, He ought not to be prayed to, granting him only an empty and vain name of divinity? 15. But what need is there to dwell longer on such impieties? Let us pass to another of his errors.

He says that the bodies which rise again will, after many ages, be dissolved into nothing, and will be nothing at all, except when souls, having slipped down from the heavenly mansions to lower regions, need new bodies, which will again become different ones, the former being altogether destroyed. Who, hearing these things, would not tremble both in mind and body? For if after the resurrection bodies are reduced to nothing, the second death will be stronger than the first: for it will be able to destroy the bodily substance altogether. Why does Paul write thus: Death shall no more have dominion over him, for that which died to sin, died once: if bodies are to be utterly destroyed? Or how will that which is called "once" be firm, when flesh, separated from the fellowship of the soul, is to be reduced to nothing? For what reason did he again add?

It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption: it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power: it is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory: it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body. For if incorruption reduces to nothing, it would have been consistent to say instead that these things are reserved forever for corruption, and that corruption would be stronger than incorruption. But far be it that Paul should write things contrary to himself, and that incorruption and corruption should be of the same nature. But if, as Origen falsely thinks, not only a corruptible but also a mortal body is to be raised, then corruption and incorruption, death and life, will be called one and the same thing, and will have the same power in the raised bodies, and corruption and incorruption, death and life, will be distinguished not at all in reality, but only in name.

But if a corruptible and mortal body is going to rise, it would have been more consistent for the Apostle to say: It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in corruption: it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in weakness: it is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in dishonor: it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a natural body. But if he removes corruption, weakness, and dishonor from the raised bodies, and says on the contrary that bodies are to be clothed with incorruption, and strength, and glory, and that a spiritual body is to be rendered in place of a natural one, then death will be dissolved, and in the raised bodies, in place of death and corruption, immortality and incorruption will reign: because the body itself, immortal and incorrupt, will rise, so that it may be able to remain co-eternal with the soul.

Therefore the Savior also, granting to our bodies a pledge of salvation in the resurrection of his own body, cannot be believed to be going to die again, the Apostle agreeing with this sentiment: Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more, death shall no more have dominion over him. Unless it has had dominion over him, let it not have dominion over us. 16. Let Origen be confounded, who, among other kinds of outrages which he fabricates, also grants patronage to magical arts: for in his treatises he has spoken these words: "The magic art does not seem to me to be the name of anything subsisting; but even if it is, it is not of evil effect," so that no one might be able to hold it in contempt. Saying this, he indeed shows himself to be a supporter of Elymas the magician, who resisted the Apostles, and of Jannes and Mambres, who withstood Moses by magical arts. But Origen's patronage will have no power, because Christ by his coming has destroyed the illusions of magicians.

Let the assertor of this new impiety answer, or rather let him openly hear: If the magic art is not evil, neither will idolatry be evil, which relies on the powers of magic art. But if idolatry is evil, the magic art will also be evil, from which idolatry subsists. But since idolatry has been destroyed by the majesty of Christ, this shows that its parent, the magic art, has likewise been dissolved along with it, the Prophet clearly proclaiming this: Stand now with thy enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, which thou hast learned from thy youth, if so be they may profit thee.

Since then the writings of the Prophets testify to these things, and no one has ever dared to hand down to memory that the arts of magicians should be counted among the best of things, and since public laws also punish magicians and sorcerers: I cannot understand by what reasoning Origen has been driven, who boasts himself a Christian, becoming a rival of Sedecias the false prophet, to make for himself horns of iron, with which he might go forth armed against the doctrines of truth, having no sense at all of the heavenly Jerusalem, nor imitating Moses, and Daniel, and Peter, and other saints, who stood as it were in battle line against magicians and enchanters, fighting an unwearied contest.

With them let us lead the dances of the festal day, because, passing through the perils in the midst of Babylon, we have avoided the poisons of Origen, and have obeyed the words of the Prophet, commanding: Go forth out of Babylon, flee ye from the land of the Chaldeans, that we might enter Jerusalem, in which is the preaching of truth. 17. Although in resisting falsehood we have suffered something like the three youths, who in the furnace of the burning fire conquered the nature of flames, yet the Babylonian fire has not prevailed against us, nor have our hairs been burnt, that is, the ultimate doctrines of the truth of the Church; nor has our sarabala been changed, which the wisdom of the sacred Scripture's testimonies has woven for us for the protection of our souls, nor is there in us the smell of fire, the flame of perverse knowledge running through us.

For we have not acquiesced to the teaching of him who supposes that bodies are made on account of the fall of rational creatures, and who says, according to the etymology of the Greek word, that souls are so called because they have lost the warmth of mind and of most fervent charity toward God, so that they have taken their name from coldness—lest we should think that even the soul of the Savior is subject to the same trifles. We also do not assert that the courses of the sun and moon and stars, and the most beautiful harmony in the diversity of the whole world, have occurred from preceding causes and various sins and vices of souls; nor that the goodness of God waited a long time, so as not to make visible creatures before invisible ones had sinned.

Nor do we call bodily substance "vanity," as he supposes, cutting things up in other words into the doctrines of Manichaeus, lest even Christ's body should be subject to vanity, whose food, being satisfied with it, we daily ruminate on the words of him who says: Unless a man eat my flesh, and drink my blood, he shall not have part with me. For if bodily nature is vain and futile, according to Origen's error, why did Christ rise from the dead? Why will he raise our bodies? What does Paul mean, writing: If the dead rise not, neither is Christ risen: but if Christ is not risen, our faith is vain. 18. From which it is clear that it is not the nature of bodies that is vain, but that those believe in vanity who do not think it will rise and remain forever.

Let him also despise honorable marriage, denying that bodies subsist, unless souls have first sinned in heaven, so that, cast down from there, they have been bound as it were in certain prisons of bodies. And let him indeed think as he wishes, and speak as he does not fear to; let him hear us crying out in his ears together with Paul: Marriage is honorable, and the bed undefiled. And how undefiled, if a soul, defiled with vices, is surrounded by flesh? And Anna, wife of Elcana, will be subject to blame for asking for male seed, so that, on account of the desire of a little woman, souls in heaven should be endangered, and one of them, weighed down by sin, should fall to earth, and abandon its former blessedness. Nor did Moses, invoking a blessing and saying: The Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times as many as you are, and behold you are today as the stars of heaven in multitude.

The Lord God of your fathers add to you, as you are, a thousand times, and bless you, as he has spoken—did he ask this so that companies of sinning souls in heaven might found the race of the people of Israel? That this is inconsistent is most plainly evident, since he who was praying for the fault of the people: If thou wilt forgive this sin to the people, forgive it; but if not, blot me out of the book which thou hast written—should ask that the sons of Israel be multiplied, whom, if he had known they increased through the ruin of souls, he would not on the contrary have prayed for, lest, on account of the vices of a better substance, a viler nature should be established.

Why does David pray in the Psalm: May the Lord bless thee out of Sion, and mayest thou see the good things of Jerusalem all the days of thy life, and mayest thou see thy children's children—if the race of a just man is increased by the expulsion and destruction of souls? And does he dare to say: Behold, thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord? When he knows that sinning souls are bound in the chains of bodies, and in such a prison pay by the judgment of God the penalties of sins? How does God speak through the Prophet: If thou hadst hearkened to my commandments, thy peace had been as a river, and thy justice as the waves of the sea, and thy seed had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy body like the gravel thereof? For those who keep the commandments of God ought not to receive as a reward the ruin of souls from heaven, which, bound to bodies, multiply the increase of their offspring.

But if they wish to learn what were the beginnings of the human race, let them hear Moses saying: God took of the earth, and formed man, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul, that is, immortal. God also, blessing Adam and Eve, said: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth. 19. If souls after sin are sent into earthly bodies to be born, it would not have been reasonable to bless Adam and Eve, since the cause of sin would rather deserve a curse. Indeed, after he formed them, he followed with words of blessing; those whom afterward, sinning by their own will, he struck with a curse. From which it is gathered that the nature of bodies did not by any means come into existence on account of the sins of souls. Let them hear again him saying: I made the earth, and man upon it. And David: The heaven of heaven is the Lord's: but the earth he has given to the children of men.

And let them cease any longer to follow the errors of their own thoughts, and be led rather by the authority of the Scriptures. For just as those who are enervated by pleasures, and in whose breast lust reigns, gazing upon the beauty of bodies, seek not the beauty of character but of limbs; and their sense, weighed down by earthly dregs, looks at nothing higher: so those who are led by an artful construction of words, and captivated by the sound of eloquence, do not look at the truth of doctrines, are ashamed to confess their former error, and, blinded by the swelling of arrogance, refuse to be disciples, lest, after they have been corrected, they should seem to have erred before.

20. Therefore, having cast aside the evils of Origen, and having passed over the traps of the Scriptures which are called apocryphal, that is, hidden—for the Lord says, I have not spoken in secret—again and again I beseech you, dearest brethren, let us celebrate the feasts of the Lord's passion, adorning faith with conduct, let us imitate God in mercy toward the poor, to whom no form of corporeal nature is similar. Let us have in all things the image of his goodness, let us amend our errors by penitence, let us pray for our enemies, let us intercede for our detractors, emulating Moses, who blotted out by prayer the fault of his sister speaking against him. Let us wash away with the oil of almsgiving the filth of sinners: let the chains of captives seem to bind us also, and let us pray that God be propitious to them.

Let daily humanity sustain those shut up in prison, and let us serve with anxious ministry those whose bodies the royal disease has seized, and whose limbs are dissolved by continual wasting, for the sake of the reward laid up in heaven. If ever the power of judgment be given to us, and the cause of quarreling brothers be brought before us, let there be no regard of persons, but of the matter itself: let us also fall in feeling with those who are falling and placed in tribulation. Let the laws hold to the rule of truth. Let charity be inclined to mercy, not insulting sinners but sympathizing with them, for the fall into vice is easy, and the fragility of the human condition ought to fear in itself whatever it perceives in another.

And when another has been corrected for an error, let his amendment be a warning to us; and above all, as the summit and crown of virtues, let piety toward God be kept with the whole fear of the heart, and, cursing the plurality of gods, let us confess the one and undivided substance of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in which also, being baptized, we have received eternal life. And if the clemency of God shall grant it, we shall be found worthy to celebrate the Lord's Pasch together with the Angels, having the beginning of Lent from the eighth day of the month which according to the Egyptians is called Phamenoth. And by his granting of strength, let us fast more diligently: laying the foundations of the greater week, that is, of the venerable Pasch, on the thirteenth day of the month Pharmuthi: in such a way, however, that according to the evangelical traditions we end our fasts in the dead of night, on the eighteenth day of the aforesaid month Pharmuthi.

And on the next day, which is the symbol of the Lord's resurrection, that is, on the nineteenth of the same month, let us celebrate the true Pasch: adding to these the remaining seven weeks, in which the feast of Pentecost is woven, and presenting ourselves worthy of the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. For thus shall we deserve to receive the kingdoms of heaven in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom, and with whom, to God the Father be glory and dominion, with the Holy Spirit, both now and always, and unto all ages of ages. Amen. 21. Greet one another with a holy kiss. The brethren who are with me greet you.

Again I enrich you with Eastern merchandise, and I send Alexandrian riches to Rome first in spring. God shall come from the South, and the Holy One from mount Pharan, with dense shadow: whence also the bride rejoices in the Song of Songs, saying: In his shadow I desired and sat down; and his fruit is sweet to my taste. Truly now is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, foretelling: In that day there shall be an altar of the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt. Where sin abounded, grace has abounded still more. Those who cherished Christ as an infant defend him, now grown, with the warmth of faith, so that he who through them escaped the hands of Herod may escape the blaspheming heretic. Him whom Demetrius drove out of the city of Alexandria, Theophilus puts to flight throughout the whole world—Theophilus, to whom Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles, who from the love of God found his name. Where now is the twisting serpent? Where the most venomous viper?

The first face of the man, joined to the womb of wolves.

Where is that heresy, which used to hiss in the world, and boasted both me and Pope Theophilus as sharers of its error, and by the barking of its most shameless dogs, in order to deceive the simple, falsely claimed our assent? It has been crushed by his authority and eloquence: and now, in the manner of demonic spirits, it speaks from the earth. For he who comes from above does not know how to speak the things which are of the things above.

2. And would that this serpentine generation would either simply confess what is ours, or steadfastly defend their own, so that we might be able to know whom we ought to love, and whom to beware of. But now there is a new kind of penitence: they hate us as enemies, whose faith they do not dare openly to deny. I ask, what is this grief, which is cured neither by time nor by reason?

Amid flashing swords, prostrate bodies, streams of flowing blood, hostile right hands are often joined, and sudden peace changes the rage of war. Only the followers of this heresy are they who cannot be united with churchmen: because what they are compelled by speech to say, they condemn in their mind. And if ever an open blasphemy is revealed to public ears, and they see the crowd of listeners murmuring against them, then with feigned simplicity they say that they have heard for the first time what they did not know beforehand that their master had said. And though their writings are held fast, they deny by voice what they confess in letters. What need is there to besiege the Propontis, to change places, to wander through diverse regions, and to tear at the most illustrious Pontiff of Christ, and his disciples, with a rabid mouth? If you speak the truth, exchange the former ardor of error for the ardor of faith.

Why do you patch together rags of curses on this side and that, and pick apart the life of those whose faith you cannot resist? Are you not therefore heretics, if some, by your assertion, have believed us to be sinners; and will your mouth not be foul with impiety, if you can show a scar in our ear? What good does your perfidy do, or what use is the Ethiopian skin and the spots of the leopard, if a blemish should appear on our own body? Behold, Pope Theophilus, with entire freedom, convicts Origen of being a heretic: nor do they defend his words, but pretend that they have been altered by heretics, and say that the books of many others have likewise been corrupted; so that they may defend him not by his own faith, but by the errors of others. But let these things be said against the heretics, who, raging with unjust hatred against us, confess the secret of their mind, and bear witness, with irremediable grief, to the poisons of their breast.

3. You, lights of the Christian Senate, receive also this year both the Greek and the Latin Letter, lest the heretics again lie that many things have been added or altered by us: in which I confess I have labored, that I might preserve the elegance of the words with an equal grace of translation; and, running within defined lines, not exceeding in any place, I might not lose the streams of its eloquence, and might render the same matters in the same style of speech. Whether I have succeeded in this or not, I leave to your judgment. Know that it is divided into four parts. In the first, he exhorts believers to celebrate the Lord's Pasch: in the second and third places he cuts the throats of Apollinaris and Origen: in the fourth, that is, the last, he exhorts heretics to penitence. But if anything here is said less fully against Origen than in last year's letter, this one, which we have now translated, striving for brevity, ought not to say more.

Moreover, against Apollinaris, the concise faith and pure profession does not lack dialectical subtlety, which, having wrested the dagger from the hands of its adversary, stabs him with it.

4. Pray, therefore, to the Lord, that what pleases in the Greek may not displease in the Latin, and that what the whole East admires and proclaims, Rome may receive with a joyful bosom. May the preaching of the chair of Mark the Evangelist also be confirmed by its own preaching from the chair of Peter the Apostle. Although it is spread abroad in common report that the blessed Pope Anastasius also, with the same fervor—because it is the same spirit—has persecuted the heretics lurking in their hiding places, and his letters show that what has been condemned in the East has been condemned also in the West. To whom we wish many years, that the revived shoots of heresy, long since withered by his effort, may perish.

First of all, the divine discourse of this august solemnity, shining forth from the regions of the heavens, and surpassing by its splendor the brightness of the sun, pours forth its most brilliant light into souls desiring it. And when they have been able, with the full gaze of the heart, to sustain its rays, it draws them into the very inward recesses of the heavenly Jerusalem, and, so to speak, into the Holy of Holies. Wherefore, if we wish to be partakers of salvation, and, cleaving to zeal for the virtues, to purge the vices of our souls, and to wash away, by continual meditation upon the Scriptures, whatever filth is in us: beholding, as it were beneath a clear sky, the open knowledge of the doctrines, let us hasten to celebrate the feasts of supernal joy, and to join ourselves to the choirs of the Angels, where there are crowns and rewards, and sure victory, and the palm desired by those who triumph is set before them.

Nor let us delay, once freed from the swelling waves of the flesh, amid the various shipwrecks of pleasures on this side and that, to hold fast the helm of the virtues, and, after the great perils of the sea, to enter the safest harbor of the heavens.

2. Wherefore let us, as it were rousing from heavy sleep those whom the empty care of this life disquiets, and around whom, like roaring whirlpools, the depths of troubles resound, summon them to the gains of wisdom: and let us show them the true riches of divine understandings, and the joys inspired by this holy festivity: and let all our present labor be undertaken to this end, that we may prepare both those who are a little negligent, and ourselves, for eternal glory. Whence also in the Proverbs, Wisdom, calling those who lack understanding to her banquet, cries out: Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you.

For not so brightly is this heaven, which we look up to, adorned with the choirs of the stars, nor do the sun and moon, the two brightest eyes, so to speak, of the world, by whose course the year revolves, and by whose alternation the seasons change, pour forth so clear a light upon the earth, as our solemnity shines and gleams with the choir of the virtues. Those who seek after its treasures and riches sing, in harmony with David: Who will give me wings like a dove? And I will fly away and be at rest. And rejoicing, and exulting as it were with a certain dance, and, according to what is written, their hearts overflowing with ineffable joy, they cry out again: We have here no abiding city, but we seek one that is to come, whose maker and builder is God.

For they know that this hope is laid up for them for all their labors, by which they fight and run in this world, and that these rewards are appointed for the future, for the sake of which, fearing no perils, they direct daily the course of their life, avoiding especially the impiety of heretics and their snares, by which the blind lead the blind into the pit, and stain, as it were with a certain sluggish and most filthy corruption, the hearts of the deceived: and not content with the surface, they drink the innermost marrow of the Scriptures, condemning the truth of the doctrines by a knowledge falsely so called.

3. Understanding this, the patriarch Jacob also beholds in his sleep a ladder, whose top reached to heaven, by which men ascend to the heights through the various degrees of virtue, and are summoned, leaving behind the lowly things of earth, to celebrate with the Church of the firstborn the feasts of the Lord’s passion.

This, he says, is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. David, gazing more keenly upon this, and seeking it with the whole desire of his mind, and turning over in his thoughts the reasons of this journey, and, as it were, pounding and crushing precious ointments more vigorously, that they might spread abroad the fragrance of their sweetest odor far and wide, summons those who hasten to the solemnity, saying: Open to me the gates of righteousness, and entering into them I will confess to the Lord: this is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter through it. There is, therefore, there is no solemnity for heretics: nor can those who have been deceived by error rejoice in its communion. For it is written, If a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned. Nor can they receive the mysteries of heavenly words who contradict the divine doctrines of the Church.

Therefore, with all our strength cleansing our souls from every contagion, let us prepare ourselves worthy of the celebration that is at hand, that we may be able to sing with the saints: The Lord is God, and he has shone upon us. Of which another Prophet also, conscious of things to come, bears witness in a mystical voice: The Lord shall appear among them, and shall destroy all the gods of the nations. When words have been turned into deeds, and the truth of things is shown to the eyes of those who doubt, so that through the fulfillment of what was foretold the truth of the words might be proved, may we, by God’s working, become partakers of his victory, so that we may be able both to have fellowship with the saints in this solemnity, and to celebrate frequently the proclamation of his illustrious coming.

For whereas the whole earth had been corrupted by various enticements, esteeming vices as virtues, and, on the contrary, virtues as vices, while, as time went on, it thought custom to be the law of nature, and the tyrannical arrogance of the wicked had gone before, and had strengthened falsehood by time, they were thought to be the fathers and teachers of truth: whence it came about that man's error increased, and, ignorant of what was useful, in the manner of brute animals, they despised the true shepherd, the Lord, and, seized by madness, worshipped tyrants and rulers as gods, consecrating their own weakness in men of the same nature. Through which it happened that they escaped the present danger of death, and won for themselves the favor of those whose clemency was more savage than cruelty.

4. Therefore, since all had been led astray by error, the living Word of God came to our aid upon the earth, to those lands which knew not the worship of God, and endured the solitude of truth.

Of which thing he is a witness who says: All have sinned, and are together become unprofitable. And the Prophets, entreating the help of Christ, say: Lord, bow down thy heavens, and come down. Not that he might change places, he in whom all things are; but that, for the sake of our salvation, he might assume the flesh of human frailty, Paul singing the same in harmony: Though he was rich, he became poor for our sakes, that we might be made rich by his poverty. And he came into the world, and, going forth as man from the virginal womb which he sanctified, confirming by his dispensation the interpretation of his name EMMANUEL, that is, God with us, he began, in a wondrous way, to be what we are, and did not cease to be what he had been: assuming human nature in such a way that he did not lose what he himself was.

For although John writes: The Word was made flesh, that is, in other words, Man; yet he was not turned into flesh, because he never ceased to be God. To whom holy David also says: But thou art the same. And the Father from heaven bears witness, and says: Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. So that, having been made man, he may be said, by our confession, to remain what he was before he became man, Paul preaching the same together with us: Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, the same also forever. For in saying "the same," he shows that he did not change his former nature, nor diminish the riches of his divinity, he who, having been made poor for our sake, had assumed the full likeness of our condition.

From such and so great a nature did he assume man—only without sin—as that from which we all were created, not in part, but wholly, the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, and he lacked nothing of what belongs to our likeness, except sin alone, which has no substance: for he did not have flesh without a soul, with himself, the God the Word, being in it in place of a rational soul, as the sleepy disciples of Apollinaris suppose.

Nor, when he says in the Gospel: Now is my soul troubled, does he thereby testify that his divinity was subject to disturbance, which is what those must consequently say who contend that in place of a soul there was divinity in his body; nor again, joining to himself the soul alone, did he fulfill the assumption of man, lest, from the likeness of the flesh and the unlikeness of the soul, he be believed to have fulfilled a half dispensation of the assumption: being like us in flesh, and in soul like unreasoning beasts, if indeed, according to them, the soul of the Savior is irrational and without mind and sense—which it is impious to believe, and far from the faith of the Church, lest he immediately be struck by that rebuke with which the Prophet reproves the offender, saying: Ephraim is like a senseless dove having no heart. And, as if irrational, let him hear: He is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like them.

For no one doubts that an irrational soul, without sense or mind, is compared to irrational beasts: whence Moses also writes: Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads out the corn. And Paul, expounding what is written, says: Does God care for oxen? Or does he not rather say this for our sake?

5. For our sake, therefore, the Savior was made man, not for brute and irrational beasts, that he might take on the likeness of a soul of beasts without sense and reason. But neither does the Church accept that which the followers of the same heresy quibble and chatter about, that the soul of the Savior should be thought to be called the prudence of the flesh, since the Apostle plainly calls the prudence of the flesh an enemy of God, and death: which it is impious to say of the Lord, that his soul is death, and is believed to be an enemy of God.

For if he commands us: Fear not those who can kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, they will be forced, by their foolish argument, to admit that our souls are better than the soul of the Savior, since that is asserted to be the prudence of the flesh, which is death and an enemy of God, while ours cannot die. Which is by no means to be understood so, dearest brethren, since not even the prudence of the soul can be called the soul, and they differ greatly from one another: for although the prudence of the soul is in that of which it is the prudence, yet one holds, the other is held: and the soul comes first, the prudence that follows exists within the soul. But if the prudence of the soul is not the soul, how much less can the prudence of the flesh be called the soul?

Let them stretch as much as they will the nets of their syllogisms, and, setting forth the snares of their sophisms, entangle themselves in their own toils, not even knowing that of which they vainly boast their knowledge: and let them learn from us, whom they force gratuitously to take up such disputation, that one thing is that which knows, another is knowledge, and another still is that which is known. And these differ not only in words among themselves, but also in meaning: for that which knows is the rational soul: but that which comes from it, and belongs to it, and is not itself that which knows, is called knowledge: while that which is known is the thing which it regards, and which is generated from the knowing knowledge, and is neither the knower itself, nor knowledge itself.

Let them, then, at last cease to pervert the simple decrees of the Church's faith by the tricks of dialectical art, calling the soul of the Savior the prudence of the flesh, which the Apostle asserts to be death and an enemy of God.

6. But it seems to us that we ought also to argue against them in this way. It is written of the Word of God: All things were made through him. Is it credible that the wisdom or prudence of the flesh, which they understand to be the soul of the Savior, was created by the Word of God, so that he himself should be the author of death and of enmity against God, and should join these things to himself—which it is impious to say? But if it is wicked to believe this, and the soul of the Savior is strong in all virtues: then the prudence of the flesh will not be his soul, lest he himself be believed to have joined death and enmity against God to himself.

Let the disciples of Apollinaris cease to defend, by reason of his other writings, what he has said against the rules of the Church: for although he wrote against the Arians and Eunomians, and overturned by his disputation Origen and other heretics; yet he who is mindful of that precept: Thou shalt not respect persons in judgment, ought always to love the truth, not persons; and to know that, in the dispensation of man, which the only-begotten Son of God deigned to assume for our salvation, he is not free from blame who has both wrongly understood and wrongly written concerning his soul.

For just as the Apostle says: Though I bestow all my goods, and though I deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing; so, whether it be he of whom we now speak, or Origen, or other heretics, although they may have written some things not repugnant to the faith of the Church; yet they will not be without fault, and in those things which are principal, and pertain to the salvation of believers, they are in opposition to the faith of the Church. For neither, as he himself with his followers strives to prove, did our Lord and Savior assume a soul without sense and mind, nor a half part of it, two parts of three, or a third, so as to save man, once assumed, imperfectly: because neither the half, nor the remaining portions, will receive the name of "perfect." And just as that which is perfect lacks the fault of imperfection, so that which is imperfect cannot be called perfect.

And if he had received our likeness imperfectly, or only in part, how could he say in the Gospel: No one takes my soul from me: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again? But that which is taken away and laid down cannot be called irrational, nor without mind and understanding, but on the contrary rational and intelligible, having mind, and possessing feeling.

7. And thus the very order of the disputation proves that nothing imperfect was assumed by the Lord, but that the man assumed by him was fully and perfectly saved. For no one doubts that the souls of irrational beasts are not laid down and taken up again, but perish along with their bodies, and are dissolved into dust. But the Saviour, taking up his soul, and separating it from his body at the time of his passion, took it up again at the resurrection.

And long before he did this, he was saying in the Psalm: Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. Nor is it credible that his flesh descended into hell, or that the prudence of the flesh, which was called soul, appeared in hell; but rather that his body was laid in the sepulchre, and that he said, Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell, neither concerning the body and the wisdom of the flesh, nor concerning his own divinity, but truly concerning the soul of our nature, so as to show that a perfect and rational, intelligible and sensible soul descended into hell. We exhort those who hold such opinions, that, abandoning the errors of the heretics, they acquiesce in the truth of the Church, and not make the festival of the Lord's passion imperfect, lest they deny in the Saviour the principal and greater part of man, asserting that his body was without soul and mind.

For if it were so, what did he mean concerning himself when he said: The good shepherd lays down his soul for his sheep? And if he had assumed only the flesh of man, why did he say in his passion: The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak?

8. Whence it must be known, that he, exhibiting in every part a tempered mystery of the human condition, assumed the perfect likeness of our condition, and, associating to himself not flesh only, nor an irrational and senseless soul, but the whole body and the whole soul, showed forth a perfect man in himself, that he might bestow perfect salvation upon all men in himself and through himself; and having fellowship with us, who were formed from the earth, he neither brought flesh down from heaven, nor did he join to his body a soul which had previously subsisted and had been created before his flesh, as the disciples of Origen strive to teach.

For if the soul of the Saviour, before he assumed a human body, dwelt in the regions of heaven, and was not yet his soul, it is most impious to say that it was, before the body, the Lord's soul, acting and living, and afterward was changed into his soul. It is another matter, if they can teach from the Scriptures that, before he was born of Mary, God the Word had this soul, and that before the assumption of flesh it was called his soul. But if by the authority of the Scriptures, and by reason itself, they are compelled to admit that Christ did not have a soul before he was born of Mary (for in the assumption of man his soul also was assumed), they are clearly convicted of saying that the same soul was both his and not his. But let them cease from the raving impiety of new dogmas.

We, following the rule of the Scriptures, proclaim with all boldness of heart, that neither his flesh nor his soul existed before he was born of Mary. Nor did his soul dwell beforehand in the heavens before he afterward joined it to himself: for the Lord brought nothing of our condition with him, coming down from heaven. Whence, cutting down with the evangelical sickle whatever is contrary to the truth, he says: Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up. Fulfilling the word by deed, and the threat by its end, and proving the power of his sayings by the accomplishment of the facts, so that the truth of the events might exhibit whatever the word had promised.

9. Let them know, therefore, that they who follow Origen—to say something of the fables of the Poets, the hydra of all heresies—and who glory in having him as their teacher and prince of error, being strangers to this solemnity, cannot celebrate with us the Lord's passion.

For although he wove countless books, and left to the world, as it were, the inheritance of his garrulity, a ruinous possession, yet we know it commanded in the law: Thou shalt not be able to set over thee a stranger, because he is not thy brother. For he who has strayed from the rules of the Apostles by a different path, as unworthy and profane to the choir of Christ and the fellowship of his mysteries, is cast out from the solemnity of Christ, and is driven far away by the fathers and elders who founded the Saviour's Church—he who strives to sew the torn and old rags of the philosophers onto the new and most firm garment of the Church, and to join falsehoods with truths, so that by their nearness weakness might be proved the stronger, and the beauty of this garment be defiled.

10. What reasoning, what order of argument led him to take away, by shadows of allegory and empty images, the truth of the Scriptures?

What Prophet taught that, on account of the ruin and fall of souls from heaven, God was compelled to fashion bodies? Who, among those who, according to blessed Luke, saw and were ministers of the word of God, handed this down to be taught—that God, provoked by the negligence and motion and flux from the higher rational creatures, made the diversity of this world?—when Moses, explaining its creation, said nothing, and indicated no preceding causes for the production of sensible things from rational, of visible from invisible, of worse from better, which Origen most openly proclaims. For he says that the world began on account of the sins of intelligible creatures; unwilling to celebrate Easter with the saints, nor to say with Paul: The invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, from the creation of the world; nor to cry out with the Prophet: I considered thy works, and was astonished. For the beauty of the world could not otherwise subsist, unless a varied adornment of creatures filled it.

Finally, the sun and moon, the two great lights, and the rest of the stars, before they became that which the daily course of their office testifies they were created to be, did not exist without bodies, nor, forsaking their original simplicity on account of certain preceding causes, were they surrounded with bodies, as he dreams, constructing dogmas contrary to the faith. Nor did souls sin in any way in the regions of heaven, and were therefore relegated into bodies. For if this were so, it would have been necessary that the Saviour himself should not assume a body, and he ought to have freed souls from bodies at the time when he remits sins in baptism; he ought to have released from the bonds of the body one just baptized—bonds which he mentions as having been made in the condemnation of sin on account of sins. But he also promises the resurrection of bodies in vain, if it is more expedient for souls, without the weight of bodies, to fly more lightly up to heaven.

He himself too, in rising, ought not to have raised up his flesh, but should have joined only the soul to divinity, if it is better to live without bodies than with bodies.

11. But what does it mean that he so often proclaims that souls are both bound to bodies and separated from them, and that he brings upon us many deaths—being ignorant that Christ came for this reason: not that after the resurrection he might release souls from bodies, or, having freed them, clothe them again with other bodies, and, coming down from the regions of heaven, clothe them with blood and flesh; but that he might once for all bestow incorruption and eternity upon raised bodies. For just as Christ, having died, dies no more, neither shall death have dominion over him; so also bodies raised up after the resurrection do not perish a second time, or often, nor shall death have dominion over them any longer, nor shall they be dissolved into nothing: because the coming of Christ shall save the whole man.

12. But this also alienates Origen from the solemnity of Christ, that he relates that the Principalities, Powers, Mights, Thrones, and Dominations were not created for this from the beginning, but after their own creation were made worthy of some honor, while others like them, through negligence, fell down to lower things, and these were called by illustrious names—so that God did not create Principalities and Powers and the rest, but the sins of others furnished them the material of their glories.

And how does the Apostle Paul write: "In Christ all things were created, in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers; all things were created through him, and in him, and he is before all things"—if he understood the force of the word by which it is said, "All things were created," he would certainly know that they were so made from the beginning, and that the slothfulness of others and their fall into lower things did not give occasion to God to name them Principalities, and Powers, and the rest of the Mights: especially since the beauty of creatures consists in the order of their dignities.

For just as it is written of the sun and moon and stars: "God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars, and set them in the firmament of heaven, to give light upon the earth," and they did not receive the reward of good works so as, after their own creation, to shine in the firmament of heaven, and to alternate with days or nights; so we understand that the Principalities and Powers, which were created in the regions of heaven, did not advance to these ranks after good works, but were so created from the beginning: for we do not follow the error of Origen and his disciples, who think that, in the likeness of the demons and the devil, who by their own will obtained such names and offices, the Principalities and Powers, Virtues and Thrones, and Dominations, after their own creation, accomplished some good, so that, while others fell to lower things, they ascended to the heights, and were marked with these names, having afterward what they had not had before.

Saying these things, they do not understand that they are contradicting the sentence of Paul, who says that the Principalities, and Powers, and Thrones, and Dominations were created in Christ. But when he says "created," no one doubts that they were thus constituted from the beginning, and did not afterward receive dignities of this kind.

13. But let it suffice to have briefly set forth these matters; let us come to another of his impieties, which he utters as if belching from the deepest darkness, and has left to the world an evil memory of his blasphemies. For he says that the Holy Spirit does not operate upon things that are inanimate, nor reach to irrational things.

Asserting this, he does not consider that the mystical waters in baptism are consecrated by the coming of the Holy Spirit; and that the Lord's Bread, by which the Saviour's Body is shown, and which we break for our sanctification, and the sacred cup (which are placed on the table of the Church and are certainly inanimate) are sanctified by the invocation and coming of the Holy Spirit. If the power of the Holy Spirit does not reach to irrational things, and to those which are without soul, why does David sing: Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Saying which, he shows that all things are contained by the Holy Spirit, and encompassed by his majesty: if all things are in all, then certainly irrational and inanimate things also. And elsewhere we read: The Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world. Which Scripture would never mention, unless irrational and inanimate things also were filled by his divine power.

But he is not content with this measure of blasphemy, but, in the manner of lunatics, who testify their madness by the gnashing of their teeth and the casting forth of foaming spittle, belches again, and says that the Son of God, that is, Reason, and his word and power, reach only to those things which are rational. Hearing which, I wonder whence he took this, or how he can be ignorant of having read: All things were made through him: from which it is proved that the power of the Word of God reaches to all things. Perhaps he has also forgotten that story, when by the power of Christ Lazarus was raised, whose body, at the time when it was rising from death into life, certainly lacked both soul and reason alike. He was ignorant too of this, that from five loaves five thousand men were satisfied, besides women and children; and there remained twelve baskets of fragments. Which surely the power of Christ accomplished.

I think he did not even remember that miracle, when, treading with divine foot upon the irrational waves of the sea, he restored calm to those sailing. Which the power of Christ, and no other's command, effected. How then does he not shudder with his whole heart and soul and body, saying that the power of the Word of God cannot reach irrational creatures? And he who boasts of his knowledge of the Scriptures, and thinks he has read more than any man has ever read, let him know it is written, that the sick were carried on beds, and laid in the streets and squares, that the shadow of Peter passing by might touch and heal them—which the sacred Acts of the Apostles attest, convicting Origen's folly, by which it is proved that the shadow of the Apostles did what he testifies the Son of God, the Word of God, could not do.

14. Deceived by a similar error, and not knowing what he says, he is of those who are unwilling that the providence of God should descend even to all creatures and to the lower parts of the world, but hold that it dwells only in the regions of the heavens, as though the shadow of Peter had accomplished what the power of the Saviour could not fulfill.

But let us come also to those matters: for while the Apostle proclaims plainly concerning the only-begotten Son of God: "Let each one among us understand this, that also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant": he has dared to say that the soul of the Saviour emptied itself and took the form of a servant, so that John should be believed to have lied, who says: The Word was made flesh, forcing the Saviour into a condition like ours, as though it were not he himself who emptied himself and took the form of a servant, but his soul; and by his impiety he dissolves the faith which has been confirmed by the confession of all.

For if it is the soul of the Saviour that was in the form of God and equal to God, according to the madness of Origen, and the Son of God is equal to God, and that which is equal to God is proved to be of the same substance, the very order of the argument leads us to believe that the soul and God are of one nature. And when he says this, it follows that he must also contend that our souls are of no other nature than God's (and no one doubts that our souls and the soul of the Saviour are of one substance), so that now the maker and the thing made are of one nature. And how could all things be created in Christ, if the souls of men are of the same substance as the Creator?

But it is not so, brethren; nor was it the soul of the Saviour, but the Son of God himself, who, though he was in the form of God and equal to God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. But Origen, plunged into the depth of the mire of impiety, does not understand that he is a partaker with the Gentiles, who, worshipping idols instead of God: "saying that they were wise, became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man": into which he also has fallen, deceived by a similar error: for in asserting that the soul of the Saviour was in the form and equality of God, as the foregoing discourse has recorded, he is equal to pagan impiety.

For as they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, saying that those were gods which were not; so he has changed the glory of the incorruptible God, asserting that the soul of the Saviour, which was created, was in his form and equality; and that this soul emptied itself, and that it was not the Word of God that came to earthly things, as the authority of the Apostle affirms.

15. Nor does he blush, forgetful of himself amid his multiloquy, unwilling that the soul of man was so called from the beginning of its creation, but holding that it was named from the fact that what was formerly mind and sense assumed the coldness of negligence and unbelief. This etymology suits the Greek language rather than the Latin. But if he asserts that the soul of the Saviour is equal to God and constituted in his form, then that too has received its name from the coldness of love, and has lost the dignity of its former name.

For his general argument is that the souls of men are called by that name because they have lost the heat of their original fervor. Therefore, if the souls of all, having received coldness, are so called, and he confesses that the Saviour had a soul, it follows that he must say that this soul too migrated from mind and sense to such a name. Although in his speech he passes over this in silence, and his open impiety suppresses his own madness, yet he is compelled by necessity to say it, since it links in due order with his former statements. For either he must deny that the Saviour had a soul, so as to come most openly against the authority of the Gospels; or, if he cannot say things contrary to himself, he will also confess that this soul was named from the coldness of love, out of mind and sense; for he reckons that the souls of all who have withdrawn from God and lost the warmth of divine love are named from coldness.

Who would not believe that he is content with this end of sacrilege?

16. Again he weaves another calumny against the Son of God, and speaks in these words: As the Father and the Son are one, so also the soul which the Son assumed, and the Son of God himself, are one. Nor does he understand that the Father and the Son are one because of the communion of substance and the same divinity; but that the Son of God and his soul are of a diverse and greatly distant nature from one another. For if, as the Father and the Son are one, so also the soul of the Son and the Son himself are one, then the Father will be one with the soul of the Saviour, and it will be able to say: He who sees me sees also the Father.

But it is not so: far be this from the faith of the Church; for the Son and the Father are one because there is no diverse nature between them; but the soul and the Son of God differ from one another both in nature and in substance, since it too was created by the Son, and is of our condition and nature. For if, as the Father and the Son are one, so the soul of the Son of God and the Son himself are one, then, as we have already said, the soul and God the Father will be one; and the soul of the Saviour will be believed to be the brightness of his glory and the express image of his substance. But this is impious and blasphemous to say. It is therefore of the same impiety to say that the Son and his soul are one, and to deny that the Father and the Son are one.

Again, forgetful of himself, he speaks things contrary to himself, for he says: The soul which was troubled and made sorrowful was not itself the only-begotten and first-born of all creation, nor the Word of God, which, transcending the condition of the soul, and being truly the Son of God, said in the Gospel: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. Therefore, if the Son of God is better and more powerful than his own soul, which no one doubts, how could his soul be in the form of God and equal to God, when he says that it emptied itself and took the form of a servant? He surpasses all heretics in the magnitude of his blasphemy. For if the Word of God is in the form of God and equal to God, and the soul of the Saviour is in the form of God and his equality, how can one of two equal things be greater, the other less?

For those things which are of a lower nature testify, by their own abasement, to the loftier nature and substance of the other.

17. This blasphemy does not suffice him, but, driving the chariot of his folly across the rivers of Ethiopia, again, raging, he exults, saying that God, by his own will, created as many rational creatures as he was able to govern; comparing the power of God to the weakness of men and of the other things that have been created. For in the human body, its strength sustains and rules as many members as it can, by its infused vigor, keep alive; and it gives us as much temperance as it is able to govern by its presence, and sustains by its power only as much as the members of men are able to bear.

But God is greater than the things which he himself has fashioned, since he has bestowed upon them in their creation such a measure as the order of things demanded, and where he was unable to sustain more, he is nonetheless able to do more than the things made can contain. But he, that pillar of truth, asserts that the power of God is limited, and less than the skills of men. For masons, and those who are skilled in the science of building houses, are able to build greater things than they have made, provided the foundations can bear what is to be built upon them; nor is the fabrication of a design the limit of their art.

And when they have completed works as great as the necessity of the matter demanded, and have a measure beyond which, if anything more had been built, it would be shown unseemly and useless, the art itself contains more in the mind than it has shown in the work; nor is a limit set upon knowledge without regard to the requirements of the matter—provided, as I have said, that whatever the mind has conceived, and thought has expanded by the greatness of works, the things subjected to it are able to sustain it. And how is it not impious not to set a limit to human art, nor to equate the knowledge of craftsmen to their works; and yet to say that God made as many rational creatures as he was able to make?

Let the impious man hear, then, and learn: The power of God is not as great as the rational creatures he is said to have made; but, imposing a measure on his works, beyond which they could not be, and enclosing the number of things within the art of his own arrangement, he himself is not bound by measure and number. From which it plainly appears that he did not make as many as he was able, but that his power made as much as the necessity of things required. Let us set forth an example, that what we say may become clearer.

If some wealthy head of a household should wish to invite guests to dinner, and to offer such abundant dishes as could satisfy the appetite of the diners, it is not the case that, however much they ate and however much had been prepared for them, that was all the rich master could have had; but he provided as much as the dignity of the banquet demanded: so also almighty God, surpassing the example of comparison, did not make as many creatures as he was able, but as many as ought to have been made were made by him. But he weaves the seedbed of his verbosity, and repeats, and says: God made as many as he was able to comprehend, and to have subject to himself, and to govern by his providence.

Nor does he hear the Prophet saying: "If all the nations are counted as a drop from a bucket, and as the turning of the scale, and shall be reckoned as spittle, to whom have you likened God?" And again: "Who has measured the water in his hand, and the heavens with the span, and all the earth with the palm?" If, in comparison with the power of God, the water is measured by the hand, and the heavens by the span, and all the earth by the palm (but these things are said by way of metaphor, that the vileness of the things that were made may be proved by the magnificence of the Maker; for God is not composed of a diversity of members): how then is he said to have made as many things as he was able to comprehend by his power?

18. Let us tread down what we have begun, and unfold our meaning more fully.

"If all the nations are reckoned as a drop from a bucket, and as the turning of the scale, and shall be reckoned as spittle": by these words the vileness and small substance of all creatures is shown, so that the incomparable loftiness of God may appear; therefore his power too will be reckoned as a drop from a bucket, and as the turning of the scale, and as a man's spittle, if, according to Origen, he fashioned as much as he was able to comprehend by his power: and it is necessary that the power of God be made equal to the number and measure of the things made, if he was unable to make greater things than he made. But I do not think that anyone—I will not say of men, but not even of demons—would dare to fabricate concerning him what that man both thought and wrote, that God made as much matter as he was able to adorn and divide into the forms of things.

Let him who thinks this learn, in turn, from us, that God did not make as much as he was able to make, but that God fashioned as much as the measure of the order of things demanded, having a much greater art and power than the number and measure of the things that were made. And let him know that this is proved by the testimonies of the Prophets, of whom one says: His power has covered the heavens: and another cries out: But he has made the earth as nothing: that they might proclaim that the power of God is greater than the things that were made. Moreover, what he said, "he made the earth as nothing," the Apostle, interpreting it, speaks concerning all creatures: Who calls the things that are not, as though they were. That by these words too we may learn that the power of God is greater than the things that were made by him.

And he does not blush, while disputing against the power of God, to say that God can do only as much as the matter furnished him for working! Nor does he understand that the nature of the things made is one thing, and that of God, the Maker, another, nor that the material from which something is made can be as powerful as he who fashions something out of it: for of diverse substances there is diverse power and condition.

19. Wherefore if they wish to celebrate the Lord's Passover with the Church, those who prefer the ravings of Origen to the authority of the Scriptures, let them hear God crying out: "And I did not show you those things that you should walk after them"; and the Prophet lamentably admonishing: "Ho, ho, flee from the land of the North, saith the Lord, for I will gather you from the four winds; be saved in Sion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon".

That, leaving behind the darkness of error and the cold of ignorance, they may turn, joined to the pursuits of the magi, toward the rising of the sun of justice; and dwelling in that hottest region of heaven, which is felt in the fervor of the Scriptures, may inquire of the pastors of the Church, having spurned the madness of Origen, and say: "Where is he that is born king of the Jews?" When they have found him lying in a manger—that is, in the lowly speech of the Scriptures—let them offer him gold, and frankincense, and myrrh: that is, faith proved and shining with the full splendor of truth, and the fragrance of a sweet-smelling life, and continence, which dries up the excess of pleasure and the wavering incitements of the flesh.

For those who, after frequent admonitions, contradict the faith of the Church, are held by a twofold sickness, wickedness and ignorance, and, turned wholly to earthly things after the manner of serpents, and clinging to the ground, prefer evils to goods, and know not what difference there is between vices and virtues, and despise the remedies from the holy Scriptures meant for their correction and health, sustaining, after the manner of pregnant women, a loathing of the truth, who reject their accustomed food and pursue whatever is harmful; nor are they able to direct the clear light of the soul against the rays of truth: despising the discipline of the Church, they wallow like swine in the mire, and scorn ointments. But it is right that they should at least receive healing from the examples we bring forward. For just as bleariness afflicts the eye, and fever wastes the whole body, and rust gradually consumes bronze and iron, so the pernicious contagion of perverse doctrines defiles the beauty of negligent souls, and overspreads them with the unsightly pallor of lies.

I beg you, brothers, to forgive my grief in bringing these wicked doctrines into the open. For though we have crossed through the rivers of Babylon, that we might persuade the captives dwelling there to go up to the festival of Jerusalem, yet by the mercy of God we ourselves have not felt captivity, spreading the sails of the Scriptures to favorable winds. Neither have the swelling whirlpools of heretical doctrine overwhelmed us, nor has the tempest of lies terrified us, nor have the torrents of iniquity drawn us into the midst of their sea, where, according to the Psalmist singing, "creeping things without number," and the Dragon, the devil, dwell—that most venomous creature, open to the sport of the saints: nor, to sum up all in brief, could the blasts of wind rising from every quarter overturn the ship of the Church, or, with a savage whirlwind, cover over the oarage of our pursuits.

And sailing with the Lord our Savior, after the manner of His disciples, we have crossed over, and entering the harbor of rest, we embrace the most beautiful shore of the divine volumes; plucking various flowers of knowledge, and pressing kisses upon the snowy limbs of wisdom, we cling in her embraces, and, if the Lord shall grant it, living with her, and persevering in her love, we shall sing: "I have been a lover of her beauty." For as many as read the holy Scriptures more diligently, and run through the flowering meadows of heavenly discourse, enjoy this blessedness. But those who, abandoning the freshness of the Lord's solemnity, cross over into the deserts, after the manner of cities that are without a wall, endure the hostile assaults of demons.

20. Wherefore, in celebrating the approaching feast, let us understand both ourselves and all that is ours; and let us embrace with all zeal our knowledge and our rational soul, as a mother, having the root of speech and the conception of reason's knowledge, and speech, so to say, as the vestibule of the work. But the work of speech and knowledge is the finished roof of the building, and the firmest crown set upon the house. For speech, and reason, and knowledge, and faith, without work, are empty and unstable. And that we may seem to take up something from that discipline for the sake of those trained in the dialectical arts: just as, if we join a verb to a noun, a perfect sense is produced, but the verb alone, or the noun without the verb, is nothing at all that is said; so knowledge without work, and work without faith, are weak and perishable: and, on the other hand, knowledge joined to work is the sign of perfect virtue.

For the silent thought of the mind is its hidden speech, which, sounding forth outwardly through the tongue, brings forth the sentence of the mind. And when speech has been completed by work, an end is set upon our knowledge and thought. Yet we shall render account of thought, and speech, and work in the judgment, our thoughts either accusing or defending one another, on the day when God shall judge the hidden things of men, through Jesus Christ, as the Apostle Paul writes.

21. Since this is so, as the Lord's festival draws near, let us say to those whom Origen's error has entangled, and whom deceit holds captive: "Flee from the midst of Babylon, and every man save his own soul." For although, according to the prophet's oracle, Babylon is said to be a golden cup, and by the composition and charm of its words presents the beauty of truth, and transforms itself into an angel of light: yet it must be known that whoever drink of her wine are shaken and fall, and, being crushed, are worthy of lamentation. But let us, resisting deadly disturbances, wall in the soul with a rampart of continence, and guard its liberty by daily exercise of the virtues. For just as bought slaves are called servants and menials of those who paid the price for them, so those who have sold their souls to various desires are called the servants of those to whom they have handed themselves over, and obey them as if they were cruel masters.

And when they scorn with hardened brow those who would correct their error, defending folly with rashness, they do not know that boldness is nothing else, as it seems to me, than a judgment without sense or thought, driving far from itself the mind that governs the passions. And when the soul has been despoiled of such protection, it is borne headlong into the depth of impiety, and, as it were, with a most bitter rheum, darkens the light of the mind, and, according to the language of the Scriptures, surrounds its eye with an unmanageable night of darkness.

22. Whence let those who delight in the errors of Origen not hope for the heralding of the Lord's festival: nor let them seek ointments, gold, and pearls in the mud, nor tear apart their mother the Church, who bore and nourished them, in great cities—they who at times, because of him and his disciples, surpass even the hatred of the Gentiles against us, and in their affection for them heap up curses upon us, and besiege the doors of the rich, not fearing to hear, along with the Jews: "I have brought up children, and exalted them, but they have despised me." These seem to me not to know that every word of truth, not having a foundation, even though for an hour it may entice the hearer to think that true which is not, is gradually dissolved and reduced to nothing; and that the whole sentence, which after the manner of a torrent is poured forth from a most wicked mind, overwhelms its own author: and, losing the letters and syllables of which it was woven, it is left without sense or sound or any image, and strikes its utterer like a most venomous serpent, and immediately draws back its head, and wastes and is consumed as it were in the hole of the mind.

For the end of lies is destruction. Let those who once boasted themselves lovers of solitude build at least a tiny cell to hide the curses upon the lips of their fury, not of the holy stones of Jerusalem, but of the shapeless rocks of Babylon, unhewn and uneven, which support the walls of a house about to fall. Although they commend themselves by detraction of us to effeminate ears and to the hatreds of the Gentiles, tearing at the discipline of the Church, and abusing our patience as it were a kindling for their rashness; yet let them at some time be silent and at rest, and hear the Prophet saying: "Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips that they speak no guile." And let them desire to savor those things which are worthy of a holy life, and not grieve God, the prince and master of the Church.

23. But I beg you, brothers, that we pray in common for them, and say with the prophetic voice: "Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes? And I will weep day and night for the wounded of the daughter of my people": beseeching the mercy of God, that He may free them from the error by which they are bound, and change into love the hatred with which they rage in vain against us. Whence we also, forgetting injuries, desire to receive them with a most indulgent bosom, and we reckon their health and conversion to God as our own health and glory. And if they cannot be cured otherwise than by our humility, let us of our own accord give them satisfaction; we have done them no injury, we have done them no harm, even though they are indignant and rage against the remedies of the Church, by which health is restored to the wounded.

We speak what we know, and preach what we have learned: praying that those who despise the rules of the Church may receive the standard of truth, and not, on account of the confusion of men—through which those in error are with difficulty corrected—lose the benefit of repentance. And now we say, and have said before, and repeat frequently, that we do not wish them to wander, nor to err through foreign provinces, but to the exiled and raving we cry out with the Prophet, and say: "Be saved from the land, and return, and do not stand still: remember, you who are far from the Lord, and let Jerusalem come up upon your heart." 24.

Perhaps, hearing these things, love of the Church's assembly may come upon them, and they may recall the common joy of brotherhood, and the hymns with which they used to sing to the Lord together with the rest, and may exchange the coldness of hatred for the warmth of love, and understand that we are physicians, not enemies, most indulgent fathers, not swollen with hostile pride. For it cannot be that we should desire the perishing of those whom we wish to be saved, nor that the rod of the Church should not be turned into a staff for them: if only, abandoning error, they are willing to follow truth, and to give up the rashness of wanton children.

But if they refuse it, and, despising the discipline of the Church, lift up their horn against her rules, and, spurning wholesome counsels, cast them behind their backs, let them hear the Lord threatening: "The man who acts proudly, so as not to hearken to the priest who stands to minister in the name of thy God, or to the judge, whoever he shall be in those days, that man shall die, and thou shalt take away the evil from Israel, and all the people, hearing, shall fear, and shall not act impiously any more". But lest, being occupied with the healing of the wounded, we forget ourselves and neglect our own affairs, and, according to what is written, "Preaching to others, we ourselves be found reprobate," let us admonish those who stand, that they take heed: lest, while reaching out a hand to those who lie fallen, they themselves fall; and that, keeping the discipline of the Church, they may dread the judgment to come.

25. Therefore, celebrating the Lord's Passover, let us be purified by the holy words of the Scriptures, and, looking to the trophies of the Savior, let us remove from our midst all the stumbling-blocks by which the course of our life is delayed. Shunning avarice as a most wicked usurer, let us slay the desire of vain glory as an insatiable beast, and with a watchful mind avoid the flattering and slippery serpent of fornication. If ever a more favorable breeze of fortune should come to us, let us temper the swelling of the mind with humility and gentleness. If adverse winds should blow, let us rouse with fortitude the mind that is oppressed and cast down, and let us be the accusers of our own sin: that, knowing ourselves, we may correct ourselves, and by continual meditation recover the freedom of the soul's virtues, which has been oppressed by vices.

Wherefore, set in the contest and the sweat and labor of present things, preparing for ourselves the future glory of the heavenly festival, before we stand before the tribunal of Christ, let us correct past sins by penitence: let us redeem future joys with present weeping, and, with the sting of conscience, after the manner of bees, let us drive away the harmful drones of sins, keeping our hives full of wax and honey. Let us heal the various wounds of vices, and check by frequent admonitions the rapacity of the rich, by which this class of men is especially caught. And thus we shall be able to pursue the path of the approaching fasts. The days of the Forty shall begin on the thirtieth day of the month Mechir.

And we shall celebrate the week of the saving Passover on the fifth day of the month Pharmuthi, ending the fasts, according to the Gospel traditions, on the evening of the Sabbath, the tenth day of Pharmuthi: and, the Lord's Day dawning at once, let us celebrate the feast on the eleventh day of the same month, joining also the remaining seven weeks of the holy Pentecost: that with those who confess the one Godhead of the Trinity, we may receive the rewards in the heavens, in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom and with whom, to God the Father be glory and dominion, with the Holy Spirit, world without end, Amen. 26. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the brothers who are with me greet you.

And we write this of necessity, that you may know that, in place of the holy and blessed Bishops who have fallen asleep in the Lord, there have been ordained: in Lemnos, Naseas in place of Hero; in Erythrus, Paul in place of Sabbatius; in Omboes, Verus in place of Sylvanus. Write to these, therefore, and receive from them letters of peace, according to the custom of the Church.

Jerome to The Most Blessed Pope Theophilus.

1. From the time when I received the Letters of Your Beatitude, together with the Paschal book, up to the present day, I have been so harassed by mourning and grief, by anxiety, and by various rumors here and there concerning the state of the Church, that I have scarcely been able to translate your volume into the Latin tongue. For you know very well, according to the old saying, that eloquence is not sad—especially when bodily illness is added to sickness of soul. And this very letter I have dictated in great haste, burning with fever and now lying in bed for the fifth day; briefly indicating to Your Beatitude that I have sustained great labor in its translation, that I might render all its sentences with equal grace, and that the Latin style might in some measure correspond to the Greek eloquence.

2. At the beginning you play the philosopher; and while dealing generally and instructing all, you strike at one alone: but in the rest—which is most difficult of all—you join Philosophers to Rhetorical eloquence, and unite for us Demosthenes and Plato. O how much is said against luxury, with what praises continence is extolled, and how, from the innermost disciplines of wisdom, the course of day and night, of the moon, and the reckoning of the sun, the nature of this world is described; and you refer this very discussion to the authority of the Scriptures, lest in the Paschal book you should seem to have borrowed anything from secular sources. What more shall I say? In these matters I fear to praise you, lest I incur the charge of flattery. It is an excellent book, both in its philosophy and in its treatment of the subject undertaken without partiality toward persons.

Wherefore I beg you, forgive also my slowness; for I have been so overwhelmed by the falling asleep of the holy and venerable Paula, that apart from the translation of this book, I have written nothing else of divine work up to the present time. For we have suddenly lost, as you yourself know, that solace which (as the Lord is witness of our conscience) we regarded not for our own needs, but for the refreshment of the saints, whom she diligently served. The holy and venerable Eustochium, your daughter, who receives no consolation for her mother's absence, together with the whole Brotherhood, humbly greets you. The books which you announced you had lately written, send to us either to be read or to be translated. Farewell in Christ.

Now again the living Wisdom of God calls us to celebrate the holy Passover, wishing all to be partakers of it: wherefore I hasten, running toward it with quickened step, fighting by fasts and continence and every affliction of the body against the effort of the opposing powers, that we may reduce pleasures to nothing, supported by the Savior's help: and simply confessing our sins to God, who is able to heal, let us fear the true judgment of conscience, that, crying out with David and saying: "Remember not the sins of my youth and of my ignorance: according to thy mercy remember me"—by the terror of eternal fire we may consume the growing vices; whose end is, to do such things no more, and the beginning of salvation is, forgetfulness of things past. For as the beginning of a good life (or way) is to do just things, so the beginning of ceasing sins is to restrain their onset, while they are either curbed by reason, or by fear are kept from headlong ruin.

And when the remembrance of the law has been in the mind, they flee at once, and ceasing to advance further, they withdraw into the camp of triumphant virtues, and gradually, by repenting, drawing back their step, and shunning the judgment of the wise, they dissolve into nothing like smoke. Evils are healed with difficulty, which are not checked as soon as they begin to grow: but their eradication is easy, when those who formerly sinned are converted through penitence to prudence, and, upon ceasing to sin, find the profit of repentance. For we cannot suppress the incitements of vices unless we begin to practice virtues: or the old ones will not cease until they are excluded by the works of new ones. And just as, if we resist with firm mind against oncoming pleasures, past sins are blotted out: so, if forgetfulness of things past persists, future offenses will no longer be able to grow.

For the workers of evils, as though reducing to their own dominion those who could forbid them but do not, rage with total madness toward sin, and, drawing silence into consent, strive to fulfill in deed whatever lust has suggested to the mind. The liberty of present vices germinates future vices: and if you neglect the earlier ones, it becomes the fountain and seedbed of those to come.

2. Since these things are so, those who are able to forbid sinners, and by avoidance of labor and by idle silence dissemble, and allow evils to grow, will most rightly be judged partakers with those who are the authors of crimes, and will pay the penalties of negligence: since they preferred irrational ease to the sweat of those who punish, choosing culpable quiet rather than the severity that cuts down vices.

For if we withdraw from vices, they will utterly perish, and their deceitful sweetness will be dried up; and every onset of pleasure will grow numb, so to speak, with a kind of languor, when our mind has become the dwelling-place of virtue. The remembrance of the law does not allow sins to be generated, nor does it suffer them to grow; and when men have pondered the future tribunal and the fearful day of judgment, then it will forbid the beginning day, the middle, and the end of sin, and will dry up its bitter waves and swelling whirlpools even to their very source and veins; virtue, accompanied by the law, will suppress the seeds of vices, and will raise the soul from lowly things to lofty ones.

On the contrary, vices, unless restrained, grow proud, and thrust down to the depths those who are obedient to them; and once they have possessed souls, they oppress them with the enticements of pleasures, and do not allow them, in accordance with the upright posture of the human body, to look up toward the heights, but bend them down to earthly things like cattle. Of whom the Psalmist testifies, saying, "They have called their lands by their own names."

3. Someone may say: if vices have such strength, and overthrow so many by their flattering persuasion even to such a degree, what ought those to do who, feeling themselves to sin, desire to exchange sins for virtues, and who, through love of better things, despise the worse? Let such persons hear Moses speaking: "Have you sinned? Cease"—overturning former things by the end of sin, and correcting vices by the most effective remedy, the cessation of vices: decline, as noxious poisons, the sweet enticements of an evil life and the flattering pleasures of the body.

Nor should you walk along the slippery and soft path of delights, because the solemnity is grasped by fasting and continence, and scarcely, by laboring and sweating, can we exchange evils for goods, and by struggling suppress pleasures. Few there are who, having trodden down vices, keep to the path of truth, since malice employs innumerable arts of harming, and cannot be overcome unless we are supported from above by the help of wisdom, which cries to us and says: "Fear not, for I am with you." The death of evil is to do evil no more; the root of vices is to despise the ordinances of the law. As negligence begets sins, so vigilance brings forth virtues. The law kept at bay drives out disgrace; neglected, it brings forth punishments: and as much as, if despised, it imitates the harshness of a severe judge, so much, if observed, it displays the gentleness of a most merciful father. Therefore the ceasing of sin is the beginning of virtue.

The medicine for past, present, and future vices is the untiring meditation of the law; which, when it has given security to its possessor, is free from all disturbances. For wisdom works good in us, after we have offered it the pure dwelling of the heart, and turned our thoughts into deeds. Nor is it doubted that we have free capacity in either direction, to do or not do good things, and that, when evil things are suppressed, right ones are born: and then the chorus of virtues sings in harmony among themselves, when there has been solitude of vices in souls.

For just as continence, holding the sovereignty in our bodies, forbids infirmities to arise, and neither weakens nor kills those who love it, but restores past sicknesses to their former health, and, expelling what is contrary to nature, recalls what is agreeable to nature, so that by an equal balance the order of this life is preserved: so the soul, keeping the commands of the laws, insofar as human nature can receive it, is separated from the contagion of evils, and, anxious on every side and watching itself, permits nothing to enter that is contrary to excellent thoughts. Rather, turned into a temple of God, it continually enjoys a heavenly festival, possessing riches—the observance of the law, which raises up those who lie fallen, and, punishing the wicked, corrects others, and ever cries out: "Shall not he who has fallen, rise again?

Or he who has turned away, shall he not return?" It bestows the hope of salvation on the penitent: while it warns, that it may profit; it rebukes, that it may amend; and instilling shame for past sins, it makes men pursue better things—which no one can desire unless he has first condemned the wounds of his own conscience.

4. But since the law hastens to recall by best counsels to better things those who neglect it and are sunk in error, as a rule for wrong deeds; but does not suffer those who obey it to be without reward, nor to be pressed by everlasting anguish; let as many of us as celebrate the holy Passover make, through continence and fasting, the giver of the law our friend, the Prophet promising to those who celebrate the Passover: "You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God." Let us seek the rich banquet of virtues, adorning ourselves with the knowledge of the Scriptures as with festal garments.

Let us prepare holy kisses, with the Angels rejoicing with us in heaven, putting to flight all negligence, and breaking off delay, that with quickened step, together with the disciples, we may go to the Savior, and say to him, "Where do you wish us to prepare the Passover for you?" and, stationed in the upper room of the heavens, celebrating the mystic Passover, we may be able to sing: "How beloved are your tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!" For there we shall find the choirs of Angels, and celebrating the feast with them, we shall have them as companions in the mysteries of God, and we shall exult with ineffable joy, learning with them the sacraments of wisdom: where there is no deception of fraud: where he who does not have a wedding garment is forbidden to enter the banquet, though in the present age he may boast himself to be just.

All things there are full of a ripened and advanced prudence: and no one there, according to the Prophet, will be found of immature wisdom: "For there shall be," he says, "a youth of a hundred years"—showing by the greatness of the number the perfection of learning. Wherefore, brethren, partakers of the holy and heavenly calling, let us hear the Savior crying through the Prophet: "I will come to gather all nations, and they shall come, and shall see my glory, and I will set among them a sign of the world."

5. Let us therefore hasten to the solemnity, and let us say: "But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of Christ".

He will give, I say, he will give joy to those who labor, and, blessing those who fast, will speak: "They shall be to the house of Judah for joy and gladness, and for good solemnities, and you shall rejoice: love truth and peace": for it is not the solemnity of all, but of the house of Judah, that is, of the Church of Christ. Therefore, since according to the Psalmist, "It is time to act for the Lord," and Paul writes: "The night is far spent, and the day is at hand." Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light; let us walk honestly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envy: but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its desires.

It is right that all, purified by the fear of the Lord, should carry out the solemnity in a worthy manner, and redeem chastity also by continence and fasting, and rouse the sleeping sense with wakeful faith, and imitate the most wise Daniel, of whom it is written: "There is a man in your kingdom, in whom is the spirit of God, and in the days of your father vigilance and wisdom were found in him." For those who take care of themselves, that they may advance to better things, having the law as a most strong leader, obey its commands, and overturn the sins that come against them, illuminating the festival of Passover with the splendor of their works: and with security of conscience, disregarding the darts of disturbances, they anticipate victory by hope.

But those who, imitating these things, letting down the veil and covering of the letter, with unveiled face, as at the crossing-over sacrifice, gaze upon the solemnity of the Lord's Passover, crying to Jesus: "Where do you wish us to prepare the Passover for you?" For, understanding from him that what is above earthly affairs must be accomplished in the higher chamber, with anxious course, in mind indeed and understanding, let them advance to the Holy of Holies: which place Christ himself entered for us, causing the office and practice of the legal Priest to cease, finding for us eternal redemption, and presenting himself for us before the face of God. For then, once a year, the High Priest alone entered into the Holy of Holies, the people standing outside, since they did not have such capacity; but the Savior, entering, granted the power to all who wished to enter.

Those who, before entering into battle, by desire of virtue seize the palm of triumphs, and, as victors, possess in the heavens the crown over slippery pleasure, with unveiled face, contemplating in spirit, shall cry out and say: "The Lord God is my strength, and he will set my feet unto perfection, setting me upon high places, that I may conquer in his song."

6. Let us not think, dearest brethren, that the struggle is perpetual, so that on that account we grow weary; but let us know that the end of this is the crown of righteousness, which no age of the world corrupts. The zeal of this life and struggle is temporal; but those who have run their course without stumbling, and have come to the finish of the prizes, will find new dwellings, showing forth victory with songs. Therefore, since the grace of the Lord promises us triumphs over the most wicked demons, let us duly celebrate the fasts, that we may also duly be sharers of the solemnity.

Let us by no means, during the days of Lent, sigh after the cup of wine, as luxurious rich men are wont to do, nor in the field and battle, where labor and sweat are necessary, let us delight in the eating of meats. For surfeiting and drunkenness, and the other allurements of this life, drain the most abundant treasure of souls, and by their admixture choke the most fruitful seed of knowledge and doctrine. Wherefore the Lord and Savior, provoking his disciples to the rigor of continence, said: Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly: for as a snare shall it come upon all that dwell upon the face of the whole earth. Rise: let us go hence, whom, because of their negligence of themselves, punishment shall straightway overtake. But they who keep the precepts of the law know not wine during the fasts, refuse the eating of meat, and restrain insatiable avarice by the fear of God.

Whence the Scripture cries daily to the continent: They shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. And on the contrary, the Jews hear because of their guilt: You gave the saints and prophets wine to drink.

They cannot receive correction who are captured by the delight of luxury, nor restrain the gluttony of the belly by reason and counsel through the love of fasting, who by sloth and by a pleasure soon to perish bring infamy upon the pursuit of virtue, not blushing to drink wine secretly, and, avoiding witnesses with greedy throats, to drink sweet wine in their chambers, so that they exchange, at the time of the fasts, abstinence and fasting, which they ought rather to have sought of their own accord, for luxury and drunkenness: not knowing that, even if they escape the conscience of men, and feast on meats behind closed walls, and tear fattened birds with unclean hands in the days of Lent and as Easter approaches, promising fasts outwardly with a sad countenance, the Lord rebukes such men, and says: These commit great iniquities, that they may depart from my saints. It is not fitting for those fasting, in the time of the contest and the battle, to eat meats, the Scripture admonishing: You shall afflict your souls.

Nor to seek out with anxious labor Phasian birds, and chattering fowl, and to force their fatness into a gaping gullet. Nor to hunt out cooks of great price, who soothe the rage of the belly with manifold sauces, and with meats changed by pounding, and with the diverse flavor of foods: with smoking dishes, and with the savor flattering the fury of the throat, while wines of different flavor and color are sought to the injury of continence.

7. The history of holy Daniel teaches us, and the virtue of the three youths, to seek and honor fasts in harmony, who—that I may explain a long discourse in brief compass—having exchanged liberty for servitude, though as captives they should have desired delicacies, despised the Babylonian feasts, and preferred simple food to the royal table.

For King Nebuchadnezzar had commanded the chief of the eunuchs that he should bring into the palace, from the children of the captivity of Israel and of the royal seed, boys in whom there was no blemish, beautiful in body, and apt to learn wisdom, and that they should be in the king's court, should learn the letters and language of the Chaldeans, and should live on the remainder of his table, and should drink of the wine received from thence. There are chosen therefore from the tribe of Judah, Daniel, Ananias, Azarias, Misael, alike in race and in faith, whose nobility hard servitude had not changed. Of these Daniel, as the Scripture testifies, purposed in his heart not to be defiled from the king's table.

The three youths also, united no less by religion than by kinship, take up the man's counsel, and approve his wisdom, and together, beseeching the chief of the eunuchs, by the aid of God's clemency obtain what they desire, and preserve in the land of captivity the nobility of their race: for they soothe with reason and counsel the officer, who feared lest the more cheerful countenance of the other boys should condemn him to capital punishment, speaking these words: Try your servants for ten days, and let pulse be given us to eat, and water to drink, and let our countenances be seen in your presence, and the countenances of the boys who eat of the king's table, and so, as you shall see, do with your servants. For he saw both the desire for virtue sustained by God's clemency, and that continence preserved bodies beautiful and strong, and that faith overcame every deformity, and that no leanness changed the brightness of beauty.

8. We have recalled these things for this reason, dearest brethren, that, knowing the words of the Apostle Paul preaching of the virtues of the saints, in which he says: Considering the outcome of their manner of life, imitate their faith; we may persuade those who at the time of the fasts delight in the eating of meats, to imitate the continence of the saints: who could be overcome by no force, so as to lose the rigor of virtue, so that, fearing the empires of the Babylonians, they might show pleasure held captive in themselves, but remained free, and overcame the desires of the belly by reason, and conquered the tempting luxury of the palate, and left us examples of their fortitude, dwelling in Babylon in body, but in sense and faith abiding with the angels in the heavenly Jerusalem, so that they might teach every age thereafter that at the time of the fasts one must abstain from wine and meats, and take seeds from the earth, and drink water, in the company of which chastity is wont to be found.

9. Why should I recall the notable victories of the Maccabees? Who, that they might not eat unlawful meats and touch common foods, offered their bodies to torments: and are praised throughout the whole world in the churches of Christ, stronger than their punishments, than the fires with which they burned more fervently. In them all the devices of cruelty were conquered, and whatever the wrath of the persecutor had invented, the fortitude of those who suffered surpassed. Amid the punishments, mindful more of their father's law than of their pains: their entrails were torn, their limbs dissolved with corruption and gore, and yet their resolve remained unmoved: their soul was free, and despised present evils by hope of things to come.

The torturers grew weary, and faith did not grow weary: their bones were broken, and by the revolving wheel every joining of sinews and limbs was loosed, and fires breathing death rose up to an immense height: pans full of boiling oil were resounding with incredible terror, to fry the bodies of the saints; and yet amid all these things, walking in paradise in mind, they did not feel what they were suffering, but what they longed to see. For the mind, fortified by the fear of God, overcomes flames, and scorns the varied pains of torments. And when it has once given itself to virtue, whatever adversity befalls, it tramples upon and despises. Such was Paul, writing: In all these things we overcome, through him who loved us. For what the frailty of the flesh cannot endure, the soul, its natural weakness overcome, conquers, speaking with God through faith.

10. Therefore let those who imitate fasting, that is, the angelic manner of life, on earth, remember that saying, The kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness, and joy, and peace, and gladness. These, through continence, by a brief and small labor, obtain for themselves great and eternal rewards; and they receive much more than they offer, and by the glory of the time to come they mitigate their present distresses, because for those fighting for virtue in this arena, there will at some time be an end of the contest. For they who enter the fight against vices, and have dedicated their souls to the disciplines of wisdom, and, so far as the human condition allows, seek knowledge of things to come, seeing the kingdoms of the heavens through a mirror and image, by sense and faith, shall obtain eternal rewards, to be closed by no end of time.

Day and night succeed each other in fixed spans of hours, and gradually decreasing, they receive back what they lose, and what they receive, they give: meeting twice a year at the same measure, they do not remain in the same state, but by the brevity and length of hours they distinguish the moments, so as to make the diversity of the seasons useful to the world. For what the day borrows in its order and circuit from the times of night, night in turn receives back what it had bestowed: and while by turns they both give and receive, and, decreasing in a certain circle, lose little by little what they had gained, and, growing gradually, receive it back: they interpret the wisdom of God the Creator. And from this alternation of spans either the monthly orbit of the moon is completed, or the year of the sun returning through its own tracks is fulfilled, while they wax and wane, and the future succeeds to the past that has slipped away, the same times ever being changed into others.

Whence also the moon, founded by the most prudent artifice of God, and changing the varieties of its shapes, tends toward fullness, and hastens toward diminishment, so that whatever, growing, it had acquired, it may lose and forfeit in waning. Nor does it stand in the same state, but ascending and descending by certain steps, it goes from poverty to riches, and from riches returns to poverty: showing by the very diversity of its shapes that it is itself subject to change and was created. Who indeed could express in worthy speech the course of the sun, and the circle of the year corresponding to the monthly or lunar reckoning? While it revolves through the four seasons, and always returns into itself, and ascends and descends by the same measure, and glides on in eternal order: so that what the lunar span fills up in thirty days and nights, the sun's course fulfills in the spans of the revolving year.

And when it has come to the equality of day and night, and has stood for a little while in the balance of a just course, it hastens to inequality, forsaking that to which it had come. This, I think, Ecclesiastes says in his book, lest we draw from foreign fountains rather than our own: The spirit goes round and round, and returns to its circuits, signifying the annual course of the sun. For the same wheel of the seasons returns upon itself, coming back to that whence it had set forth.

11. But the holy and heavenly solemnity, sending forth to us the rays of its splendor, is bounded by no spans: and when the contests of the saints, and the labor of the present age, shall have received their end, there will succeed perpetual joy, and eternal festivity. Whence perfect men, separating their souls from every darkness of errors, already now sing the festival: Let us enter his gates with confession, his courts with hymns, sounding forth with glad voices the coming of the Savior.

For when wickedness reigned in the whole world, and the demons had poured darkness over human eyes, and none could bring them help, according to that which is written: I looked, and there was none to help; I considered, and there was none to take up my cause; that impiety might at last have an end, and the deceit of idolatry might be destroyed, the living Word of God, leaving nothing of our likeness behind, save only sin, which has no substance, deigned to come to us in a new way, that he might become the son of man, and remain the Son of God; for being born of a Virgin, this alone was believed by foolish minds, which the eyes showed. But from his works and the greatness of his signs, the invisible God was discerned by the prudent; and whom the face showed to be man, him the powers signified to be God, covered with the vileness of servile form.

For although the Jews handed him over, and cried out with impious voices that he should be crucified, blaspheming the Lord by the killing of his body: nay rather, by the slaying of the Lord's flesh they were made servants of impiety, yet he, going to death undaunted, that he might offer us an example of virtue, was shown to be the Lord of glory in the very passion, remaining, by the majesty of his impassible divinity, and passible in the flesh, according to the word of blessed Peter. And therefore, suffering for us, he did not flee death, lest we, warring against the property of his death through fear, should lose the victory. For if he had feared the cross, bearing things contrary to what he had taught, which of his disciples would willingly have fought for religion? He is therefore mocked by the foolish and unbelieving, who has subjected the whole world to his faith, and has bestowed upon the saints the dignity of the Christian name.

And although the greatness of his powers shines forth to all, they do not cease to blaspheme. But he who is mocked as God has been shown by his works to be God, so that he might overthrow the temples of demons, so that he might refute the shape-shifting impiety of the Origenists: whose author Origen so deceived the ears of the simple and the fickle by his persuasion, as the whirlpools coming from the deep are wont to dash upon the shores, and to be broken in their own foaming mass.

12. Let us therefore, roused by zeal for the faith, speak thus against him who has dared to write that bodies were fashioned as a ruin of rational creatures: If this sort of impiety pleases you, how is it that the Apostle Paul writes: I will that the younger women marry, bear children?

Was it for this reason that he commanded marriages, that from women bodies might be born, so as to prepare prisons for the Angels falling from heaven, and, as you would have it, turned into souls? Or rather, that in marital union, serving the sentence of God, he might preserve the human race? For if he wishes younger women to marry and to bear children, through whom human bodies are born, and if souls that have gone astray are united to bodies for the sake of penalties and punishments, there can be no doubt that the bonds of marriage are given to young women for the sake of the punishment of souls, and not for the sake of the order of generation. But far be it that we should believe this to be so, and that we should believe the covenant of husband and wife to be joined not for blessing but for sin.

Nor did God, when fashioning Adam and Eve, unite them with the blessing on account of souls falling from heaven and of fallen rational creatures, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth. For if souls were sent to earth on account of sins committed beforehand in the heavens, in order to be bound to bodies, then Paul lies when he writes: Marriage is honorable, and the bed undefiled. But he does not lie at all. Therefore bodies are not fashioned on account of the fall of souls, but so that the world, by the succession of those being born, may compensate for the losses of those dying, and overcome the brevity of human life by perpetual succession. For if souls falling and joined to bodies are blessed by God, they will be in a better condition after they have received bodies; but if they are said to receive bodies in order to undergo the punishment of sins, how are they blessed in the bodies into which they came on account of sin?

For one of two things must be true: either they were in a state of blessing before the fall, or, once joined to bodies after the fall, they cannot at all be blessed. For if blessing follows that former life, it forsakes this one; if it is transferred to this one, it is proved not to have been in that one. But if, even before they fell and were not yet clothed with human bodies, they were in a state of blessing, and, having fallen and having bodies, they were again blessed, then the former life and the latter will be alike as regards the condition of blessing—which is by no means consistent, since sinners deserve punishments, not those who do not sin deserve blessing. Whichever of the two they answer to be true, it will lie under fault, since these men refuse to keep the rule of ecclesiastical doctrine.

For whether souls falling from heaven on account of sins were bound to bodies as to a prison and chains, let them answer how Adam and Eve, male and female, living in bodies, were blessed? For not, according to their ravings, are naked souls called man and woman, but bodies which distinguish either sex. Or if before having bodies they dwelt in the heavens, and their manner of life then, without bodies, was blessed and worthy of blessing, by what reasoning are they blessed either before they fell, or, after they had fallen and, as punishment for the fall, had been joined to gross bodies, again granted a blessing? For blessing and punishment are not the same thing, since they differ greatly both in name and in effect; nor can things separated by so great a contrariety in any way be joined together. And how is a multitude of children promised to the just as a blessing, the Prophet saying: He who is least shall become a thousand, and the smallest a great nation?

13. Therefore let those also who wish to celebrate the Lord’s feasts despise the idols of Origen, and by reason overcome the disgracefulness of his doctrines. For just as the most impious of the pagans prefer their error and custom to the truth, fashioning idols in the likeness of men, and blaspheming the invisible God, while they invent in them shape and members and genital organs, confessing them now as male, now as female, and have changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of various forms—so Origen, by the credulity and impiety of believers, has set up, as it were, shrines of idols by the monuments of his treatises, which we, overturning by the authority of the Scriptures and by zeal for the faith, will use this comparison:

Just as masons, wishing to build a square house, measure equal walls on every side, and, directing them by rule and plumb-line, construct in the actual work what they had conceived in mind, and join the four sides of equal measure through the square at the corners above and below, keeping the equality begun and the increase little by little, so that the beauty of the work may unite the diversity of material, and the craftsman may preserve the corner-lines by his structure—so the teachers of the Church, having the testimonies of the Scriptures, lay firm foundations of doctrine, and remain undismayed, offering their works to Christ, and saying: Strengthen me in Thy words. For He Himself, of whom it is written: The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner, unites us and those who are above into one solemnity, toward which, sailing with swift course, let us in no way fear the rage of the heretics’ waves against us, which will be swiftly dissolved.

14. For just as the pilots of great ships, when they see an immense whirlpool coming from the deep, receive the foaming waves like hunters facing a most fierce beast, and sustain them by the opposition of the prow, turning the rudders now this way, now that, and, as the blowing of the winds and necessity demand, tightening the ropes or loosening them, and when the wave has subsided, on either side of the ship they release the straining bonds of the oars, that, resting a little, they may be prepared for the coming surge; and when it comes again, they tighten the heads of the oars and spread the blades, so that, the blasts being divided this way and that, the labor of each side may be equal, and what could not be sustained together may be more easily borne when divided—those who take care for themselves imitate the likeness of this example, and, using the dispensation of the divine words as a rudder, meet the tempest and the waves of the heretics, holding fast the law of God as their art, so that those who had fallen may be raised up; those who stand may persevere with a firm step; and all together may be preserved by the help of doctrine.

For what the rudder is to the pilot, that the law of God is to the soul: keeping the Lord’s Passover in accordance with which, let us prefer nothing else in the world to the love of God and of our neighbor, nor let us change our judgment because of the variety of human circumstances, which turn now this way, now that, so that, whereas we formerly served with base flattery those in power, if perchance the winds should turn, and riches be changed into poverty, loftiness into humility, glory into disgrace, we should suddenly turn into enemies, resisting to their face those whom we used to consider worthy of veneration, weighing our attachment by circumstance and not by faith.

Rather, revealing hidden enmities in time of need, and coming forth like serpents from their holes, so that we might not only be most ungrateful toward those by whose benefits we were sustained, rejoicing if we could possess the names of clients, but might, as if enemies, pursue them even unto blood: trampling upon those cast down and prostrate whom we formerly admired for their riches, proclaiming them the worst of all after their wealth has turned to poverty, praising power and slandering misfortune; honoring or despising someone not according to the nature of things but according to the variety of circumstance: so that those whom we formerly called masters and patrons, we should now call scoundrels and most worthless slaves; and our iniquity should appear from every side, while we either praise the unworthy, or persecute with detraction those worthy of praise, imitating that reproach which was spoken against blessed Job: For the few things for which you have sinned, you have been scourged.

15. Let us therefore love, not uncertain riches, but the most firm virtue: let not the hardship of poverty humble us, nor let riches exalt us, which are wont to depress and elevate the most foolish of men; but let us moderate both according to the honesty of things, bearing sorrows and joys alike with an even mind. The care of riches interrupts the sweetest sleep, contrives false accusations against the innocent, and, when it has gathered boundless wealth, prepares material for eternal fires. But after insatiable frenzy has fastened upon riches obtained, avarice is not satisfied, but despises the laws, scorns the flames of Gehenna, counts the future tribunal of judgment as nothing. Nor do enemies fight so much against their foes as riches fight against the virtues, unless they are tempered by reason and by mercy toward one's neighbors. These are preferred to nobility in cities; these grant an ancient lineage to new men. Never can the desire for riches be satisfied by any riches.

He who is greedy is always in need: he knows no measure, for whom what he lacks is as great as what he has. Hell is not filled by the dead: but the more it receives, the more it desires. Avarice therefore imitates it, and cannot be satisfied, but whatever it has, it seeks more; it counts as less than what it desires all that it possesses, ever boundless, ever immoderate, not quenching the burning of the sinner by the greatness of wealth, at banquets devouring not food but injustice: in courts mixing quarrels and discords, it gives birth to envy, through which one comes to murder: it is not master of its mind, but wavers as if drunk, having but one measure—always to seek beyond measure. The sea is enclosed by shores, and the waves coming from the deep, and the rage of the raging whirlpools, are checked by harbors, whether man-made or naturally most secure: but the desire for riches, unless bridled by reason, no counsel restrains, no law can mitigate, no abundance satisfies.

It is not ashamed, it does not fear the coming judgment, but with the desire of possessing more—just as the luxurious, given over to pleasures, are wont to rush into embraces, and to rage with lust—so avarice fills cities and villages and country estates with false accusations and dissensions: it possesses islands, seas, lands, shores, roads, passageways, and pursuits.

Avarice, in its desire to have more, exchanges wares by trade here and there, and by frauds and perjuries lays the insatiable foundations of riches.

16. Wherefore, despising such madness, let us seek riches in the worship of God, and the firmest possessions of chastity and holiness; adoring the one divinity of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; believing the resurrection of the dead to be incorruptible and to abide forever. For it cannot be that death should overcome that which has been strengthened by the passion of Christ, raising up the incorrupt and eternally abiding temple of His body.

Let us pray for the most pious Emperors; and let us adorn the precepts of fasting by observance of the law of God: because virtue, without any compulsion, guards its followers, and lifts up the mind, wavering amid various thoughts, from earthly to lofty things, contemplating not the beauty of bodies, but the order of conduct and morals, showing it the choirs of Angels rejoicing in heaven, and teaching the flashes of shining disciplines, so that in the present age, like a most valiant athlete, it may sustain the blows inflicted, and await for these the future glory: by no means subject to vices, but raising the inner man by its own desire toward eternal things; and, restraining every impulse of pleasure by reason, let it think on that which is to come, and, as far as human frailty can bear, withdraw from concern for bodily things, preferring spiritual to carnal things, so that, despising even the body itself, it may persuade one to enter upon a harder but better life than that of present pleasures, so that he who once served lust may with good freedom serve chastity, and, drawn back from precipices, may take up the gentle reins of fasting.

For if weak nature, without a ruler and master over the body, and unwilling to obey the commanding mind, stirs up countless shipwrecks for itself and for its ruler, and drags him to the most shameful lusts and the abyss of pleasures, so that he considers nothing honorable, but, fleeing the good, dwells in mire and filth.

But virtue, when it has ruled the mind like a charioteer, and, standing as it were in the chariot, has composed its impulses and various appetites with the reins of doctrine, lifts it from lowly things to lofty ones, showing invisible and eternal things in place of visible ones, prepares a dwelling in the heavens, and makes friends for it of those who, serving in the ministry of God, enjoy spiritual delights: so that what he here beheld in image, there he may perceive in truth, and may see a greater brightness than the rays of the sun, which comes down to us here only in part, so that we may proceed from lesser things to greater, and, as it were through letters and syllables, advance to reading: because both the one needs the other, and this needs that.

There, when we shall have been joined to the fellowship of the blessed, we shall hear: Well done, good and faithful servant, because you have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many things: enter into the joy of your Lord.

17. The fasts of the holy Forty Days shall begin from the eleventh day of the month Phamenoth, and the week of the Lord's Passion on the sixteenth day of the month Pharmuthi. And we shall end the fasts on the evening of the Sabbath, the twenty-first day of the same month Pharmuthi, and on the following Sunday we shall celebrate Easter, on the twenty-second day of the same month.

After which we shall join the seven weeks of the holy Pentecost: being mindful of the poor, loving God and neighbor, praying for enemies, showing kindness to persecutors, relieving the falls of the weak with consolation and mercy: that the tongue may always resound in the praises of God; that the just judgments of the Church may in no way be undone by unreasonable leniency, lest human decisions be preferred to the Law of God: whose friendship, if we shall desire it, we shall attain heavenly glory in Christ Jesus our Lord; through whom, and with whom, to God the Father be glory and dominion, with the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.

18. Salute one another with a holy kiss. The brethren who are with us salute you.

And this you ought to know: In place of the bishops who have died, the following have been appointed in the places of each: In the city of Nichius, Theodosius in place of Theopemptus: In Terenuthis, Arsinthius: In the town of Geras, Pirosus in place of Eudaemon: In Achais, Musaeus in place of Apollo: In Athribis, Athanasius in place of Isidore: In Cleopatris, Ofellus: In the town of Latopolis, Apellen in place of Timothy. Write, then, to these, and receive from them, according to custom, ecclesiastical letters.