Apology Against Jerome

And since among his very opening words he says: As if without me heretics could not exist, we must first show this, that we are heretics neither with him nor without him, so that when it has been established what we are, then at last the infamy of the words of others cannot be turned back upon us. I, as both he himself and all know, was placed in a monastery nearly thirty years ago, was regenerated through the grace of Baptism, and received the seal of faith through the holy men Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius, most esteemed and approved bishops in the Church of God, of whom one was then a presbyter of blessed memory Valerian's, another an archdeacon, another a deacon, and at the same time father and teacher to me of the Creed and the faith.

They, then, handed this down to me thus, and thus I hold it: That the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one deity, of one substance: a co-eternal, inseparable, incorporeal, invisible, incomprehensible Trinity, known perfectly, as it is, only to itself: because no one knows the Son but the Father, nor does anyone know the Father but the Son. And the Holy Spirit is he who searches even the deep things of God: and therefore he lacks all bodily visibility, but with that intellectual eye of the deity the Son so sees the Father and the Holy Spirit, as the Father sees the Son and the Holy Spirit; nor is there in the Trinity any diversity at all, except that this one is the Father, and this the Son, and this the Holy Spirit.

A Trinity in distinction of persons, a unity in the truth of substance: and that the only-begotten Son of God, through whom from the beginning all things that are were made, whether visible or invisible, in the last days took on human flesh and soul, was made man, and suffered for our salvation. And on the third day, that very flesh which had been laid in the tomb having been raised, he rose from the dead. And with that same flesh, glorified, he ascended into heaven, whence also he is awaited to come for the judgment of the living and the dead. But he has likewise, in a similar way, given us also hope of resurrection, so that in the same order, the same sequence, the same equal form, in which the Lord himself rose from the dead, we too believe we shall rise: not clouds or thin airs, as some slanderously allege, but these very bodies, in which we now either live or die, we shall receive back.

For how will it be true that we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, unless in it the true and entire nature of the flesh be preserved? Without any illusions, therefore, we confess the resurrection of this true and entire flesh of ours, in which we now exist.

But for greater confirmation of the matter I add something further, and, compelled by the necessity of the slanderers, I disclose a singular and special mystery of our Church.

For whereas all Churches hand down the sacrament of the Creed in such a way that, after they have said the remission of sins, they add the resurrection of the flesh, the holy Church of Aquileia, the Spirit of God foreseeing the future slanders against us, where it hands down the resurrection of the flesh, adds the syllable of a single pronoun: and instead of what the others say, "the resurrection of the flesh," we say, "the resurrection of this flesh." By which, of course, touching the forehead, as is the custom, at the end of the Creed with the seal, and confessing with the mouth the resurrection of this flesh, namely which we touch, we block off every avenue of the venomous tongue's slander against us. Is there anything fuller than this confession? Is there anything more perfect than this exposition? But nothing, as I see, has this great caution of the Holy Spirit availed us. Still the evil-speaking tongues find room for slander.

Unless, they say, you name the individual members expressly, and the head with its hair, the hands, the feet, the belly, and those parts which are beneath the belly, unless you designate them more explicitly, you have denied the resurrection of the flesh.

These are the inventions of a novel sage, which escaped the blessed Apostles when they handed down the faith of the Church: nor were they revealed to any of the Saints except to this one alone, through the spirit of the flesh. And now he proposes indeed a shameful thing: but let him hear what is both more honorable and truer than what he proposes. Christ is the firstfruits of them that sleep, who is also called the firstborn from the dead: as the Apostle also says of those who rise: The beginning is Christ, then they that are Christ's.

Having, then, as the undoubted firstfruits of our resurrection, Christ, why do we doubt about the rest, since it is certain that with such members, such hair, such flesh, and such bones as Christ rose, we too shall all rise? Because he himself, for this reason, after the resurrection offered himself to the disciples to be touched, so that no hesitation might remain about his resurrection. Since, then, Christ has given us so evident, and (so to speak) palpable and hand-touchable an example of his resurrection, does anyone rave so far as to think he will rise otherwise than he rose, who first opened the way of resurrection?

Whence also this affirms the truth of this confession, that the nature of this flesh indeed is the very same, nor is there any other which will rise, yet it will rise purged from vices, corruption having been put off, so that that saying of the Apostle may be true: It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory: it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body. As a spiritual, then, and glorious, and incorruptible body, it will be adorned and made illustrious with its own members, not assumed from elsewhere, according to that glory which the example of Christ set before us preserves, as the Apostle also says: Who will transform the body of our lowliness, conformed to the body of the glory of his Son.

Since, then, in every respect Christ is set forth as the pattern in the hope of the resurrection, and he himself is the firstborn of those who rise, and is himself the head of all creation, as it is written, Who is the head of all, the firstborn from the dead: that in all things he himself might hold the primacy: why do we vainly stir up battles of words and contests of evil suspicions, when in that confession which I set forth above the faith of the Church stands firm, and it is clear that it is not diversity of faith, but perversity of mind, that moves anyone to accusation? But since in this place, when arguing about the resurrection of the flesh, as is his custom, he mixed ridiculous and jesting things with serious matters, saying: "Certain women of ours, holding their breasts, or stroking their smooth cheeks, are wont to say, with a clapping of thigh and belly, what good is the resurrection to us, if the body will rise again fragile?

We shall be like the Angels in the future, and we shall have the nature of Angels." Which little women he here accuses, and whether they deserve to be torn at, let him see to it himself. Or if he thinks that he who preaches that it is not his own way to bite in retaliation is now biting even without retaliation: or at any rate, if he bears with equanimity that his little women be bitten back with true, not feigned nor invented, retorts, this, I say, let him see to himself. We meanwhile fulfill what he promised: we do not return retaliation. But as I see, this man, to whom the woman is displeasing who denies that she will have a fragile body from the resurrection, without doubt it pleases him that the fragility of the body should remain. And where is that which the Apostle says: It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power: it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body?

What fragility do you want to be in a spiritual body? And that it shall rise in power: how then shall it again be fragile? In power, how shall that which is fragile exist? Do not the little women speak better than you, who deny that fragility will any longer hold dominion over the body? Why do you mock those who follow the Apostle saying: For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality? The Apostles did not teach that the body which will rise from the dead will be fragile, but on the contrary they say it will rise in power and in glory. Whence do you now bring forth this teaching? Unless perhaps a new law is now being promulgated to the Church by some Jews, that we should learn these things too. For indeed this is truly the opinion of the Jews about the resurrection, that they will rise indeed, but so as to enjoy carnal delights and luxuries, and the other pleasures of the body.

But what else is the fragility of the body, but the corruption of the members, the irritation of the appetite, and the incitements of lust?

But suffer me, I beg, if indeed you love Christ, that the body which shall rise from the dead may be in incorruption without these things: let it be lawful that these things should at some time cease. Let us believe that even lawful intercourse ceases at the resurrection, lest the unlawful too creep in, so long as there is no forgetting of these things. Why is the belly, and what is under the belly, discussed and handled with such anxious curiosity? And you call us carnal and given to pleasures, when I see that it is you who ought to cease from these things, and do not believe them to cease even at the resurrection.

For we do not deny that the nature of this flesh, in which we now live, shall rise again; nor again do we so involve it that we wrap up along with it the vices of the flesh as well. But the flesh indeed shall rise, and not another in place of another, but this very flesh, nor shall it lose its nature, but shall lay aside its frailty and its vices. Otherwise that which remains frail will not be immortal either. And therefore we are heretics neither with you nor without you. For the faith of the Church, whose foster-children we are, walking a middle course between both extremes, neither denies the truth of the nature of the flesh or of the body (which shall rise from the dead), nor, contrary to the sentence of the Apostle, says that the incorruption of the future kingdom is to be possessed along with corruption.

We do not, therefore, say that the flesh, or the body, rises again with lost or amputated members, as you say, but the whole and entire body, only corruption, and disgrace, and frailty being laid aside, and all the vices of mortality being equally cut away, so that nothing at all is lacking from its nature to that spiritual body which shall rise from the dead, except that corruption.

I have answered this one heading concerning the resurrection at greater length than I had proposed, fearing lest again through brevity I should lie open to certain calumnies. And therefore I have made frequent mention not only of the body, in which they slander, but also of the flesh, and not only of the flesh, but I have added "of this flesh": and not only "of this flesh," but I have also recalled the nature of this flesh, nor was I content with this, but I said that not even the integrity of the members would be lacking to those who shall rise.

Yet in such a way that, according to the Apostle's definition, the body which shall rise is believed to be, from corruptible, incorruptible; from ignoble, glorious; from frail, immortal; from animal, spiritual; so that at last we may understand the members of the spiritual body to be free from any suspicion of corruption or of frailty. I have set forth my faith concerning the Trinity, I have set it forth concerning the Incarnation, the Passion and Resurrection, and concerning the second coming in glory, and concerning the future judgment of our Lord and Saviour. I have set it forth also concerning the resurrection of our flesh, and I have left, I think, nothing ambiguous. What now remains? Nothing, I think, as far as faith is concerned.

"But in this," he says, "I accuse you, that you have translated Origen, who says that there will be a restoration of all things, in which not only all sinners are to be absolved, but even the devil himself and his angels, he says, will at some time be released from their punishments, so that the restoration of all things may accordingly be understood. And he says that souls were created before bodies, and that they were brought down from heaven and inserted into bodies." I am now doing nothing on Origen's behalf, nor am I writing an apology for him. For whether he stands with God, or has fallen, he must see to that himself: he stands or falls to his own Lord. But I am compelled to make mention of him in certain matters, because while our rhetorician accuses him, he no longer attacks obliquely but openly, with drawn sword, assails me, and is wholly borne against me. And why do I say, he assails me?

Nay rather, that he may vent his fury upon me, he does not even spare his own teacher, while he thinks that from those little books of his which I have translated he can twist back some calumny against me. Because among the other things which he blames in us, he has also spitefully added this, saying that I chose this work to translate, which neither he himself, nor any other of the ancient translators, would have chosen. The cause of this matter, therefore—why I undertook this work above all—since this is what most gnaws at me, I will explain as briefly and as truthfully as I can.

Although this may seem superfluous to you, my dearest son (Apronianus), who know well how the matter happened, yet it is fitting that those who do not know should also come to know it; and at the same time also because this too, not he alone but his whole school, boasts of us, that whereas we had promised one thing in the Prefaces about how we would translate, we did otherwise in the work: therefore I shall answer not only them, but also others whose minds either their own envy, or another's accusation, disturbs.

Macarius, a man distinguished for faith, learning, and nobility, and for a renowned life, when he had in hand certain small works against Fate, or Astrology, and was composing them with useful and most necessary toil, but in some parts hesitated, because the matter was very difficult, in discussing the dispensations of Divine providence, said that something like this was shown to him by the Lord in sleep: that a certain ship was shown to him approaching from afar over the sea, which, when it had entered port, would loose the knots of his hesitation. Rising, then, anxious in thought about the vision, he said that we had arrived just at that time; to whom he immediately made known both his little works and his uncertainty and his vision. He then asked what Origen, whom he had heard to be most highly esteemed among the Greeks, thought about such matters, and he begged that his opinions on each particular point be briefly set forth to him.

I said first that the matter was difficult to accomplish; yet I said that the holy martyr Pamphilus had written something of this sort in part in his Apology. He immediately demanded that this be turned into Latin for him. I said I had no experience of such a work, and that I had grown almost numb through nearly thirty years' neglect of the Latin language. Yet he persisted, begging that I give him, in whatever style, at least some acquaintance with those matters which he desired to have shown. And when I had done this in such style as I could, he was kindled with a greater desire to know those very matters more fully, from which those few things I had translated seemed to have been drawn. Pressing me more vehemently as I made excuses, he began to entreat, calling on God as witness, that I should not deny him such aids as might help him toward a good work.

And since he insisted strongly, and I perceived that his desire was according to God, I at last consented, and did translate.

In the little prefaces of both works, however, and especially in the little book of Pamphilus, which I had translated first, I set forth first of all my own faith, and declared that I indeed believe as the catholic faith holds. But whatever I might read or translate, I do so with the reservation of my faith intact.

In these books "On First Principles," moreover, I gave this warning too: that since in these very books certain things were found written in a catholic manner concerning the faith, as the Church preaches, but other things contrary to these, though spoken concerning one and the same matter—it seemed good to me that these things should always be set forth according to that rule which he himself had put forth in the exposition of catholic doctrine, and that whatever was found contrary to himself—or inserted by others (for this his own letter's complaint attests)—I should either cast aside, or at least pass over as having nothing edifying for the faith. I do not think it superfluous, moreover, to insert here the very passages from my little prefaces, so that nothing we say may lack a witness. But lest there be error in reading, from those things which we now insert into this writing from elsewhere: if they are mine, they have single marks against the headings; if they are my accuser's, double ones.

From the little preface to the Apology of Pamphilus, after some remarks, we said thus: "How then Origen thinks, let the tenor of this little book teach. But concerning those things which are found contrary to himself in him, what the reason may be, we shall explain in a brief statement added at the end. We, however, hold as it has been handed down to us by the holy Prophets: that the holy Trinity is coeternal, and of one power and substance; and that the Son of God, in the last time, was made man, and suffered for our sins, and rose from the dead in that very flesh in which he suffered; on account of which he has granted to the human race the hope of resurrection also.

But we say that the resurrection of the flesh is not by any illusions, as some slanderously claim; rather we believe that this very flesh in which we now live shall rise again, not another in place of another, nor do we say the body will be other than that of this flesh. Whether, then, we say that the body shall rise, we say it according to the Apostle: for he used this term. Or whether we say flesh, we confess it according to the tradition of the Creed. For it is a foolish invention of calumny to think that the human body is something other than flesh. Whether, then, we say flesh according to the common faith, or body according to the Apostle, that which shall rise: it must be believed just as the Apostle defined, that what shall rise, shall rise in power, and in glory, an incorruptible and spiritual body.

Therefore, with the prerogatives of the future body, or flesh, being preserved, the resurrection of the flesh must be believed to be entire and perfect, so that both the nature of the flesh may be preserved the same, and the condition and glory of the incorrupt and spiritual body not be diminished. For thus it is written: 'Because corruption shall not possess incorruption'. These are the things which are preached in Jerusalem in the Church of God, by its holy priest John: these things we, together with him, both say and hold. If anyone believes or teaches otherwise than these, or thinks that we believe otherwise than we have set forth, let him be anathema." If anyone, then, wishes to have proof of our faith, let him have it from these things. But whatever I read, or assert, or translate, I do with the reservation of this our faith intact, according to the Apostle: "Proving all things, holding fast that which is good, abstaining from every appearance of evil".

And as many as follow this rule, peace be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.

Since, then, I declared these things concerning my own faith before any of my accusers arose, lest anyone should perhaps say that, admonished or compelled by them, I was now saying these things which I had not held before: and since I had promised that, if that necessity of translating required anything, I would do so with the state of my faith kept intact, how is any place still given to my accusers, when surely the very first utterance of my confession makes me safe and fortified against all suspicion of contrary doctrine? Besides, as I also said before, I have learned from the word of the Lord that each one shall be justified or condemned by his own words, and not by another's.

But also, no less, in that little preface which I prefixed to the books "On First Principles" themselves, how I said the faith of my translation was to be observed, may equally be proved from the very words themselves. For it is right that these things too, which pertain to the matter, be inserted from that source.

For when, out of honor, I had made mention of this man who now brings these things forward as a charge, because he before us had first translated a great many works of Origen, and I had praised either his eloquence in explaining, or his diligence in translating, and said that he was to be followed by me in a similar work, after some remarks I added this also: "Him, then, we too, though not with the powers of eloquence, yet according to the rules of discipline, as far as we are able, follow: observing this, that we do not put forth those things which are found in Origen's books discrepant from himself and contrary." Remember, you who read, let not this briefly stated saying pass you by, which I said: that I would not put forth those things which are found in Origen's books discrepant from himself and contrary.

For I did not promise in general that I would not put forth whatever might be contrary to the faith, but whatever was contrary to himself, or discrepant from himself—not whatever might be discrepant from me, or from someone else. Let not my enemies, then, snatching at this saying, breed calumnies, so as to say that I promised that if anything is contrary to, or discrepant from, our faith, I would put it forth. Even if I could have done this, I would not have dared to promise it. And if indeed you find this done in my work, you may embrace it. But if in some respect it seems to you less fulfilled, you cannot blame me, since you do not hold me to any such bond of promise.

But let us join together the rest also. « Of which diversity, I say, I have set forth the causes more fully to thee in the Apologeticum which Pamphilus wrote on behalf of the books of Origen himself, a very brief little book having been added, in which, by clear proofs, as I think, we have shown that his books have been corrupted in very many places by heretics and malevolent men, and especially those which you now require me to translate, that is, περὶ Ἀρχῶν, which can be rendered either "Of Principles" or "Of Principalities," which are indeed both most obscure and most difficult. For he there disputes concerning matters in which philosophers, having spent their whole lifetime, could find nothing.

But our author here did as much as he could, so that he might turn to piety the faith concerning the Creator, and the reasoning concerning creatures, which they had drawn into impiety. » Here too look more carefully, that it may not escape you, that we spoke of the faith concerning the Creator, but the reasoning concerning creatures: knowing that those things which are said of God pertain to faith, but those things which we discuss concerning creatures pertain to reasoning. But let us add further what follows: « If then we found anything in his books contrary to what he himself had piously determined elsewhere concerning the Trinity, we either passed over such a thing as adulterated and foreign, or we set it forth according to that rule which we frequently find affirmed by himself. » Have I here too spoken carelessly about anything? Have I said anything, since I set it forth according to the rule of our faith, which was indeed already quite beyond the manner of an interpreter, and of one translating from Greek into Latin?

But I said that I set it forth according to that rule which we frequently find affirmed by himself. Likewise we added this: « If indeed, speaking as it were to men already skilled and knowing, wishing to pass by briefly, he expressed something too obscurely: we, that the passage might become clearer, added what we had read more openly on the same matter in other books, striving for explanation. Yet we said nothing of our own, but restored to him, though said elsewhere, what was his own. »

I think that even before the most unjust judges this confession alone might suffice for me, in which I said, we said nothing of our own, but restored to him, though said elsewhere, what was his own. Have I made myself liable in anything? Did I promise that I would say anything of my own? Where is that which they accuse, which they slander, which they falsely allege that I said, that I removed the bad and said the good, and translated whatever things are good?

Let them blush at last, and cease to bring forth falsehoods, and to take upon themselves the work of the devil, by accusing their brothers. Let them hear that we said nothing of our own, and let them hear it again and again, that we said nothing of our own, but restored to him, though said elsewhere, what was his own. And lest they think that we set our hand to this work without the Lord's mercy, let them see that we foretold beforehand these very things which they are doing.

For after this we added also this: « I have given this warning in the Preface for this reason, lest perhaps the slanderers should think they have again found matter for accusation. » As to what I said, "again," the reason is this, that already they had slandered the letter on the faith of the holy Bishop John written to holy Theophilus, when they pretended the human body to be I know not what other thing than flesh; for that reason I put "again." But let them see, I say, what perverse and contentious men do. Meanwhile, so great a labor has been undertaken by us, if indeed, with your prayers, God has helped, not that we might close the mouth of slanderers, which cannot be done, though perhaps even this God might do, but that we might furnish material to those wishing to advance in the knowledge of things.

But that you may know that we foresaw and foretold that they would falsify these things, see what we joined in what follows: This indeed I testify and charge, in the sight of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, before everyone who shall either copy or read these books, by the faith of the kingdom to come, by the sacrament of the resurrection from the dead, by that eternal fire which is prepared for the Devil and his angels: so may he not possess that place by eternal inheritance, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and where their fire shall not be quenched, and their worm shall not die, let him not add anything to this Scripture, nor take away, nor insert, nor alter it. And yet after all these things, so fearful and so horrible sacraments of adjuration, those who say they believe in the future resurrection of the flesh did not fear to falsify and corrupt these things.

If they believed even this very thing, that He is God, they would never commit such criminal and wicked deeds. Yet where, in these things which we have set forth, was Origen exalted with praises even to heaven, as is falsely charged, where was he made an Apostle, or a Prophet, or was anything of the kind said by us concerning him, such as he himself had written about him? Or in what else at all do they find a place for accusation? We set forth our faith beforehand, which I think agrees in all things with the confession of the Church. We distinguished the manner of our translating, an example of which indeed he himself, who now stands forth as accuser, had given us in very many places. What purpose I pursued in translating, I have set forth.

Now whether I have been able to fulfill this fully or less fully, let it be judged by readers, by whom one is accustomed to be either praised or laughed at, but not called to account as for a crime, when foreign words are rendered into another tongue, whether properly or less properly. 17. But since we have made mention of those who, however these things are, could nevertheless in no way accuse them unless they were false, I think it fitting to insert into this our Apology the very chapter itself, upon which they laid their falsifying hands, lest they think that I withhold, out of concern for myself, that upon which, with their own addition, they cast false accusations.

For when, in a certain place of the aforesaid Work which we translated, a question was raised against those who say that God is corporeal, and describe Him with human members and form (which the heresy especially of the Valentinians and the Anthropomorphites is accustomed to assert, to which these accusers of ours have, as I see, given their hands all too much), and Origen, defending the faith of the Church against them, affirmed that God is in every way incorporeal, and therefore also invisible, being provoked by the order of the question, he replied against the heretics in this place certain things, which have been rendered by us in this manner into Latin. From Book I of περὶ Ἀρχῶν, after some things (Chap. 1, n. 8): But these assertions perhaps may seem to have less authority with those who wish to be instructed from the holy Scriptures concerning divine matters, and seek to have it approved to them from there, how the nature of God transcends the nature of bodies.

See then whether the Apostle does not say this same thing, when he speaks of Christ, saying: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For it is not, as some think, that the nature of God is visible to one and invisible to others, because the Apostle did not say, the image of the invisible God to men, or invisible to sinners; but he pronounces very firmly concerning the very nature of God, saying, image of the invisible God. But John also, saying in the Gospel, No one has ever seen God, plainly declares to all who are able to understand, that there is no nature to which God is visible—not as though He were indeed visible by nature, and only escapes and exceeds the sight of a weaker nature, but because by nature it is impossible for Him to be seen.

But if you should ask of me what I think even of the Only-begotten Himself: whether I would say that even to Him the nature of God is visible, which is by nature invisible—let this not seem to you at once either impious or absurd: for we shall give a reason accordingly. It is one thing to see, another to know. To be seen and to see belongs to bodies: to be known and to know belongs to an intellectual nature. Whatever therefore is proper to bodies, this is to be understood neither of the Father nor of the Son. But what pertains to the nature of the Godhead, this holds between the Father and the Son. Finally, He Himself also in the Gospel did not say: that no one has seen the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father; but He says, No one knows the Son except the Father: neither does anyone know the Father except the Son.

From which it is plainly indicated, that whatever among corporeal natures is said to see or to be seen, this between the Father and the Son is said to be known and to know, through the power of knowledge, not through the frailty of visibility. Since therefore of an incorporeal and invisible nature it is properly said neither to see nor to be seen, therefore neither is the Father said in the Gospel to be seen by the Son, nor the Son by the Father, but to be known. But if someone should propose to us, why it is said: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God? Much more from this, as I think, will our assertion be confirmed. For what else is it to see God with the heart, except, according to what we have explained above, to understand and know Him with the mind?

This chapter, those who were sent from the East to lay snares for me have tried to defame, not only by perverse understanding, but even by adulteration of the words. Which I, for this reason, just as certain other things of the writer whom I was translating, could not hold suspect, nor did I judge it should be omitted, because in it nothing was said concerning the comparison of the Father and the Son, but the question was concerning the very nature of the Godhead, whether any term of visibility seemed in any way fitting to it. I replied, as we said above, to these heretics, who assert that God is visible for this reason, because they also say He is corporeal, on the ground that vision properly belongs to a body. Whence also those Valentinians, whom we mentioned above, heretics, say that the Father begot, and the Son was begotten, corporeally and visibly.

Fleeing therefore, as I suppose, Origen, from the term "vision" as suspect, says that it is better, in the nature of the Godhead, that is, between the Father and the Son, to use that word which the Lord Himself defined, saying: No one knows the Son except the Father, neither does anyone know the Father except the Son: he believed therefore that every occasion should be excluded from the aforesaid heresies, if he spoke rather of "knowledge" in the nature of the Godhead, than of "vision," since "vision" seemed to afford some occasion to the heretics. But "knowledge" of one nature between the Father and the Son preserves the indissoluble truth, especially since such is the authority of the Gospel. At the same time he believed that by this a great deal of caution would result, lest the Anthropomorphites, in whatever way, should hear that God is visible.

This reasoning, since it made no difference in the Trinity, seemed to me that it ought not to be altogether rejected, even if we avoided certain words perhaps too incautiously placed in the Greek. Let it still remain to the judgment of readers, whether this too seems useful or less useful against the aforesaid heresies. Yet let us suppose that even those who know how to judge concerning letters and matters of this kind, in whom skill is joined with the fear of God: who do nothing out of contentiousness, nor for empty glory, whose mind is free from envy and favor and hatred, should say that this chapter is of little value for instruction, or for the overthrowing of the aforesaid heresies—is it then not permitted to pass it by, and to run past it as of too little force for repelling adversaries? Suppose it be idle—is it therefore also criminal? How shall it be reckoned as a crime, where the equality of invisibility between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is affirmed?

I do not think this seems so to anyone. And why do I say "to anyone"? But not even to these very accusers of mine did anything in my writings seem such as could give offense. Finally, if they had thought this, they would have set down my very words, just as I had translated them.

But now listen to what they do, and inquire whether their misdeed had any precedent. In the place where it was written: “But if you ask of me what I feel even about the Only-begotten himself—if I should say that even in him the nature of God is not visible, since he is naturally invisible—let this not at once seem to you either impious or absurd; for we shall give a reason accordingly”; instead of what we wrote, “for we shall give a reason accordingly,” they wrote, “let it not at once seem to you impious or absurd,” because just as the Son does not see the Father, so neither does the Holy Spirit see the Son.

If this man (Eusebius of Cremona), who was sent from the monastery to Rome as though most skilled in calumny, had committed such a thing while engaged in the forum or in secular business, everyone knows what would follow from the public laws against one guilty of such a crime. But now, because he has left secular life and turned from the shiftiness of public affairs to the monastery, and has attached himself to a noble master (Jerome), he is taught by him again to rage in the name of modesty, to be mad in the name of quiet, to stir up seditions in the name of peace, to stir up war in the name of concord, to sow discord in the name of harmony; to be faithless in the name of faith, a forger in the name of truth. Believe me, the wickedness of this crime would even have been a genuine model, had not that Jezebel come to your mind.

For it is she who contrived this charge against Naboth the Jezreelite for the sake of his vineyard, and commanded the elders of iniquity to press him with false accusations, as though he had “blessed,” that is, blasphemed, God and the king. But which is more fortunate in this—she who commands, or those who obey the command of iniquity? These are grave matters, and, as I think, a crime almost unheard of in the Church until now. But something further is added. You ask what that means: “That the guilty become judges, and that plotters pronounce sentences.” For that a writer should err, or slip in a word, is nothing new, and, I think, worthy of pardon, since Scripture also says, “For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man”. Is an error in wording supposed? Let it be corrected, amended, if usefulness demands it, and removed.

But to insert into another’s writings what was not written, and to interpolate falsehoods for this purpose alone—to defame a brother’s life, to tamper with another’s writings, to brand the writer with a mark, to creep into the ears of the peoples, to trouble the hearts of the simple, to bring nothing else from it but a stain of reputation among men—see whether this is the work of any other than him who was a liar from the beginning, and who, by accusing the brethren, received the name devil, that is, accuser. For when he (Eusebius) recited this false sentence at Milan, and I said that what he was reading was false, being asked from whom he had received the copies, he answered that a certain matron (Marcella) had given them to him—about whom, whoever she is, I say nothing, but I leave her to her own conscience and God’s.

For me, however, in this matter the testimony of God and of you suffices—that is, of you and of that holy man, Macarius, for whom I was doing this work, who either read my very drafts from the beginning, or still retain the copies, even though not yet completed and fully corrected—namely, that just as the Son does not see the Father, so neither does the Holy Spirit see the Son; that is, that I not only never wrote otherwise, but on the contrary, I point out that he falsified it. If anyone denies that the Son does not see the Father as the Father sees the Son, and that the Holy Spirit does not see the Father and the Son as the Father sees the Son and the Holy Spirit, let him be anathema. For he does see, and sees most truly, but as God sees God, and light sees light, and not as flesh sees flesh, but as the Holy Spirit sees, not by bodily senses, but by the powers of the Godhead.

If anyone denies these things, let him be anathema forever. But whoever troubles you, as the Apostle says, shall bear the judgment, whoever he. I recall indeed that one of them, when accused of having falsified these things, answered me that it was so in the Greek, but that I had wished to change it in the Latin. In this I omit to pursue the point that they do not even speak the truth; but let us grant that it is so in the Greek, and that I had not written this in the Latin. For I had promised in my little Prefaces that I would do something of this sort. But if I had done so, in order to render more suitably in Latin what was offensive there, what had I done without a promise, or without reason on my part? You certainly, who had not found this in my Latin copies, where did you read it written in your own papers? I who translated it did not write it.

You who accuse me, and do not possess any such writing of mine, from what source do you construct a charge against me? Or ought I to be accused from the very point where you have spoken falsely? I speak the matter quite plainly. These are four books which I translated, in which the Trinity is discussed here and there on almost every page. Let the whole be read again: if anywhere such a sense concerning the Trinity as they slanderously attribute to this passage should be found in our translation, then at last let it be believed that this too was uttered in the sense they invent. But if throughout the whole body of the books that distinction of the Trinity is nowhere found, is it not equally mad and foolish to claim that a heresy has been confirmed in one single chapter by the very man who assailed it in a thousand chapters? But the very sequence of the matter sufficiently instructs any prudent person.

For if he had found this in my writings, and had truly conceived some scruple from that very reading, since he had me present at Rome at that time, as you yourself know, he would certainly have inquired at once, and would have brought the very writing to me: since indeed up to that very time he was accustomed to see me, greet me, and share in prayer with me, he would without doubt have conferred with me about the things by which he seemed offended: he would have asked how it had been put by me, how it stood in the Greek. 21. Surely he would have thought it glory enough for himself if he had been seen to have brought about some emendation in our words or writings through his own effort. Or if madness of mind compelled him not so much to correct an error as to bring it into public view, he would surely never have chosen to tear apart an absent man, whom he could have refuted more severely present.

But because a guilty conscience of falsehood deterred him, he did not bring the matter to me, whose writings they were which he wished to slander, but he carries it around through houses, through matrons, through monasteries, through each of the brethren individually, wherever he might be able to disturb by mere hearing. And he did this at the very time when he was about to depart suddenly from the City, lest, if apprehended, he should have to give account of his deed. From there, as one may understand, according to the instruction of his master, he goes about slandering through all Italy, stirring up crowds, disturbing churches, polluting the ears even of priests, and in all these things abusing our restraint as though it were a guilty conscience. These are the deeds of the disciples. But the eastern master himself, who, writing to Vigilantius, had said (Ep. 61, n.

22), “Through me the Latins know all the good things of Origen, and are ignorant of the bad”; these very books which I had now translated, he retranslated, and inserted everything that I had passed over as objectionable, so that now, contrary to his own former statement, the Romans might through him come to know the bad things of Origen, and be ignorant of the good. From this point he now tries to bring not only Origen, but me myself, under suspicion of heresy. From this point he ceaselessly sends out his dogs, who pursue me through cities, through streets, and even as I pass along the road, with the barking of slanders, and attempt against me all things sayable and unsayable. What crime, I ask you, have I committed, if I have done what you have done? Yet if it is indeed wicked to follow your examples, what do you judge of yourself?

But tell me, O master—for now the reply must be turned to you—is the fault of a writer, if there is any, rightly laid upon the reader, or upon the translator? “Far be it,” he says: “by no means.” Why do you subtly ensnare me? Have not I too read? Have not I too translated? But read what I have translated; see if you find anything dogmatic in it: surely you will find some of what you now summon to condemnation.

Finally he says: “If you wish to know more fully how with me even the suspicion of such doctrines has always been execrable, read my Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, and from what I wrote there you will know what I felt about him, whether reading or translating him.” And is this the gravity of you, so great a master, that you condemn in one place him whom you praise in another, and that he whom in your Prefaces you called the second teacher of the Churches after the Apostles, you now call a heretic? Who that was ever called a teacher of the Churches could be a heretic? “I erred,” he says, “in this.” But how long do you append your little Preface? Read the Commentaries, but those which I have designated.

And to whom does this seem just, that he who wrote so many books, in almost all of which he carries his praises up to heaven; which for so many years now have been read by all, and are still read; from which very many, thus instructed, have already departed from this world and gone to the Lord, holding this opinion about Origen which they had learned from the assertion of his books, and departed hoping, according to his testimony, to find him the second teacher of the Churches after the Apostles—and now, as he writes again, they find him condemned along with impious heretics and pagans. How does he, out of contentiousness, change himself, and say that he whom for nearly thirty continuous years, reading and writing, he equated with the Apostles, he now pronounces a heretic? Has he now read some new books of his, which he had not read before? But from these same statements, he calls him both an Apostle then and a heretic now, and this could in no way be so.

For either he spoke rightly then, and now is perverted by some envy and contentiousness, and is not to be heeded; or if he spoke wrongly then, and now condemns himself, what judgment then will he expect from others concerning himself, he who by the Apostle’s own sentence is condemned by himself? 22. And what, he says, is repentance cut off? No: one errs, and especially in word: yet it is indeed permissible to repent of an error. But does someone at the same time do penance, at the same time accuse, at the same time judge, and at the same time condemn? As if, indeed, if some harlot should refrain from whoring for one night or two, she ought forthwith to write laws about chastity, and not only establish laws, but also dig up the graves of all women already deceased, on the suspicion that they led a life like her own. In doing penance for having been a heretic, you do well. What is this to me, who was never a heretic?

You do penance for an error—you do rightly; provided, however, that you conduct the penance itself lawfully, not by accusing, but by beseeching; not by condemning, but by weeping. For what truth of penance is there, where the one doing penance himself dictates to himself the decree of indulgence? He who repents of what he has spoken ill does not heal his wound by speaking ill again, but by keeping silence. For thus it is written: “You have sinned; be still.” But now you set yourself up as guilty, and again absolve yourself from guilt, and from the guilty party make yourself the judge. This misery now is not yours, who mock us, but ours, who suffer ourselves to be so mocked.

Nevertheless let us come to these two Commentaries, which, all his other little works having been condemned and renounced, he alone excepted, and let us see how chastely and continently he has conducted himself in these.

For from these alone he wishes his faith to be proved, and that he is opposed to Origen in all things. Let them therefore be produced, these which alone of all his writings please him, that is, three books on the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians: and on Ecclesiastes, I think, one. But for now let the Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, which occurs first, be read again. There too I approve him as an associate and of like mind and συμμύστην, as he himself says, in the things which he censures. And first of all, concerning those little women whom he mocks, who say that after the resurrection they will not have a fragile body, since they are to be like the Angels, let us see what he himself thinks.

In the third book of the Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, under that heading where it is written: He who loves his wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, after some remarks he says thus, "Let us therefore, husbands, cherish our wives, and let our souls cherish our bodies, so that wives may be reduced into husbands, and bodies into souls, and there be no longer any diversity of sexes; but as among the Angels there is no male and female, so we also, who are to be like the Angels, may now begin to be what has been promised to us in the heavens."

Knowing that you wrote these things in your Commentaries, how do you propose them as an example of your faith, and as things to be refuted which you censure: how do you accuse women out of your own words? Then, what woman ever said that wives are converted into husbands, and bodies reduced into souls, as you write?

If bodies are to be reduced into souls, then according to you not only will there be no resurrection of the flesh, but not even of bodies, which you say these men whom you have made heretics confess. Where then shall we further seek the body, if it is reduced into soul? For it will then be wholly soul, and nowhere body. And again, if wives are to be changed into husbands, according to what you added, that there be no diversity of sexes at all, as though to show by this that the female sex indeed will perish, being reduced into the male, while only the male will remain: I do not know whether the female sex would permit you to say this of itself.

Yet even if it were conceded by them, by what consequence could you show that the male sex is there necessary, where the female is not proved necessary, since by a certain natural bond the one sex so needs the other, that if the one does not exist, there is no function for the other. For if man is thought to receive at the resurrection only the earthen form which he had in paradise, where is that which is written, that He made them male and female, and blessed them? But if, as you and the little women whom you accuse say, there is neither male nor female, how then will bodies be reduced into souls, or women be converted into men, since paradise does not admit of either being absent, and the likeness of the Angels, as you yourself also confess, admits of neither at all?

And I marvel how you demand of others an opinion on the diversity of sexes, concerning which, when you wish to discourse, you entangle yourself in such knots that you can by no means extricate yourself. How much more rightly would you act, if in such matters you were to imitate us whom you blame, and were to allow these things to be known to God alone, as the truth requires; and were to confess rather that you do not know, than write things which shortly afterward you yourself would condemn?

I would like him, with his own conscience as witness, to tell me now—not to say if in some little work of mine, but if even in a letter of mine, which I had written somewhat carelessly to some friend—had he found it written that bodies are reduced into souls, and wives into husbands, whether he would not have ordered this to be written in bronze letters upon the gates of the cities, whether he would not have had it recited in the forum, in the senate-house, even before the rostra.

How many titles of accusation would he have composed from this, what volumes would he have written, with what force he would have pressed upon me with all the arms and weapons of his most fertile breast, saying, that if you do not believe me when I say that he deceives when he says the body rises, and denies the flesh, or when he indeed confesses the flesh but denies the members and the sex: behold, see how he himself wrote in his letter, that bodies are turned into souls, and wives into husbands. But we indeed, when you write these things, not only do not accuse you as a heretic, but we make satisfaction to you as to a master.

Yet those women, whom you have torn with such unworthy and dishonorable insults, will exhibit before the tribunal of Christ both these things which you teach in these Commentaries, and those things which, forgetful of yourself, you again write with insults: and there both will be recited, where the favor of men will now cease, and applause purchased by praises will fall silent: and they will be judged with you for these your words or deeds before the just Judge, Christ.

But let us proceed to discuss what he also writes concerning questions, for this pertains to faith, in which he varies as much concerning the resurrection of the flesh, as in other things, so also in questions. Likewise from the first book of the Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, on that heading where the Apostle says: As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him, he speaks thus: "For 'foundation of the world' the Greek has written καταβολῆς κόσμου.

But this is not the same as what constitutio means. Whence we too, on account of the poverty of our language and the novelty of the matters, and as someone has said, because the speech of the Greeks is broader and their language more felicitous, will endeavor not so much to translate word for word, which is impossible, as to explain the force of the word by a certain circumlocution. καταβολή is properly said when something is cast down, and sent from a lofty place into a lower place, or when some thing takes its beginning. Whence also those who lay the first foundations of future buildings are said καταβεβληκέναι, that is, to have cast down the beginnings of the foundations.

Paul, therefore, wishing to show that God fashioned all things out of nothing—not creature, not condition, not made thing—referred to him καταβολήν, that is, the beginning of the foundation, so that, not as with Mani and the other heresies, which posit a maker and matter, something else from which creatures were made should have preceded the creatures, but that all things came into being out of nothing. But that he testified that we were elected to be holy and blameless before him, that is, before God, before the fabric of the world, pertains to the foreknowledge of God, to whom all future things are already made, and before they come to be all things are known: just as Paul himself is predestined in his mother's womb, and Jeremiah is sanctified in the womb, chosen, strengthened, and sent as a prophet in the type of Christ to the nations."

Thus far he has set forth one exposition, but under whose persona this sort of understanding is to be taken, he has not expressed.

He has only done this, that from what follows he disapproves of what precedes; for he says in what follows: "But there is another who tries to show God to be just." Whence he clearly shows that by that former exposition the justice of God is not shown: which indeed is impious: but by this one whom he calls "another," whose assertion he undoubtedly wishes to show to be indubitable and catholic among all, he has given such testimony, that by this his assertion he tries to show God to be just. But let us see what this other says, who proclaims God to be just.

"But another," he says, "who tries to show God to be just, that he chooses each one not from prejudgment of his own knowledge, but from the merit of the elect, says that before the visible creatures—heaven, earth, seas, and all things that are within them—there were other invisible creatures, among which also souls, which for certain causes known to God alone, were cast down into this vale of tears, into this place of our affliction and pilgrimage, in which the saint, being established, prayed that he might return to his former seat, saying, Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged, I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Cedar: my soul has been a stranger long. And in another place: Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And elsewhere, It is better to return, and to be with Christ. And elsewhere, Before I was humbled, I sinned, and other things similar to these." Therefore, before the souls, they say, were cast down into the world.

You say, Master, they say, and you do not say who these are who say this, that souls existed before they were cast down into the world. Have I not then rightly said, he says, that you are a mole, and do not see? I have already said above, that those say these things who assert that God is just, whom certainly, if you had a heart, you would understand to be myself. For I am not so impious as to set myself up as another and different from those who defend God as just, which indeed all do who are of sound mind. "Say then, say, Master, what these, who are you, say?" Therefore before the souls, they say, were cast down into the world, and the world came to be out of souls, itself cast down to the lowest place along with its inhabitants, God chose Paul, and those like him before himself, who were holy and blameless. But no one is chosen except from among many, and where there are some baser, there election takes place.

But just as in the Babylonian captivity, when the people were led into Chaldea by Nebuchadnezzar, prophets were sent—Ezekiel, Daniel, the three Youths, Haggai and Zechariah—not because they themselves had merited captivity, but that they might be a comfort to the captives: so also in that casting down of the world, those who before the world came to be had been chosen by God, were sent for the instruction and teaching of sinning souls, that by their preaching they might return to that place from which they had fallen: and this is what is said by Moses in the eighty-ninth Psalm: Lord, you have been our refuge in generation and generation, before the mountains were established, and the earth and the world were made. Which is to say, that before the world was made, and all generation took its beginning, God was a refuge to his saints.

These are the things which you write in your Commentaries, those very ones which alone out of all your little works you choose and bid to be reread in order to condemn the others. The world, you say, was invisible before this visible one came into being: in which world, together with its remaining inhabitants, namely the Angels, souls too existed. These souls, you say, for certain causes known to God alone, are born in bodies in this visible world, and those which had formerly dwelt in heaven in a prior age now dwell here, that is, on earth, not without certain causes which they themselves committed while living there. And you say that all the Saints, as Paul and others like him, were appointed by God through each generation for their instruction, in order that by their preaching they might recall them to that dwelling of theirs from which they had fallen, and this you confirm with most abundant testimonies of Scripture. And what else, I ask, is said, for which you summon Origen to trial?

What other things are there for which you order him to be condemned? Do you condemn another in these matters? And if, as you urge, statements of this kind are to be condemned, you will pronounce sentence first, and for such statements you will condemn yourself before anyone else. For no escape remains to you any longer. No stratagems, by which you accuse others, will have place here. For in the very penitence of yours, after your conversion, now corrected and reproved, you gave authority to these books: namely, so that from them your judgment concerning those doctrines which you say are to be condemned might be proved. And therefore what is written here must be heard as though you were now pronouncing and defining it. And here you define such things as you say are to be condemned. But, he says, it is not I who define this; I say it is another who speaks thus: that is, this very one whom I now say ought to be condemned.

Let us then, if it please, repeat that very little verse where you change the person of the expositor, so that we may see who it is whom you say asserts such things. You say then: "But another, who strives to show God just, says these things which we have already said above." If this one whom you call "another" shows God just by this his assertion, as you say, and is other and distinct from you, what do you think of yourself? Do you deny that God is just? Master, while you see so much, and reproach mole-eyed captives sufficiently, I think you have fallen into an impossibility, and are refuted from both sides.

For either you will deny that God is just, so as to be other than and contrary to him who says these things: or, if, as the whole Church confesses, you too confess that God is just, then you are the one who says these things, and you are the one who first receives the sentence which you pass upon another, and you are the one pierced by your own sword. I think this suffices before most just judges, and those awaiting the future judgment of God—not because they ought to condemn one who sees the mote in his brother's eye and does not see the beam in his own, but rather to correct him and call him back to true repentance.

But lest perhaps this one passage, out of these books which he thought he had thoroughly reviewed, and whose example, all the others being condemned, he had proposed as a confession of faith, should escape notice, let us inquire how he thinks also in the rest.

Likewise in the same book, concerning that chapter where it is written: "According to the purpose of his will, unto the praise of the glory of his grace", after a little he says thus: "Here then those seize their occasion who think that before the constitution of the world souls dwelt with the Angels and the other ranks of the heavenly Powers in the heavenly Jerusalem—a thing which can be understood neither according to the good pleasure of God nor unto the praise of his glory and grace—that some are born naked, barbarian, slaves, weak; others rich, Roman, free, healthy; ignoble or noble, in different regions and different parts, unless causes have preceded, by which each of these souls has, according to its merits, obtained this lot.

And that saying written to the Romans, which some think they know and do not know: 'Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?', they refer to the same sense, so that, just as an evil or good life, laborious or easy, is lived in vain in this world unless we believe there will be a judgment of God: so also the diversity of those born in this world proves the justice of God, unless the merits of souls have preceded."

For if, they say, we do not so accept this, neither will it be the good pleasure of God's will, nor unto the praise of his glory and grace, that he chose some before the constitution of the world, that they should be holy and unblemished, and should have adoption through Jesus Christ, while he destined others to the lowest condition and to perpetual punishments: that he loved Jacob before he came forth from the womb, hated Esau before he had done anything deserving of hatred—unless causes have preceded which prove the justice of God.

29. What could be more explicit than this assertion? What could be thought or said more clearly, either by Origen or by any of those whom you say you are refuting, concerning these doctrines, namely that the diversity and inequality found among those born into this world is to be referred to the justice of God?

You say that the cause of salvation or damnation each soul gave to itself, namely from those movements of minds which it had previously exercised while living in the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the mother of all. And this, he says, was not spoken in my own person, but I described another as saying it. Indeed I said, "Here some seize their occasion." Nor do I deny that you seem to be speaking of another. But whether this "other," whom you say says these things, is in agreement and harmony with you, or rather contrary to you and an enemy, you have not made clear. For when you name some other who is contrary to you, you are accustomed to set forth certain of his statements, but immediately to destroy and attack them: as with Marcion, and Valentinus, and Arius, and the rest.

But when you name another, and write his statements with the strongest assertions, and furnish them too with the most abundant testimonies of Scripture, do not even we, most slow of wit, whom you call moles, see that this one whose statements you set forth and do not destroy is none other than yourself, and that this comes about by that rhetorical figure, whereby men put forth their own opinion under another's persona? This is done by orators, when they fear to offend some, or wish to avoid ill-will. For if you think yourself defended by the fact that in these statements you name "another," much more excusable will be he whom you accuse. For he not only has this habit, of saying that others say thus, and that it seems so to some; but he speaks much more cautiously, saying that he does not decide this about such matters, but rather is of the opinion. And if it should seem better to another, he says, let these be set aside and those other things be held.

See with what caution he proceeded: and yet he is summoned by you to condemnation. You, because you merely name "another," think you have escaped. For you condemn him in the very things in which you follow and imitate him.

30. But let us proceed in reading the Commentaries, lest by lingering over each point we be shut out from the knowledge of the many. "Likewise from the same book, on the same chapter where it is written: 'That we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who first trusted in Christ'. If he had said only 'trusted in Christ,' and had not put first 'we first trusted,' which in Greek is προηλπικότες, the sense would be clearer, that those who trusted in Christ were perhaps called, and are predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

But as it is, the addition of 'first' draws us to that understanding of which we disputed above, expounding what is written: 'Who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ: even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him': namely, that just as he had already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, and had chosen us before the foundation of the world, so also we are now said to have hoped beforehand in Christ, from that time when we were chosen and predestined and blessed in the heavenly places."

31. Thus far for the present, for what follows is greater still. Now therefore I give thanks to God, that he has relieved me of the weight of a very grave suspicion. For perhaps I seemed to some to be dealing rather contentiously or slanderously about that "other," when, according to the rhetorical figure, I asserted that this one whom he calls "another" was himself.

But lest any doubt should remain at all in any hearer as to who that "other" was, of whom he had spoken above, he has made it clear.

Like a truly good teacher, unwilling that any ambiguities from his statements should remain for his disciples, he has deigned in this passage to show more plainly who that one was whom he had above called "another." He says then: "But as it is, the addition of the preposition draws us to that understanding of which we disputed above." You see, he says, that it is we, and not some other whom you thought, who disputed above, expounding that which is written: "Who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ." And what was there said in the person of another, and thought by the less intelligent to be so, lest any error should remain among those whom he had bidden to learn from these books what he thought of Origen, recalling it now to his own person, and naming no other, he says the things which we read above: namely that, just as he had already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ, and had chosen us before the foundation of the world, so also we are said to have hoped in Christ from that time when we were chosen and predestined and blessed in the heavenly places.

He has therefore, I think, absolved me by his own testimony from all suspicion of calumny, in that this "other" is none other than himself. 30.

But we shall show even greater things still from what follows, as we promised. For after he had said that we had hoped beforehand in Christ, and from that time already, that is, before the constitution of the world, and before we were born in bodies, were blessed and chosen in the heavens, he again introduces his "other," and says: "But another, not sustaining this doctrine, that we existed and hoped before in Christ before we lived in this body, transfers the understanding elsewhere." In this passage, whoever he is, this "other" of his has exhaled his whole stench. For let him tell us here whom he wishes this "other" to be, who cannot bear this doctrine, that before we lived in this body we both existed and hoped in Christ—for this is the very thing for which he bids Origen be condemned. Whom does he wish us to understand here as "another"?

Someone contrary to himself? What do you say, master? You are pressed by that two-horned dilemma, about which you are accustomed to instruct your disciples. For if this "other," who does not accept that souls existed before they lived in the body, is not you, it has been betrayed what was concealed above. For you are found, by your own confession, to be that very "other" who defines all the doctrines which you order to be condemned. But if you are not the "other" in the passages above, lest those things which you reprove be ascribed to you, then neither will you be the "other" here, who does not accept that souls existed before we lived in the body. Choose whichever part of the excuse you like. This "other," whom you frequently introduce—do you wish us to understand him as yourself, or as someone else? Do you wish him to seem catholic, or heretical? To be condemned, or to be acquitted?

If this "other" of yours is catholic, who in the passages above said that before this visible world souls existed with the Angels and the other Powers, established in the higher Jerusalem in the heavens, and there, by living, contracted for themselves the causes of diversity, whether of being born into this world or of enduring any other conditions whatsoever—then these will be catholic doctrines, and it will be impious meanwhile to condemn what is catholic. But if you call this "other" a heretic, you will be marking as heretical him who does not accept that souls existed and hoped in Christ before they were born in the body. By what way do you get out of this, master? Where do you break through? Where again do you escape? Whichever way you turn, you will stick fast. I do not say merely that no avenue of withdrawal is given you, but that not even the smallest chance of catching breath is afforded. Is this what the Aristotelian Commentaries of your Alexander availed you?

Is this what Porphyry's Introduction did? Is this what the discipline of so many and such great Greek and Latin philosophers, and even Jewish learning besides, cultivated in you, that you should come into straits so inextricable, and be so wretchedly hemmed in, that you could not even be defended as far as the Alps? 31.

But let me now be more sparing: something must be conceded to writing, and, as he himself says, sleep is not to be imputed to a great work, although he himself spares no one, and lashes whomever he pleases, not so much by reason of what is said as by the scourge of his tongue. And if anyone flatters him less, straightway he is designated a heretic, in writings sent abroad through a hundred various copies.

Yet let us imitate not him, but the Patriarch David, who, when he had caught his enemy Saul in the cave and could have slain him, refused; but spared him—a thing which this man too, though he does not wish to confess it, retains in his heart and conscience as having been done for him by us more than once, not only in word but in deed and act. Let us then grant pardon to him who knows not how to grant pardon, who without any regard for humanity judges the words of another, and meanwhile let us lead him out of this cave, until he falls into that one from which, even if we all should strive and desire it, he cannot escape.

Let him say then, how it can be, that in those earlier passages, where this doctrine was being confirmed by him who was trying to show God to be just—where he spoke of another man—was it truly the person of another such as he now wishes to be condemned; but here, where he is contrary and does not accept what was said above, has he called himself “another”? For it may be that he is conscious in himself that he thought thus when he wrote, though he was unable to express it so in his style. Let there be pardon then, and let us suppose in this place that this “other” is the very man himself, who does not accept the doctrine which he states, namely that souls existed before we dwelt in the body, and had hoped in Christ. Let us repeat the very chapter, and follow more carefully whither it again tends.

He says thus: “But another, not upholding this doctrine, that we existed before and hoped in Christ before we dwelt in this body, transfers the meaning to this, that he says: at the coming of the Lord Savior, when at his name every knee shall bow, of things heavenly and earthly and infernal, and every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father, when all things shall have been made subject to him, some by will, others by necessity to be subjected, and those who before the presence of his majesty hoped in him shall be unto the praise of his glory, and are called προηλπικότας (those who hoped beforehand): but those who shall be found believing by necessity, at that time when neither the devil nor his angels will be able to deny him reigning, are indeed hoping, but not unto the praise of his glory.

Which indeed we now see fulfilled in part, since the reward is one thing for him who follows God by will, another for him who follows by necessity. Nevertheless, whether by occasion or by truth, let Christ only be proclaimed: provided he know, both he who hopes and he who hoped beforehand, that according to the diversity of hope they shall receive diverse rewards.” 32.

In this passage every occasion for cavil is removed. Above you said that those who hoped in Christ beforehand are those who, before being born in bodies in this visible world, had hope in Christ while placed in the heavens. But lest this should seem to be your own doctrine, you introduced another exposition, in which you say that at the time when every knee shall bow to the Lord Jesus, the whole creation of things heavenly, earthly, and infernal will be subject to him in two ways, some by will, some by necessity.

And you say that all the Saints are subjected by will, who now believe in him through the words of preaching, and that these are called προηλπικότας, that is, those who hoped beforehand in Christ. But those subjected by necessity are those who indeed have not now believed through the preaching of the word, but then will no longer be able to deny him, like the devil and his angels, and those who together with them believed by necessity; and all these, together with whom also the devil and his angels, because they will believe afterward, will not be called “those who hoped beforehand”—for the reason, namely, that the former believed in Christ beforehand, and hoped in him by will; but these latter only afterward, and by necessity. And therefore you say that they will receive diverse rewards.

Yet you set rewards for all these, even for those who now do not believe, that is, for the devil and his angels—lower ones, to be sure—and him, concerning whom you accuse another’s opinion, not sentence, merely of hoping for pardon of punishments at some time, you yourself lead into the kingdom of Christ unto second rewards. And you wish this to be understood: that just as it makes no difference whether Christ be proclaimed in truth or by necessity, so it makes no difference whether one believes by necessity or by will. 33.

These are the things which you bid us learn from your Commentaries. These are the rules of the confession of faith which you teach us, that this should be condemned in others which is taught at home.

For assuredly, if you are now that “other,” who does not uphold that first doctrine which says that souls existed in the heavens before being born in bodies: then you are without doubt the one who not only grants pardon to the devil and his angels and all unbelievers, but even promises that they shall be rewarded with second rewards. But if you shrink from this second doctrine, you will be the father of that first one. And I marvel how these prudent and learned men, who read these writings of his, concerning which such things are now written by him, laugh at me because he calls me a mole, and do not perceive that they themselves are judged by him to be moles all the more, since he thinks they do not see these things buried in his own books.

For if he thought that his readers could understand, he would never have ordered a copy of these books to be kept for the condemning of what the master himself teaches—books in which those very things are contained more fully and manifestly which he persuades us to condemn. We have shown meanwhile that this very man asserts, in these very Commentaries of his own choosing, those things which he bids to be condemned in the books of another—namely, that souls existed in the heavens before being born in this world in bodies, and that all, whether sinners or unbelievers, together with the devil and his angels, at the time when every knee shall bow to Jesus, of things heavenly, earthly, and infernal, shall not only receive pardon, but shall even be called to second rewards.

But since this novelty of the matter, I do not doubt, will with difficulty earn belief, that anyone should be thought to condemn the things which he himself asserts; I know what you desire, that if we can, we bring forward such examples from the same books, and so evident that no room at all is left for anyone to doubt concerning them, that is, where not even that "other" is named by him: and so I shall do.

Likewise from the same book, that at the end of the age Christ, and all his Saints, will have their seat above the demons, so that the demons themselves will act according to the will of Christ sitting above them, and of his Saints: From that chapter where the Apostle says, "That he might show to the ages to come the abounding riches of his grace, in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus", after a little: "That we," he says, "who once were held by the law of hell, and on account of vices and sins were destined, as by works of the flesh, so also to punishments, now reign in Christ, and sit with him. But let us sit not in any lowly place, but above every Principality, Power, and Dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come.

For if Christ has been raised from the dead, and sits at the right hand of God in the heavenly places above every Principality, and Power, and Dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come, we too shall sit and reign with Christ; it is necessary that we sit above those things above which he sits. But a diligent Reader will at once say and ask: What then, is man greater than the angels and all the powers in heaven?

Because it is dangerous to answer this, he refers Principalities, Powers, and Virtues, and Dominions, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in that to come (especially since all things are subjected under the feet of Christ) not to the good part, but to the contrary, so as to say that these are the fugitive angels, and the prince of this world, and Lucifer who used to rise in the morning, above whom the saints at the end of the age are to sit with Christ, he granting this benefit also to those who now wander here and there in hell and, wrongly abusing their liberty, fall headlong through the precipices of sins. But when they shall have such as sit over them, they will begin to be governed according to the will of those who sit." Is any ambiguity at all left here, that this passage should need a defender?

Where he says most evidently, with no other person interposed for himself, that the fugitive angels, and the prince of this world, and Lucifer who used to rise in the morning, will at the end, while Christ presides and reigns with his saints, become associates and companions, not only of his kingdom, but also of his will. For to act according to the will of Christ, and of all his Saints, is this: to have arrived at the highest blessedness. Nor indeed is there any other perfection of the Prayer, by which he taught us to entreat the Father, except that his will be done, as in heaven so also on earth.

35. But listen patiently, I beg, while I do not indeed unfold all the things contained about these very doctrines in his books (for they are so many that, if I wished to pursue them, I should have to write many more volumes), but as much as may suffice to satisfy the readers: that this man does not fall by chance into these things, which he now proposes for his disciples to imitate, but confirms them by the widest and most frequent assertion. But let us see what things these are, which he teaches us out of these most approved Commentaries.

Likewise from the same book, that not only in the present age, but also in the age to come there is ascent and descent of men, from that chapter in which he says: "Above every Principality, Power, and Virtue, and Dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that to come", after some things: "But if," he says, "there are Powers, Virtues, and Principalities, and Dominions, it is necessary that they also have subjects, and those who fear them, and serve them, and those who are held back by their own strength. These distributions of offices will exist not only at present, but also in the age to come: but through individual advances and honors, ascents also and descents, one man may increase, another decrease, and come to be under one Power, Virtue, Principality, and Dominion after another."

36. Why, Master—that I may deal with you in your own words—after nearly four hundred years, do you teach these calm and simple minds of the Latins?

Why do you thrust new expressions, which no one received from the Apostles, upon unaccustomed ears? I beg you, spare Roman ears, spare the faith, which was praised by the voice of the Apostle. Why do you bring into the open what Peter and Paul refused to publish? "Until you should write these things"—not "until I should interpret them," as you teach; but until you wrote these things nearly fifteen years ago, was the Christian world without them? For why do you now teach that in the future age there are still to be ascents and descents, and some advance, and some diminish? Therefore is it not true what you say, that in this age life is either acquired or lost? Or does it have some hidden interpretation? For you do not do penance for the things contained in these Commentaries.

Likewise, that the Church is to be understood as one body not only from men, but also from Angels, and all the heavenly Virtues, from the same book, from that chapter in which it is written: "And gave him to be head over all the Church", after a little: "Not only," he says, "of men, but also of Angels and of all the Virtues, and of rational creatures, can the Church be understood." Likewise, that souls, because in that former life they had known God, now recognize him not as unknown, but as if, after forgetfulness, they know him again—from the same book he says thus: "But as to what he says, 'in the knowledge of him', that is, ἐπίγνωσις, some understand it thus, that between γνῶσις and ἐπίγνωσις, that is, between notion and recognition, there is this difference: that notion is of those things which we did not know before, and which we afterward began to know; but recognition is of those things which we afterward remember.

And they suspect a certain prior life in the heavens, after which, cast down into these bodies, and having forgotten God the Father, we now know him again through revelation, according to what is written: 'All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord', and many similar things." 38. But as to what he says: "Because certain persons say these things," I think I have sufficiently and evidently shown above, that whenever he puts, "Because certain persons say these things," or "Another says," and yet does not overturn the things thus said—that this very man is that "certain person," or "another," especially since I have frequently shown opinions in accord with these, expressed by him without any interposition of another person of this kind. But what further is it that displeases him in "another"? "And the stars," he says, "or the other things that are in heaven, he calls rational and capable of sin." Let us see then what he himself feels about such things.

In the same book from the same chapter, where it is written: "For he must reign, until he puts his enemies under his feet", after some things: "It can," he says, "be answered thus, that no one is without sin. And the very stars are not clean in the sight of God, and every creature trembles at the coming of the Creator. Whence the cross of the Savior is said to have cleansed not only the things that are on earth, but also those that were in the heavens." Likewise, that on account of the body of humiliation and the body of death, men are called sons of wrath, from the same book, from that chapter where it is written: "We were by nature children of wrath, even as others"; after some things: "But let us say," he says, "that all men are first by nature children of wrath because of the body of humiliation and the body of death: and because the mind of man is set upon evil from his youth".

Likewise, that the making of the soul comes first, and afterward the forming of the body, from the same book under the same chapter, after many things: "And observe carefully," he says, "that it does not say, 'we are his figuring and forming,' but 'his making'. For the forming derives its origin from the slime of the earth: but the making took its beginning according to the likeness and image of God. This, when placed together in the hundred and eighteenth Psalm, signifies different things. 'Your hands, Lord, made me, and formed me.' The making holds the first place, then the forming." What further is there that he wishes to be condemned? Let him say, so that we may bring it forward from his books, indeed from his heart. "For that," he says, "there is one nature of both souls and Angels, is troublesome." But let us see what he himself feels about this, in these books which he sets before us as a model of confession and a rule of belief.

Likewise from the same book, from that chapter where it is written: "Coming he preached peace to those who were far off, and to those who were near"; and when he had expounded that this was said first concerning Jews and Gentiles, afterward he added these words: "And these things indeed may be said according to the common interpretation. But he who reads that saying of the Apostle, mentioning of Christ, 'Making peace through the blood of his cross, for the things that were on earth, and the things that were in the heavens', and the other things said in the same passage, will not think that we, who according to the spirit are called Israel, were far off, and that the Jews, who are called Israel only in the flesh, were near. And he will apply this whole understanding to Angels and heavenly Virtues, and to human souls, in that Christ, by his own blood, joined together earthly and heavenly things, which had been at variance with one another.

And the good shepherd, carrying back the sick sheep to the mountains, made it to be with the rest: and joined the drachma which had been lost with the drachmas that had been saved." 39. Do you see how great a diversity of nature he makes between souls and Angels? "As great," he says, "as between a sheep and sheep, and between a drachma and drachmas." But after a little he added, saying: "But as to what he says, 'That he might create the two in himself into one new man': which also seems rather to suit the earlier sense concerning Jews and Gentiles, he will fit it thus to his own understanding: that he may say that man, made according to the image and likeness of God, will after reconciliation receive back that same form which the Angels now have, and which he himself lost.

But he calls him the new man, who is daily renewed, and is to dwell in the new world." Just as sheep differ from a sheep, and a drachma from drachmas: so also he says that souls are with Angels, and that man once had that same form which the Angels now have, and lost it, and says that man will have it in the future. If he does not differ in nature, in kind, in form, how is it that a learned man feels no shame to condemn his own opinions under another's name, especially when you decree that this ought to be said not according to the common exposition, but according to the sense of the Apostle? But let us see what is added to these things in the same place.

After a little he says thus: "And the restoration of the new man will then be completed fully and perfectly, when heavenly and earthly things shall have been joined together, and we shall have come to the Father in one spirit and mind and the same conviction. I know not what similar thing Paul also hints, in another Epistle (if indeed anyone has received it), to prudent readers, saying: 'These all, having received testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God providing something better for us: that they should not be made perfect without us'.

For this reason all creation groans together with us, who groan together in this tabernacle: and grieves together, we who from the fear of God have conceived in the womb, and grieve, and await the revelation of the sons of God, that it may be freed from the vanity of the servitude to which it is now subjected, and that there may be one shepherd and one flock, and that the Prayer of the Lord may be fulfilled, saying: 'Your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth'." Heavenly and earthly things, that is, Angels and men, as they formerly bore one form, and had one sheepfold, so also you say they are to be restored in the age to come. Because Christ came to make both one flock, and this you say will be the future men, either what the Angels now are, or what those Angels themselves were before, that is, they were souls.

And how, I ask you, could you so amiably—no, not even amiably now, but scurrilously—mock the little women, who, with the applause of belly and thigh, denied that after the resurrection they would again be in a frail body, but would be like the Angels, or would become that very thing which the Angels are? And you charge these things as said with such derision by women, when they are things brought forward as written out of those choice Commentaries of yours. Does this not seem to you like the case of one accusing another of theft, while himself concealing in his own bosom the very theft for which he accuses the other, and after he has pleaded at length, and inveighed magnificently against the thief, after he has produced witnesses, and even given the sanction of an oath: after all this the theft itself, for which he had thought he had already convicted the other, is drawn out from his own bosom?

Then also you accuse others, because when questioned about such things they do not answer promptly, nor at once, but hesitate, and act more by a nod than by words. And you say this very thing of the Apostle, that he hints something in his Epistle to prudent readers. If Paul does not indicate, but merely hints, and not to just anyone, but to the prudent, why do you mock us wretches, O our penitent, if we say that what the Apostle has not clearly stated we either do not know, or are in doubt about, and do not so much understand as sub-understand, and therefore do not so much indicate as sub-indicate?

Now if there have been revealed to you those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they ascended into the heart of man: if that which is perfect has come to you, and those things which are in part have been done away in you: cry out concerning these things, and proclaim them, and that which you say the Apostle merely hinted, do you now plainly declare, you who write not only that these things were hinted, but even confirmed by him, which you now bid to be anathematized. For all these things, which you now order to be anathematized, you had, while expounding the sayings of the Apostle, built up, and had taught that they were implanted in his very meaning. 40. What further is it that he bids others to condemn?

"That this body," he says, "they call the prison and the bonds of the soul, and they assert that the soul does not go, but returns, as it were, to those places where it had already been before." Let us then also bring forward testimonies as to how he himself felt about this.

From these same Commentaries, book two, from that chapter where he says: "For this cause I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ", after a little: "Since in many," he says, "places it is written that the bond of the soul is this body, in that it is held, as it were shut up in a prison, we say that Paul is on that account restrained by bodily bonds, and does not return and is with Christ: that the perfect preaching to the Gentiles through him may be completed." Likewise on the same matter, from the same Commentaries, book three, at the chapter where he says: "For which I perform the office of ambassador in a chain", after some things, through that "other" of his, who is himself, he speaks thus: "But another will contend that he said these things because of the body of humiliation, and this chain by which we are surrounded, and because we do not yet know as we ought to know, and see through a glass in a riddle: and that then he can truly, with confidence, open the mysteries of the Gospel, when he shall have laid down the chain, and gone forth free from the prison.

Unless perhaps he too, who has his citizenship in the heavens, is to be reckoned as without bonds even in bonds: and of whom it can be said: 'But you are not in prison, nor in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you'." Likewise on the same matter, from the Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to Philemon, under that chapter where he says: "Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner, greets you": after some things: "Unless perhaps it shows something hidden and sacred, as some think, in the word 'captivity,' that men equally taken captive and bound are led down into this vale of tears." 41.

You see how he says that these things are held as mystical and sacred among certain persons, whom we have often shown in many places to be, however, one and the same as himself: but he uses this figure, by which he seems to avoid the odium of mystical knowledge.

"These things," he says, "how they stand, you shall see." Can you cite it as said by me, that all things are to be restored to one condition and reintegrated into one body, not only men but demons and fugitive angels? "Do you wish," he says, "that it not be laid to me, if something I have said under another's person be another's; but if you read something said thence plainly, and written with no interposed person, this rightly ought to be ascribed to me." And why do we pour out all these labors which we have sweated over above? So much does hardness of face avail. But come, let it be so, let us acquiesce even in this, that not the matter itself, but he as he demands, be convicted.

From these Commentaries, book two, on that matter which I proposed, under that chapter where it is written: "Careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as also you are called in one hope of your calling": after some things, "It is asked," he says, "how there is one hope of calling, when with the Father there are diverse mansions? To this we say that the one hope of calling is the kingdom of heaven, as it were one house of God the Father, and in one house many mansions. For one is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars.

Or certainly this is more subtly indicated, that at the end and consummation of things, all things are to be restored to their original state, when we shall all become one body, and be reformed into the perfect man, and the Prayer of the Savior will be fulfilled in us: 'Father, grant, that as I and you are one, so also these may be one in us'." 42. You have heard also this opinion of his about the resurrection of all, without any ambiguity; hear also another; and then I shall conclude the first volume of our Apology. For his sayings on such matters are innumerable.

Likewise from the same book under that chapter, where it is written, "From whom the whole body, joined together and knit together through every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of every part, makes the increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in charity"; thus he began: "At the end of things, when we shall have begun to see God face to face, and shall have come to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, from whose fullness we have all received, so that Christ is not in part, but wholly in us, and, leaving behind the beginnings of little ones, we shall have grown into that man of whom the Prophet says, 'Behold the man, the Orient is his name': and John the Baptist recalls, 'After me will come a man, who was made before me': because he was before me: then, in the meeting of one faith, and one recognition of the Son of God, whom now, because of the diversity of minds, we know not by one and the same faith of recognition, the whole body which had before been scattered and torn into diverse parts will be brought back into its own framework and joining, so that one ministration, and the same operation, and the accomplished perfection of one age, may make the whole body grow equally, and all the members receive the increase of age according to their own measure.

But this whole building, by which the body of the Church is increased part by part, will be completed by mutual charity toward one another. Let us understand all rational creatures under the example of one rational animal, and whatever we say of its members and parts, let us know that this is to be referred to each and every rational creature. Let us imagine this animal so torn apart through its limbs, veins, and flesh, that bone does not cling to bone, nor sinew is joined to sinew, the eyes lie apart, the nostrils separately, the hands hold another place, the feet are thrown in another direction, and the rest of the members are thus scattered and divided among themselves. Let us imagine some physician of such great skill coming, who, after the manner of the fables of the Pagans, might imitate Aesculapius, and raise up a new form and a new man, Virbius.

He will of necessity have to restore each member to its own place, and join framework to framework, and, the parts being restored by a certain glue, make one body. Thus far our one comparison has proceeded. Now, in the same comparison, let another example be drawn to what we wish to be understood. A little child grows, and in a hidden span of time comes to a perfect age: the hands have their growth, the feet feel their increase: the belly, while we do not notice, is filled out, the shoulders, while the eyes are deceived, are broadened, and all the members grow part by part according to their own measure, in such a way, however, that they seem to grow not for themselves but for the body.

So then, likewise, in the restoration of all things, when the body of the whole Church, now scattered and torn, the true physician Jesus Christ, coming, shall have healed, each one, according to the measure of faith and the recognition of the Son of God (whom he is said to recognize for this reason, because he had known him before, and afterward ceased to know him), will receive back his own place, and will begin to be what he had been: yet in such a way that not, according to another heresy, are all placed in one age, that is, all reformed into Angels: but each member, according to its own measure and its own office, is made perfect. For example, that the fugitive Angel may begin to be that which he was created; and that man, who had been cast out of paradise, may be restored again to the cultivation of paradise.

But all these things will happen in such a way that they are joined to one another by charity: and while member rejoices together with member, and rejoices in the advancement of another, the body of Christ, the Church of the firstborn, may dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem, which the Apostle in another place calls the mother of the Saints." 43.

All the Latins read these your words, which even now you also bid them read, where you say that all rational creatures, which are understood under the example of one rational animal, are so to be restored into one body, just as if the scattered members of one man's body were, by the art of Aesculapius, restored again into the soundness of the same body: in which, indeed, you define that there will be different offices in the future, as of members, but one body, that is, of one nature, and this one body of all you call the primitive Church, and you name it the body of Christ, of which body one member, to be restored to its own office, you say is the fugitive angel, who is certainly the devil, and is to be restored to that for which he was created from the beginning.

Likewise also man, another member, is to be recalled to the cultivation of paradise as an original colonist: and all these things you pursue not, as is customary when such matters are spoken of gradually and cautiously, with another person interposed, so that someone might think you had hesitated in matters so secret and hidden, as Origen, whom you do not deny being his disciple, and whom you confess to have betrayed, is always found doing in such matters: but with an abrupt and definite pronouncement, as if an Angel were speaking in Daniel, or Christ in Paul, you declare to mortal ears the secrets of ages to come. And you say, "Let the people of the faithful, chosen by Christ, believe none of the ancients." If Origen suspected something about the more hidden things of the divine dispensation, let no one accept it.

And if Clement, or that disciple of the Apostles, or that man of the Alexandrian Church, and the very teacher of Origen, said something of the sort: even if that Gregory of Pontus, a man of apostolic virtues: even if that other, Nazianzen, and Didymus the seer prophet, both my teachers, than whom the world had nothing wiser in the faith of Christ. All these erred like Origen: but let them receive pardon for their error, because I too once erred, and now do penance, but I ought to receive pardon. But Origen, though he said the same things which I said, even if he did penance, will not receive pardon; nay, for the things which we all said, he alone shall be condemned. He is the one who did all the evil. For it is he who handed down to us whatever we speak, whatever we write, whatever is thought to be said learnedly: and what we make into not-good Latin out of good Greek.

Let no one, then, listen to any of these, but receive only these things which you find in my Commentaries, and especially in the Epistle to the Ephesians, in which I have most vehemently refuted the sayings of Origen.

But I have searched out, that you ought to believe and hold that the resurrection of the flesh will be such, that bodies are turned into souls, and wives are directed into husbands: and that before the constitution of the world souls existed in the heavenly places, and thence, for certain causes known to God alone, were led down into this vale of tears: and that they were inserted into the body of death: and that at the end of the ages every rational nature will be restored into one body just as it was from the beginning, so that man too is recalled to paradise, and the fugitive angel is exalted above Peter and Paul, to whom, as being men, they themselves are to be subordinated as to paradise, while he is restored to that for which he was created from the beginning, so that all together may become the Church of the firstborn in the heavenly places, and may be, while indeed each are in their own offices, members of Christ.

But the totality of them all shall be the perfect body of Christ. Holding these things, O faithful and prudent disciples, and keeping these undoubted definitions of mine, yet condemning Origen for these same sayings, you will do well. Farewell. 44.

Do you see that you do everything with mockery, and that you say you repent for this reason, that you may deceive those to whom you write? For even if you truly repent, as you ought, what will you do about all those souls whom, through so many years, this your teaching, so poisonous (as you yourself say), has deceived? Finally, who will ever be corrected by your repentance, when this very little book, in which you are at once the penitent, the accuser, and the judge, sends your hearers back again to read and to hold these very things? Finally, even if these things were not so, you yourself have nevertheless, even after your repentance, closed off for yourself every avenue of pardon.

For you say that Origen himself repented of these sayings, in a little book of repentance given to Fabian, then Bishop of the city of Rome, and yet, after his repentance, after one hundred and fifty years from his death, you drag him into court and call him to condemnation. How then will pardon be given to you as a penitent for these sayings, if he who repented before you for these same things does not deserve pardon? As he wrote, so you have written; as he repented, so you have repented. Either you both ought equally to be absolved on account of repentance, or, if you deny pardon to the penitent (which I do not wish, but you insist upon), we shall be equally condemned, according to a certain parable of the Gospel: an adulteress was brought to the Lord by the Jews, that they might see what he would judge concerning her according to the law. That merciful and compassionate Lord said, "If any of you is without sin, let him cast a stone at her".

And then, it says, they all went away. And the Jews indeed, though impious and unbelieving, nevertheless blushed in their consciences, lest, being themselves sinners, they should seem to take vengeance upon sinners. And that thief on the cross said to the other thief, who was hanging at the same time on the cross and blaspheming, "Do not even you fear God, seeing we are in the same condemnation?" We, however, while we condemn in others these very things which are in ourselves, neither blush with the Jews, nor grow gentle with the thief.

In the previous little book we turned back upon himself, by his own testimony, the dogmatic objections which he unjustly casts upon others; but now, having explained these matters and cast behind us those accusations which touch upon the faith, we shall answer him more confidently concerning the rest of his charges. For there is also that very grave head of his accusation, which, like his other lies, must be cut away by the sickle of truth. For he says that certain persons are bound together with Origen for perjury, and that this secret of his mystical tradition lies hidden in the sixth book of the Stromata, and has been detected by no one else in so many ages except by himself alone.

But lest I move him to laughter, if I should affirm myself to be a stranger to the sacrament of the oath, I will proceed by a plainer road toward the manifestation of the truth than through the confederation of perjury, from this fact, which I can most easily prove, that I never possessed those books, nor read them anywhere when offered to me. And just as I cannot excuse myself concerning something whose nature I do not know, so neither can I be accused concerning something which, even if it exists, I am utterly ignorant of. Yet this man, who charges that it was either handed down by him or said by his disciples, argues that what is written, "who speaks the truth with his neighbor", means that no one is a "neighbor" except one who is perfect and a fellow-initiate.

And again, that which the Apostle says: "We speak wisdom among the perfect"; and that which is written: "Do not give what is holy to dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine"—so that, he says, they may assert by this that truth is not to be opened to all.

Let us see what he himself, in these very chosen commentaries of his, in the second book, under that chapter where it is written: "Wherefore, putting away lying, speak the truth each one with his neighbor, for we are members one of another"—after a few words, he says: "Wherefore Paul himself, being perfect, spoke in another Epistle: 'But we speak wisdom among the perfect'.

This, therefore, is what he commands: that each one should speak whatever mystical and secret things, and those things which are full of God's truth, with his neighbor, so that day may utter speech to day, and night may show knowledge to night—that is, that he should show clear and shining things to those who deserve to hear, 'You are the light of the world'. But dark and involved things, veiled with all the night of mysteries, let him relate to others, who are themselves night, darkness, or gloom. Of whom it is said, 'And darkness under his feet'—no doubt God's own. For on Mount Sinai Moses entered into the whirlwind and the darkness where God was. And of God himself it is written: 'He made darkness his hiding place'.

Let each one, therefore, speak truth and mysteries with his neighbor, and let him not give what is holy to dogs, nor cast pearls before swine; but whoever have the oil of truth, let him lead them into the bridal chamber of the bridegroom and the storeroom of the king." See, I beg you, and look more carefully, whether in all these things which he writes, he condemns anyone but himself and his own words. If his enemies wished to tear him apart and accuse him for his own writings, by what other order, by what other sentences would they use against him, except those which he himself uses against himself, as though against others? If a condemnation is to be brought against this man, his own letter suffices, if you only change the name; for the text of the charges fits no one else at all so exactly as it fits himself alone. What he orders to be condemned, this he in turn orders to be observed; what he does, he condemns; what he abhors, he practices.

Blessed are his disciples, who either hear him or imitate him. 3. But since the dogma of his perjury is put forward, it is nothing to me whether this man acts or writes thus, because among certain of the brethren he has also tried to brand us with this very stain, and now repeats it in his letters, according to the rule laid down by him; I set forth what I myself think about perjury, so that I may again leave him to be his own judge concerning himself. For since our Lord and Savior says in the Gospels, "It was said to the ancients, You shall not perjure yourself, but you shall render to the Lord your oaths; but I say to you, do not swear at all": whoever teaches that one ought to perjure oneself for any reason whatsoever, I say that he is a stranger to the faith of Christ and to the unity of the Catholic Church.

But I would now, after having satisfied you concerning my own anathema, as I have determined, wish to labor a little, if you will bear with me patiently, and to disclose this also—namely, what worshippers and fellow-initiates this man has, who says that perjury is observed through certain rites and mystical bonds. For that sentence of God is certain and quite true which says, "By their fruits you shall know them"; and again: "A tree is known by its fruit". We too, then, as this man says, have taken up the doctrine of perjury. If we have been taught this, and such a tree has been planted in us, it cannot be but that some of us should more often have brought forth such fruits, indeed should have grown together by the authority of a mystical doctrine.

And indeed, as far as concerns my own person—whom alone, of all these things he writes, he thinks he is tearing apart—I will not bear witness for myself, nor will I say that one ought even to swear, when perhaps necessity demands it: and if I am not cautious, I at least wish to be fearful. Finally, even if I cannot keep from it, I know that I would have erred. These things, then, I will not say; yet whether I err in these matters, or am cautious, meanwhile this man has no cause of any offense by which he might accuse me in such matters. But how sacred among this man is the observance, not of this doctrine, but of this most foul and most true vice, I will again prove from his own writings.

For I will bring forward nothing forged out of envy and ill-will against him, as he does against us; but I will produce himself as witness, and his own writings against him, that he may know that he is not accused by enemies, but refuted by himself.

He wrote, while stationed at Rome, a certain little book concerning the preservation of virginity, which book all pagans and enemies of God, apostates and persecutors, and whoever hate the Christian name, eagerly copied for themselves, because in it he defamed with the foulest reproaches every rank of Christians, every degree, every profession, and the whole Church alike; and those crimes which the Gentiles were thought falsely to lay upon us, he asserted to be true, indeed to be committed by our people far worse than the pagans charged.

For first he defames those very virgins, about whose virtue he seemed to be writing, and says of them in these words: "Some, with changed dress in a manly habit, blush that they are women, which is what they were born; they cut off their hair, and shamelessly lift up eunuch-like faces. There are some who clothe themselves in haircloth and specially-made cowls, so that, to return to infancy, they imitate owls and screech-owls." He says a thousand other, more grievous, disgraceful things about them. But he does not even spare widows. For he says of them, "They have no care but for the belly, and what is nearest to the belly." He heaps up very many other obscene things as well. But as for the whole race of monks, how foully, how disgracefully he tears at them—it would take long if I wished to prove it from his own words or writings. But as for the deacons and presbyters, it is shameful to unfold what disgraces he described.

Yet I will set down the beginning of his tearing-apart, from which it may more easily be conjectured how much the invective increases in what follows. "There are others," he says, "I speak of men of my own order, who seek the presbyterate and the diaconate for this reason, that they may see women more freely. Their whole care is for their garments, whether they smell sweetly, whether their shoe does not flap on a loose sole. Their hair is curled with the mark of the curling-iron, their fingers gleam with rings, and lest a rather damp road splash their feet, they scarcely press the tips of their footprints. When you see such men, you would judge them to be bridegrooms rather than clerics." And after reproaching, specifically, not so much the vices as the crimes of priests or ministers, he has not only tarnished but even made execrable even their entering in and their greetings to matrons: hear now how, after he has torn apart and defamed the whole Christian race, he does not even spare himself.

For I return, after a certain digression, to what I had proposed, on account of which the matter of this Little Book demanded that mention be made, and I shall show that among that man perjuries are held so permissible that he does not blush to be caught at them even in his own writings. Therefore in this very Little Book, when he was warning that secular books ought not to be read, and said, “What has Horace to do with the Psalter, Maro with the Gospels, Cicero with the Apostle? Will not the brother be scandalized, if he sees you reclining in an idol's temple?” and had said other things of this kind, by which he asserted that the reading of secular books is foreign to a Christian: he inserts also a certain revelation made to him divinely, filled with sufficiently horrifying precepts.

For he relates that, after he had renounced the world and had been converted to God, he was nevertheless still strongly held by the love of secular books, nor could he easily be free of such a desire. “And for this reason,” he says, “suddenly caught up in spirit, I was dragged to the tribunal of the Judge, where there was so much light and so much brightness from the splendor of those standing around, that, cast down upon the ground, I did not dare to look upward. Asked my condition, I answered that I was a Christian. And he who presided said, ‘You lie, you are a Ciceronian, not a Christian; where your treasure is, there also is your heart.’ At once I fell silent, and amid the blows (for he had already ordered me to be beaten), I was tormented more by the fire of conscience. Yet I began to cry out and to wail, saying, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy on me.’ This voice resounded amid the scourges.

At length those who stood by, falling at the knees of the one presiding, begged that he grant pardon to my youth, and give room for repentance to my error, on condition that he would afterward exact the punishment, if ever I should read books of Gentile literature. I, who, bound by so great a constraint, would have wished to promise even greater things, began to swear, and invoking his name to say, ‘Lord, if ever I shall have secular books, or if I shall read them, I have denied thee.’ Dismissed upon these words, I return,” he says, “to the world above.”

Have you heard how novel, how horrifying a kind of oath he has set forth? With the Lord Jesus Christ sitting as judge upon the tribunal, with Angels standing by and interceding for him, amid blows and torments he swears that he will never have nor ever read secular books.

Let there now be reread, I ask, what he writes—if there is even a single page of his Work which does not again proclaim him a Ciceronian, where he does not say: “but our Tullius, but our Flaccus, but our Maro.” Indeed he now scatters before his readers, like smoke and mist, the names of Chrysippus and Aristides, Empedocles, and other names of Greek authors, so that he may seem learned and of vast reading. In short, among other things he repels the charge of perjury, and professes that he swore only in a dream.

He even boasts that he has read the books of Pythagoras, which learned men assert do not even exist. But so that he might not omit, on any point, his oath concerning the authors of the Gentiles, he even writes that he has read things that were never written. But in nearly all his Little Works he sets forth far more and lengthier testimonies from these authors of his than from our Prophets or Apostles. Even when writing to girls and little women, who ought and wish to be edified only by our Scriptures, he weaves in for them examples from his Flaccus, and Tullius, or Maro.

Now indeed in that little book which he entitled On the Best Kind of Interpreting, where, apart from the title's label, nothing is best, but everything is worst (for there he asserts that those heretics with whom he now communicates, and thus incurs that sentence of our Apostle—not his own, for he calls his own either Flaccus or Tullius—who says: “But he who discerns, if he eats, is condemned”); in that little book, then, in which no manner of reasoning allows word to be translated for word (which now again seemed reasonable to him), he inserted whole chapters dictated from a copy of Cicero. Did he not himself say, “What has Horace to do with the Psalter, Maro with the Gospels, Cicero with the Apostle? Will not the brother be scandalized, if he sees you reclining in an idol's temple?” In which he certainly establishes himself guilty of idolatry. For if he who sees another reading this is scandalized, much more is he who sees one writing it.

But since he who rolls down into idolatry is not made fully and completely profane unless he has first denied Christ: he himself, to Christ's very face, as He sat upon the tribunal, with the most illustrious ministries of Angels standing by, says: “If I shall read, or shall have, books of the Gentiles, I have denied thee.” And now he not only reads and possesses them, not only transcribes and compares them; he even weaves them into the divine words and discourses of Ecclesiastical edification. The matter I speak of is well enough known to all who read his little books, and needs no witness.

But it is the mark of a man wishing to extricate himself from so sacrilegious an abyss of perjury, to apply to himself some fabricated excuse, and to say: “I do not merely read now, but the things which I learned in my youth, since I am of tenacious memory, so that I can string together at once many chapters from diverse sources, I now bring forth.” If someone were now to demand of me that I prove that today, before the sun rose, there had been night upon the earth: or that the day illumined the world up to the setting of the sun, what else would I say, except that rather from him who doubted a thing which all knew, the reasons for his doubt ought to be demanded, than proof from me? But though all may know that what we say is true, and all may understand it: yet since it is a matter concerning a man's soul, concerning the crime of perjury, concerning the sacrilege of denying Christ, an easy condemnation cannot be entertained.

Shall we imitate him who condemns the accused without questioning them, without their answering—and not only those not answering, but not even present; and not only those not present, but even the dead; and not only the dead, but even those whom he had always before praised; and not only those he had praised, but even those whom he had followed, and had had as masters? Let the sentence of the Lord be feared, first that which says: “Judge not, that ye be not judged”; and again: “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again”. What then—though it be superfluous—yet let me bring forth one very strong witness against him, one against whom he cannot plead prescription: let me again bring forth himself and his own writings. Although therefore all his little books bear witness to this, and my assertion on this point may seem superfluous: yet some special testimony must be used, lest what we say should seem less than complete to those who perhaps have not read his writings.

When certain persons had found fault with the little books which he wrote against Jovinian, this man, writing back to Domnio, of blessed memory, an old man who had pointed this very thing out to him, excuses himself, and says that it could in no way have happened that he had erred—a man who possessed the knowledge of all things. When therefore he had enumerated the kinds of syllogisms, or the arts of learning and writing, which of course the one who had reproached him was ignorant of, he immediately adds this: “Foolish I was,” he says, “to have thought I could know this without philosophers—I who chose the better part of my pen to be that which would erase rather than that which would write.

In vain then did I turn over the Commentaries of Alexander, in vain did a learned master introduce me to Logic through the Isagoge of Porphyry: and, that I may disregard human things, in vain did I have Gregory Nazianzen and Didymus as catechists in the Scriptures.” This is the man who said to Christ, “I have denied thee,” if he should even have or read books of the Gentiles. If nothing else, he ought at least to have kept silent about Porphyry, who is a special enemy of Christ, who, as far as in him lay, strove utterly to overturn the Christian religion by his writings—whom this man now boasts of having as his introducer and instructor into Logic. Nor can he argue that he learned these things before his conversion. For before he was converted, he was, equally with me, entirely ignorant of Greek letters and of the language. All these things came after the oath, after the pledge of the vow given.

Without cause do we argue—it will at once be said to us: “You err, man; God is not mocked”, nor are syllogisms woven in with him from the Commentaries of Alexander. As I see, brother, you have begun badly for yourself, in that your introducer is Porphyry. Whither has the faithless one introduced you? If to that place where he himself is: there also is weeping and gnashing of teeth. There indeed dwell apostates and enemies of God, and perhaps perjurers too. 10.

You have not chosen a good introducer for yourself. Rather, if you accept my counsel, let us together turn to that Introducer who introduces to the Father, who said: “No one comes to the Father but by me”. I grieve, brother, if you believe, and if you do not believe, I grieve that you scrutinize suspicions of another's perjury in old and worn-out papers, while in your own mouth an unceasing and endless sacrilege of inexpiable perjury persists.

Will not that saying of the Apostle rightly apply to you: “But thou who art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and gloriest in God, being instructed by the law, art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them that are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, having the form of knowledge and of truth in the law”? You then who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who preach that one must not steal, do you steal? You who abominate idols, do you commit the sacrilege of perjury? And what is the last and gravest thing, the majesty of God is, because of you and your love of contention, blasphemed among the Gentiles. 8.

But let us pass now from this to the clearing up of the other charge, if indeed, convicted of perjury and prevarication together, pressed even by his own conscience, he should confess it.

Otherwise, if he should deny it, I can produce very many witnesses among the brothers, who, staying in my cells on the Mount of Olives, transcribed for him very many of the Dialogues of Cicero, whose quires, while they were writing them, I myself often held in my hands and reread, and I recognized that far larger wages than are usual for other writings were given to them by this man. To me myself also, at one time when he had come from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and had brought with him a book in which was one Dialogue of Cicero, and likewise the same one of Plato in Greek, that he gave me that very book, and that it remained with me for some while, he can in no way deny. But why do I linger so long on a matter that is clearer than daylight?

Since to all these things which we have said above, this too may be added, where every fabrication ceases: that, established in the monastery at Bethlehem, not long before this, he expounded the parts of Grammar, and taught his Maro, and the Comic, Lyric, and Historical authors, to the little boys entrusted to him to learn the fear of God—becoming, that is, a teacher of the very Gentile authors whom, had he merely read them, he had sworn he would deny Christ. 9.

But let us see what else he still finds fault with. He says these teachings are of the Gentiles: see by what sentence he condemns himself. He calls the teachings Gentile which he himself writes down: he slips; but a hand should be extended to him, he should not be pressed too hard. For while he flies wholly in eloquence, and is carried along by vituperations and invectives, he forgets himself, and is carried away from reason. Do not, brother, rashly condemn even yourself in matters not necessary.

You are not, therefore—nor is Origen—straightway to be reckoned among the Gentiles, if, as you yourself said, wishing to defend God's justice, and to answer those who say that all things are moved either by fate or by chance, and wishing to show that God's providence, which governs all things, is just, you said that each soul procured for itself the causes of its inequality already from the movements and sentiments of a former life which it had among the heavenly beings; or even if you said that it befits that good and unchangeable and simple nature of the Trinity, that it should in the end restore all its creation to that state in which it was created from the beginning, and that, after long ages and periods equalized by punishments—which God inflicts on each not so much out of anger as out of a healing affection, since He lacks the fault of resentment—He should at some time, in the manner of one healing and curing, set an end to the punishments.

Whether these things which you said are true, God shall see; yet they do not seem to me to contain much impiety toward God, nor anything of Gentilism, especially if you say them with this mind, wishing by whatever reasoning to defend the justice of God. 10.

For these things therefore do not disturb yourself overmuch, nor subject yourself superfluously either to repentance or to condemnation. But there is indeed something from which we cannot defend or excuse you, namely that it is proved you spoke not merely as a pagan, but beyond all paganism, indeed with impiety, in that in this very little book (Epist. 22, to Eustochium), which we mentioned above, you said that God is your mother-in-law. And what so impious or profane could have been said by any even of the pagan poets? For it would be foolish to ask of you where you read this in the sacred Scriptures.

I ask whether even your Flaccus, or Maro, whether Plautus, or Terence, certainly whether any satirist, among all his filth and shamelessness, ever brought forth from his mouth this crime against God. I believe this matter deceived and misled you, that the girl to whom the Word of God was addressed was called the bride of Christ; so that on this account you thought her carnal mother too should be called the mother-in-law of God. And you did not know that these things are said not according to the order of the flesh, but according to the grace of the spirit. For she is called bride because the Word of God is joined to the human soul, as it were, by a certain sacred marriage. But if by such a union the girl's mother is also joined to Christ through faith, you might more correctly have called her too the bride of Christ, rather than the mother-in-law of God.

It now remains for you to call the girl's father the father-in-law of God, and her sisters kinswomen, and to pronounce the girl herself the daughter-in-law of God. Thus, while you desire to be seen as a wholehearted follower of Plautine and Tullian eloquence, you have forgotten how the Apostle names the whole Church—that is, parents with children, mother with daughters, brothers together with sisters—all at once as one virgin, or bride, saying: "For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ". But you, while you glory in having not Paul but Porphyry as your introducer, by following that very Porphyry who wrote impious and sacrilegious books against Christ and against God, and being, as you say, introduced by him, have fallen into this abyss of blasphemy.

But if you truly wish to do penance for your maledictions, if you do not mock by saying these things, if you do not, out of a contentious and quarrelsome mind, refrain from disgracing even yourself for this reason alone, provided you can blacken another—if you have repented not artfully but in good faith concerning your words—do penance for this so grave and shameful blasphemy, for in this you have blasphemed against God. For to say something erroneous about creatures, especially if not out of a desire to insult, but while wishing, as you say, to assert the justice of God, whoever may let this slip, is not too execrable an offense. But to stretch one's mouth against heaven is grave. To speak injustice or insult against the Most High is ruinous. This should be mourned, because it is hard to cure.

For who is there who, suffering from the disease of the liver, and endangered in his very head and countenance and life, would cry out greatly that a mere slight paronychia of the foot, or a very easy hurt of his nail, is not being cured?

12. But this is a very small matter, and scarcely worthy of a reply, that in enumerating his teachers, whom he says he purchased from the synagogue, he adds, goading us: "For I did not teach myself," he says, "as some did"—looking at us without doubt, upon whom he has heaped from the beginning the whole weight of his slander. And I wonder that he wished to say this, since he had a greater and truer matter for slandering me, namely that though I tarried longer among many and distinguished teachers, I have nothing worthy of their teaching or their instruction.

But this man, who in his whole life did not remain even thirty whole days at Alexandria, where Didymus was, boasts throughout almost the whole of his little books, far and wide, that he was a disciple of Didymus the Seer, and that he had Didymus as his καθηγητής, that is, his instructor in the sacred Scriptures. And all this boasting was acquired in a single month.

I, who tarried six years for God's sake, and again after some interval, two more years, where Didymus was, of whom you alone boast, and where others no less than he, whom you do not even know by face, were: Serapion, and Menites, men truly brothers in nature and character and learning; where old Paul, the disciple of Peter the Martyr; and, to come to the teachers of the desert, to whom we more attentively and more frequently devoted ourselves: where Macarius the disciple of Antony, and the other Macarius, and Isidore, and Pambo, all friends of God, who taught us these things which they themselves learned from God—how great a matter for boasting could I have concerning all these, if it were fitting or expedient? But I blush even to unfold these things, while I wish to show you that it was not, as you say, that the teachers lacked our talent, but—what grieves me more—that our teachers lacked talent of their own. But why do I foolishly enumerate holy Christian men?

He does not speak of these, because we ourselves were self-taught, but because we did not accept his Barabbas from the Synagogue as teacher, and were not introduced to Logic through Porphyry's εἰσαγωγή. Forgive me for this, that I preferred to seem ignorant and untaught rather than be called a disciple of Barabbas. With Christ and Barabbas both set before me, I, as though ignorant, chose Christ. You, as I see, cry out with those who say: "Not this man, but Barabbas". For your Porphyry, tell me, pray, what did he teach you, who wrote volumes of blasphemy against Christians and against our religion? What good did these men teach you, in whom you boast so much—one from among the demons' idols, and the other from the Synagogue, as you say, a teacher of Satan? I see nothing except what they themselves knew. For Porphyry taught you to speak evil of Christians, to cut down virgins, the continent, deacons, priests, and to defame in published booklets every rank and order of Christians whatsoever.

But that Barabbas of yours from the Synagogue, chosen instead of Christ, taught you to hope for the resurrection of the flesh not in strength, but in weakness; to become a friend of the letter that kills, and an enemy of the life-giving spirit. And certain other more secret things, which, if the matter requires, will be brought forward later in due time.

13. But why is the discourse drawn out at length? Let us not answer his insults and injuries, let us not meet his slanders, for the sake of which Porphyry daily sharpens his pen. For our Jesus, not the teacher Barabbas, has taught us to be silent about this. Let us come to this, that it may be shown how true are the things he has written either for his own excuse, or for our accusation.

He says there are only two little prefaces of his in which he seemed to praise Origen; yet he praised him in that work of interpretation in which nothing dogmatic at all, nothing about the faith, is said, and that absolutely nothing of the sort is introduced in those things which he himself interpreted, such as he now criticizes for the favor of the Synagogue, not for the edification of Christians. And although it should be enough to make him silent, that he condemns in others' writings what is brought forward from his own; nevertheless let us also see how truly he has spoken in this.

From the Preface to the interpretations in Ezekiel, fourteen Homilies, or little Discourses of Origen, writing to a certain Vincent: "It is a great thing, my friend," he says, "that you ask, that I should make Origen Latin, and give to Roman ears a man who, according to the judgment of Didymus the Seer, is the second teacher of the Churches after the Apostles." And after some things: "And I briefly note this," he says, "so that you may know that Origen's little works on the whole of Scripture are threefold. The first are his Excerpts, which in Greek are called σχόλια, in which he touched summarily and briefly upon those things which seemed to him obscure, or which had some difficulty. The second is the ὁμιλητικόν genre, of which the present interpretation also is one. The third is what he himself wrote as τόμοι, which we may call volumes, in which work he gave all the sails of his talent to the blowing winds, and departing from land, fled into the middle of the sea.

I know you desire that I translate every kind of his writing: I have set forth beforehand the reason why I cannot do so; yet I promise this, that if, at your prayer, Jesus should restore my health, I will not say all—for that would be rash to say—but I shall translate very many, on the condition which I have often set for you, that I supply the voice, and you the scribe."

14. Likewise the Preface on the Song of Songs: "To the most blessed Pope Damasus. Origen, though he surpassed all others in his other books, in the Song of Songs surpassed himself.

For having completed eleven volumes, which come to nearly twenty thousand lines of verse, he discussed first the Seventy interpreters, then Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and finally the fifth edition, which he writes he found on the shore of Actium, so magnificently and openly, that it seems to me that in him is fulfilled what is said: 'The king has brought me into his chamber.' Therefore, setting aside that work, because it demands immense leisure, labor, and expense, to translate such great matters, so worthy a work, into the Latin tongue, I have translated these two Treatises, which he composed in the manner of daily speech for those still infants at the breast, more faithfully than elegantly, offering you a taste of his meanings, not the full food; so that you may perceive how much those things which are great ought to be esteemed, since even the small ones can so please." 15.

Likewise from the Preface to the Commentary on Micah, written to Paula and Eustochium, after some things: "For as to what they say, that I compile Origen's volumes, and that it is not fitting to contaminate the writings of the ancients, which they consider a severe reproach, I count that the greatest praise, since I wish to imitate those who please all prudent men, and please us." 16. Likewise from the Preface to the interpretation of Hebrew Names: after some things, he says thus: "But lest perhaps, with the building completed, the finishing hand should seem to be lacking, I have interpreted the words and names of the New Testament, wishing in part to imitate Origen, whom no one denies to be, after the Apostles, a teacher of the Churches, except an ignorant man. For among the other splendid monuments of his genius, he labored also at this, that what Philo, as a Jew, had omitted, he, as a Christian, might fulfill." 17.

Likewise from the Letter to Marcella: "Ambrose, by whose furnishing of paper, expenses, and scribes our truly Adamantius and Chalcenterus unfolded so many innumerable books, in a certain letter which he had written to the same from Athens, relates that he never took food, while Origen was present, without a reading, never went to sleep unless one of the brothers recited the sacred Scriptures. This he did by day or by night, so that reading might take up prayer, and prayer take up reading." 18. Likewise from another Letter to Marcella: "The blessed martyr Pamphilus, whose life Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, unfolded in almost three volumes, wishing to rival Demetrius of Phalerum and Pisistratus in his zeal for a sacred library, and seeking throughout the whole world the images of intellects, which are the true and eternal monuments—he then pursued most especially and diligently all the books of Origen, and dedicated them to the Church of Caesarea. This library, partly corrupted, Acacius, and afterward Euzoius, who were priests of that same Church, tried to restore on parchment.

He, having found many things, and having left us an index of what was found, confessed by not inscribing it that the Commentary on the hundred and twenty-sixth Psalm, and the Treatise on the letter Phe, were not found. Not that such and so great a man—we mean Adamantius—had omitted anything, but that through the negligence of posterity it did not endure down to our own memory." 19. But perhaps you will say to me: Why do you fill the pages with superfluous matter? Does he not say that it is a crime to name Origen, or to give him praise for his talent? If such and so great a man is praised, all the more if there are things of his in which he is called an apostolic man, or a teacher of the Church, as he himself declares above; or if there is anything of the sort that seems to commend not merely his talent but his faith.

This indeed I will do; yet I have brought these forward for this reason, that where he calls him such and so great a man—because in that little preface where he says he is defended as an Apostle, or a Prophet, or is raised even to heaven—I consider this to be a discourse inscribed with his praise. And if anywhere perhaps I have praised his knowledge, all my praises of him are of such a kind, for which he here kindles so great a fire against you—things which he does not think worthy to be imputed to himself from his own writings. But because he does not deign to hold an equal standing with us in judgment, and indeed condemns us even from mere suspicions, while he himself neither wishes to be bound by his own handwriting, nor was he asked to be.

He thinks that in his own case one must observe the ruling of holy Scripture, which bids that judgment be made without respect of persons: not so that fairness, but so that he himself wishes, thus we should give satisfaction on our behalf. For he says: If you have interpreted Origen, you are to be blamed; I, even if I have said the same things for which he is blamed, have done well, and my words ought to be read and held. If you have praised his talent or his knowledge, you are guilty; if I have praised his talent, it is nothing. 20.

But bring forth, he says, where I praised him in such a way as to excuse his faith. Not equally, indeed; but wherever you shall lead I will follow.

Writing a certain little book, he wished to comprehend, as it were in a kind of index, how much among the Latins Varro wrote, and how much among ours Origen wrote in Greek; in which he speaks thus: "Antiquity marvels at Marcus Terentius Varro, because among the Latins he wrote so many innumerable books. The Greeks extol Chalcenterus with wondrous praises, because he composed as many books as any of us could scarcely copy out by hand even from another's work. And because it is now idle to weave among the Latins an index of Greek volumes, I will recall some things concerning him who wrote in Latin, that we may understand that we sleep the sleep of Epimenides, and that the zeal which they placed in the study of secular writings, we place in the accumulation of riches.

Varro, then, wrote forty-five books of Antiquities, four on the Life of the Roman People." And when he had enumerated one by one all the things Varro wrote, he added after this: "Why mention has been made of Varro and Chalcenterus, you ask, namely, that we might come to Adamantius, our own Chalcenterus, who sweated with such zeal in the labor of the sacred Scriptures, that he justly received the name of Adamantius. Do you wish to know how great monuments of his genius he has left? The following list shows. He wrote thirteen books on Genesis; two books of Mystical Homilies; Excerpts on Exodus, Excerpts on Leviticus." And after many things he says: "Likewise, single books: four books Περὶ Ἀρχῶν (On First Principles), two books on the Resurrection, and two other Dialogues on the Resurrection," and when he had enumerated all his little works, according to the faithfulness of the list, he added and says, "Do you not see that both Greeks and Latins alike are surpassed by the labor of one man?

For who could ever read as much as he himself wrote? For this toil what reward did he receive? He is condemned by Bishop Demetrius, except for the priests of Palestine and Arabia and Phoenicia, and of Achaia: the city of Rome consents to his condemnation. Rome herself gathers the Senate against him, not on account of novelty of doctrines, not on account of heresy, as now rabid dogs pretend against him, but because they could not bear the glory of his eloquence and knowledge, and when he spoke, all seemed mute. Why I have written these things, and dictated them by the light of a poor lamp, in swift but incautious speech, you may understand, if you consider the Epicuruses and Aristippuses." 21.

If, I ask, some Prophet had stood by you as you were dictating these things, by the light, as you say, of a poor lamp, in swift but incautious speech, and had cried out: O writer, restrain this voice, hold back your pen; for a time will come, and not long after, when you will make a schism from the Church, and in order to find some color of excuse for that very schism, you will begin to defame these very books which you now make wonderful to all, and this man whom you now call your Chalcenterus, and whom, on account of the merit of his praiseworthy labor, you say was named Adamantius, you will say wrote not so much books for the profit of the soul, as poisoned doctrines.

This man whom you now deny was justly condemned by Demetrius in a matter of faith, and whom you deny was accused on account of novelty of doctrines, you yourself will call execrable on account of novelty of doctrines: and the very things you say now—that rabid dogs pretend against him—these you yourself will pretend. The Roman Senate too, as you now write, you will compel against him with your admonitory letters, oaths, and hovering satellites, and such a return for all his labors will you render to your Chalcenterus. Therefore beware of writing these things now, lest, when you shall have written these and done those things, you be condemned much more truly by your own words than he by another's. Do you think you would have believed that Prophet, saying these things to you, and would not rather have thought him mad then, than have thought that you would come to this? But this is the nature of contention, which spares not even friends, provided it wound enemies.

But you, going beyond this, spare not even yourself, provided you destroy not enemies, but friends. 22.

Likewise from the Preface to the Hebrew Questions, after many things: "But concerning Origen," he says, "I am silent: whose name, if it be permitted to compare small things with great, is odious to my own name. Who, although in his Homilies, which he speaks to the common people, follows the common edition, yet in his Tomes, being overcome by the Hebrew Truth, and surrounded by his own troops, sometimes seeks the aid of a foreign tongue. This one thing I say, that I would wish to have, along with the odium of his name, also his knowledge of the Scriptures, thinking little of the images and shadows of ghosts, whose nature is said to be to terrify little children, and to chatter in dark corners." But now I ought neither to marvel nor to complain concerning what he does against me, since he has not spared such great and such men.

For I will likewise show, from his own Prefaces, with what figures he tears at Bishop Ambrose of holy memory, with what detractions he cuts him, in the very passages in which he nonetheless praises Origen. The Preface to the Homilies on Luke, to Paula and Eustochium: "A few days ago you said that you had read certain Commentaries on Matthew and Luke, of which one was dull in understanding, and the other played with words and dozed in his opinions. Wherefore you ask that, such trifles being despised, I should at least translate the thirty-nine Homilies of our Adamantius on Luke, as they are in Greek. A troublesome thing, and like a torment, to write with another's stomach, as Tully says, and not one's own: which nevertheless I will now do for this reason, that you do not ask for loftier things.

For indeed that which holy Blesilla once, at Rome, had earnestly demanded—that I should render into our tongue his twenty-six tomes on Matthew, and another five on Luke, and thirty-two on John—you perceive to be beyond my strength, my leisure, and my labor. But since your authority and your will avail so much with me, I have set aside for a little while the books of the Hebrew Questions, so that, at your pleasure, as a work of profit, I might dictate these things, whatever they are, not my own but another's; especially since I hear a raven of ill omen croaking on my left, and, wondrously, mocking the colors of all the other birds, though he himself is wholly dark. I confess, therefore, before he objects it, that Origen in these Tracts plays, as it were, like a boy with knucklebones.

Other works of his are manly, and serious works of his old age: which, if it please you, and if I am able, as the Lord grants leave, to turn into the Latin tongue, and if I finish the work first set aside, then you will be able to see—indeed through you the Roman tongue will come to know—how much good it did not know before, and has now begun to know."

23. Behold what he thinks of Origen and of Ambrose. But if he should wish to deny this, which everyone knows, that he spoke of holy Ambrose, he will first be convicted by this, that among the Latins only his Commentary on Luke, and no other's, is in circulation. Then he knows that I have his own Letter, in which, excusing this very thing regarding others, he turns the suspicion upon him.

But because that Letter contains also certain more secret things, which for the time being I do not wish to be published before their time, we will prove this meanwhile from other similar passages. Meanwhile he extols the books of Origen, as we said above, with every admiration, and says that "if he should translate them, the Roman tongue will know how much good it did not know before and has now begun to know"—that is, he says, twenty-six books on Matthew, and five on Luke, and thirty-two on John. These are the ones he magnifies, in which are contained absolutely all the same things—but more broadly and copiously—that are contained also in those books Περὶ Ἀρχῶν, for which he accuses me. But if he promises that he will translate these, why does he accuse me for similar things?

But since we have promised to prove how he tears at a man worthy of everyone's admiration, Bishop Ambrose, who was not only a pillar of the Milanese Church, but a certain impregnable tower of all the Churches, we will set forth yet one more of his Prefaces, from which you may see either how basely and unworthily he tears at so great a man, or again how he exalts Didymus with praises up to heaven, whom in turn he plunges down to the depths: or how he speaks of the city of Rome, by God's favor the head of the Christians, in terms such as were used at the time when Gentile peoples and persecuting Princes still dwelt in her.

24. Preface to Paulinianus on the Holy Spirit: "While I was dwelling in Babylon, and was a tenant of the purple-clad harlot, and lived by the law of the Quirites, I wished to babble somewhat concerning the Holy Spirit, and to dedicate the work I had begun to the Pontiff of that same city.

And behold, that pot which in Jeremiah is seen after the rod began to boil from the face of the North, and the senate of the Pharisees cried out together, and no scribe, whether real or pretended, but all, as if war had been declared upon them, conspired together against me in a faction of ignorance. Immediately I returned, as if by right of postliminium, to Jerusalem, and after the hut of Romulus, and the Lupercal of the naked runners, I beheld the inn of Mary and the cave of the Savior. Therefore, my brother Paulinianus, since the aforesaid Pontiff Damasus, who first urged me to this work, has now fallen asleep in the Lord, aided now both by your prayer and by that of the venerable handmaids of Christ, Paula and Eustochium, the song which I could not sing in a foreign land, I here, called forth by you, murmur in Judea, judging that place to be far narrower which bore the parricide of his brother, than the one which bore the Savior of the world.

And that I may confess the true author under this title, I preferred to be the interpreter of another's work, rather than, as some do, adorn myself with another's colors like a shapeless little crow. I read long ago the little books of a certain man on the Holy Spirit, and, according to the saying of the Comic poet (Terence), I saw from good Greek things bad Latin things. Nothing dialectical there, nothing manly and taut, which might draw the reader into assent even against his will, but everything flaccid, soft, glossy, and handsome, and painted here and there with exquisite colors. But my Didymus, having the eye of the bride from the Song of Songs, and those lights which Jesus commands to be lifted up over the already whitening fields, looks far more deeply and further, and restores to us the ancient custom, that a Prophet should be called a Seer. Certainly whoever reads him will recognize the thefts of the Latins, and will despise the little streams once he has begun to draw from the springs.

He is unskilled in speech, but not in knowledge, expressing the apostolic man from his very style, both in the meaning of his thoughts and in the simplicity of his words." 25.

You have heard how the one he had before called a raven and wholly dark, he now again calls a little crow, painting itself with another's feathers or colors; and how basely he tears at him, and says that the man has nothing manly about him, who was chosen by God for the glory of the Churches of Christ, who spoke of the testimonies of the Lord in the sight of persecuting kings, and was not confounded. Holy Ambrose wrote concerning the Holy Spirit not only with words but with his own blood. For he offered his blood, which he poured out for himself, to his persecutors: but by God he was still reserved for other labors.

But even if he followed the Greek catholic writers before ours, and took something from their writings, this should not immediately have become your greatest concern, this labor, this zeal—that for this reason you should translate the book of Didymus on the Holy Spirit, so that men might recognize his thefts, who perhaps also suffered the necessity of writing, in order to answer the heretics then raging. Is this Christian modesty? Do we thus keep the admonitions of the Apostle who says, Nothing through contention, nor through vain glory? Then how—to repeat the same thing again—do you, who preach that one must not steal, steal? A little before, you were saying that the interpretation of Micah had been objected to you, as though you had stolen the words of Origen.

You indeed did not deny the theft, but said: "What they consider a vehement reproach against me, I count as the greatest praise, since I wish to imitate him who pleases all prudent men and pleases me." Your thefts bring you the greatest praise: the thefts of others, in your eyes, make them ravens and little crows. If you rightly do well to imitate Origen, whom you call another after the Apostles, why do you cut to pieces him who followed Didymus, whom you likewise name a Prophet and designate an apostolic man?

If, then, you did not spare so great and such a man as Ambrose, whom you call another after the Apostles, and who pleases all prudent men, and whom you have extolled to the sky with a thousand other praises, not two, as you say, but in your innumerable writings—you again make a heretic, whom before you made an Apostle: and this same Didymus, whom now you designate a Prophet who sees, and one having the eye of the bride from the Song of Songs, and an apostolic man in the meaning of his thoughts, you again accuse as a perverse teacher, and separate him from the company of heretics by your censorial little rod, as you say: which rod I know not from whom you received; for we know that Peter once received the keys from Christ, but who dispenses these censorial rods of the spirit now, you shall see: if, I say, all those whom you have praised with your own mouth, you condemn again with your own mouth, why should I, a mere flea in comparison, complain against you about myself, if you now tear at me, whom you had before praised in your Letters, and in your Chronicles had joined with Florentius and Bonosus, for the nobility, as you say, of their life?

Nor should that admirable deed of his be passed over in silence, lest we bring shame upon our hearers: that the niece of the Consul Marcellinus, whom he called the foremost of Roman nobility, having left behind at Rome her little son, went to Jerusalem, and there, on account of the outstanding merit of her virtue, was named Thecla—this he had written in his very Chronicles; afterward he erased it from his copies, when he saw that the deeds of a woman of such strict discipline displeased his own conduct. We are indeed compelled to gather together still more from his writings, so that it may be recognized how true this also is which he writes, that he has mentioned Origen only in his two little Prefaces, praising in them not his faith, but his talent; not him as a dogmatist, but as a translator. I have adduced ten so far.

But lest the burdensome discourse be drawn out too far, let these things suffice for the present, in which he both praises him as it were an Apostle, and as it were a teacher of the Churches: and shows that the Roman order is not moved against him for the faith's sake, nor for novelty of doctrines, as rabid dogs now pretend, and that he follows the very man who is pleasing to all prudent men, and all those things which the little Preface inserted above testifies. But however these things may be, whatever you have in common with these writers, whether ancient or recent, whether you call them venerable or you call them Prophets, or whether you style them perverse teachers, what is that to me? For your own inconsistencies, for your insults and lacerations of good men, you would do well to do penance, if indeed you do it. Why do you say to me, if they have followed one in error, let them follow one now corrected? Away, far be it from me.

I have never followed you, nor anyone else in error, but by the power of Christ I follow neither you nor anyone else, save the Catholic Church. You who have written such things, and have followed those whom you believed to have erred, you who are convicted of having written so unworthily of God, do you do penance, if indeed you think the crime of blasphemy can be forgiven you. Can you produce any writings of mine of the like sort, in which you can convict me of having erred even in my youth? Just as you not so much confess as are convicted.

I said that I imitated or followed you only in the discipline of interpreting, but yet in nothing else, wherein you also say that every injury was done to you, because I followed what I had seen you do in the Homilies on the Gospel according to Luke, so that where you had not found the correct reading in the Greek concerning the Son of God, you passed it over, in that place where it says: My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. You know that concerning the soul, wherever those things which are usually said occur, you did not pass them by, but you wrote them even more clearly, adding certain assertions of your own, as in that passage, Behold, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant leaped in my womb; where you say that this was not the beginning of his substance, you added of your own, and of his nature.

These things, and a thousand others like them in your interpretations, whether in these same Homilies, or in Jeremiah, or in Isaiah, but especially in Ezekiel, you removed. But concerning the faith, that is, concerning the Trinity, when in a number of places you had found things otherwise expressed, you omitted what seemed good to you. Both of us have followed this manner of interpreting. But if another were to blame it, you certainly ought to answer, since you were the first to do this. Now you yourself blame it, without doubt whence you yourself are to be blamed. You formerly pronounced that to translate word for word was both foolish and malicious. In this I followed you. Do you wish me to repent of this, because you have now changed your opinion, and say that you translate word for word? Wherever anything built up less in the faith, you removed it, yet you removed it in such a way that you did not cut away everything, nor in all cases entirely.

Finally, in the Homilies on Isaiah, the Vision of God referred to the Son and the Holy Spirit. So you translated it, adding of your own something that drew the author's meaning to a gentler understanding. For you say: "What are these two Seraphim? My Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit." And you added of your own, "Do not think that the nature of the Trinity is at variance, if the offices of the names are preserved." These things I also have done in very many places, and I have either cut them away, or turned them to a sounder understanding. For these things you bid me do penance. I do not think you mean this. But if for these things neither you nor I need do penance, for what other things do you invite me to penance? 28.

No writings of mine exist in which any error of mine needs correcting. Many of yours exist, which, as I see, must now all be condemned according to your own judgment.

You had made an exception for yourself of the Commentaries on the Epistle to the Ephesians, in which you had thought you had composed something more correct. Yet you yourself have seen how they are found to be similar in every respect to the opinions of Origen, indeed to contain even something more than what you demand be condemned. And had you not already excluded for yourself the possibility of repentance concerning these, saying, "Turn over my Commentaries on the Epistle to the Ephesians, and from them you will recognize how I have opposed the doctrines of Origen," perhaps you would wish again to repent of these also, and to condemn yourself in these, as in the rest. Yet, so far as it lies in me, I grant you leave to repent of these too: but also for all things, not only which you have spoken, but which you are yet to speak, if you do penance, you do well. For it is certain that everything you shall have written deserves penance.

But if anyone thinks I am to be blamed on this account, namely, why I translated anything of Origen at all—if this is blamed, I am the last in this work, and the blame must necessarily begin with the first. And yet no one punishes a thing done, which he did not forbid before it was committed. It was lawful, we did it. If the law forbids something, it is customarily observed thereafter. But someone says that books ought to be condemned along with their author. But what do we do about this author, who writes the same things, as I have shown most fully above? Let him receive the same and identical judgment. I do not ask this, nor do I press it, although he deals with me in hostile fashion; but, as I see it, he brings this upon himself, by rashly condemning others. 29.

But that I may again speak with you from your own words, you yourself write in these Invectives of yours (Epist.

84), that I showed by my interpretation that I indeed was catholic, but Origen, whom I was interpreting, was a heretic. For you say: "This is to say, that I indeed am catholic, but he whom I interpret is a heretic." For you say, this I have read. If, as you say, I have shown this throughout my whole work, that I am catholic and Origen a heretic, what else is still sought? Do you not do this altogether, namely to have him called a heretic and me called catholic? If you testify that I have said this, and that I have made this sufficiently clear throughout my whole work, what cause of accusation remains for you? What has this your Invective against us accomplished? If I have shown Origen to be a heretic, and myself catholic, have I done rightly, or not rightly? If rightly, why do you summon to blame and accusation things that have been rightly done?

If it is not right that Origen be called a heretic, why do you summon me into court on this charge? What need was there for you to translate more maliciously those things which had been rendered according to your own manner of interpreting, albeit in a rougher style? What need indeed was there to mock your hearers: while they suppose one thing, you do another? For they think that you act against those who defend Origen as catholic; but you accuse and blame those who have designated him a heretic. Was it perhaps for this that you were inviting me to penance? I had not understood. Nevertheless know that I do not repent even of this, though I do not say that everything found in his books is to be received as catholic. Whether these things are his own, as you say, or inserted by others, as we think, God shall see. Meanwhile, as far as we are concerned, wherever the summit and truth of the faith is reached, they are rejected.

But do you tell me, what do you demand of us: do you wish us to say Origen is a heretic? You blame us for having done this. Or catholic? For this you accuse us. Explain more plainly what you want, if indeed you can find some middle position that you want. These are all your wits gathered from the sharpness of Alexander, and Porphyry, and Aristotle himself. This is all that boasting, with which you proclaim yourself from your earliest age to your old age to have been trained in the schools and disciplines of Grammarians and Rhetoricians and Philosophers, that you might come forth to pronounce Origen a heretic, and in that very speech in which you passed sentence against him, accuse the man whom you asserted had designated him a heretic.

See that nowhere is there concern for truth and faith, nowhere consideration of religion and judgment, but only the practiced lust of speaking ill and lacerating the brethren dwells upon your tongue, only human contention in your heart, only envy and spite in your mind: so much so that, though there was no cause for hatred toward you, you took offense at being called by me brother and colleague, though with commendation. Forgive me, for I did not know that you are to be called ἀκατονόμαστον (unnameable), and to be styled unaddressable. Yet I marvel that you demand of me to condemn the very things which you complain have been noted by me. 30.

As to that part of his accusation, it seems superfluous even to reply at all, where he wishes the piously and religiously spoken words of the Martyr Pamphilus either to be called false, or, even if they are true, decrees they should be spurned. To whom now would he defer? Whom now would he spare? In his view all the ancient Greek Ecclesiastical writers have erred.

But as to how he disparages the Latins, how he picks apart individuals, whether ancient or recent, whoever reads his various little works will recognize. But now not even Martyrs can hold any reverence with him. "I do not believe," he says, "that it is the Martyr's." If we wished to say this of all the little books of writers, what proof would there be in each case? If I should say, it is not true that the books of the Stromata which you speak of are Origen's—whence is it proved that they are his? "From their resemblance to the rest," he says. But just as one who wishes to forge a falsehood in another's handwriting imitates that hand, so too one who wishes to insert his own words under another's name will doubtless imitate the style of him whose name he has assumed.

Then, to pass over for brevity's sake all the things that could most justly be said, if you wished to dare so far as to reprehend a Martyr, you ought to have brought forward into the open the very words which seemed to you reprehensible, and then each reader would have seen what was absurd there, what followed logically, what was unjust, what indeed was contrary to the Apostolic rules—but instead only some vague impiety, to expiate which, as you say, the Martyr shed his blood. If one were to read those very words, it would then be his own judgment, not yours, that would say either that the Martyr had erred, or that an absurd and impious composition had been put together by someone else under the Martyr's name.

But now, knowing that if the things you censure were read, the mark of blame would be turned back upon him who unjustly accuses, you do not indeed produce the things you censure: but with that censorial rod of yours and arrogant authority you decree, Let this one be barred from the libraries, let that one be received: and again this very man who is received today, tomorrow, if anyone other than myself should praise him, let him be cast out, and with him the one who praised him. But let this man be held catholic, even if he seems sometimes to have erred: to that other let no pardon for error be given, even if he says the very things I have said, and let no one interpret him, nor read him, lest anyone recognize my thefts. This one is indeed a heretic, but he is my teacher.

And this one, though he be a Jew, and though hired from the Synagogue of Satan he sells words for a price, is nevertheless my teacher, and is to be preferred to all, because among them alone the truth of the Scriptures remains. If the whole Church together had enjoined this authority upon you, and it were required of you to judge concerning each and every one, ought you not to have excused yourself from so grave and dangerous a burden, lest it be laid upon you? But now we have progressed so far in the daily practice of detraction, that we no longer spare even the Martyrs. But let us suppose that this little book is not the Martyr's, but that of some one or other of the Church—did whoever that writer is, use his own words, so that it seems one must yield to the merits of the author?

He sets forth examples from Origen's own volumes, and shows what he thinks of each, not by the words of his defender, but by those of the very man who was accused. And just as against you now your own writings are far more forceful than any words of mine could be: so it is not the authority of one excusing him, but his own words, that defend him. And therefore the question of the author is superfluous, where the defense is such that it needs no advocate. 31.

But now we must come to that most wicked and most invidious head of his accusation—nay, not invidious, but envious. For he says, "What prudent man, or what saint, has wished to attempt to translate into Latin what you have dared?" "I myself," he says, "though often asked by many, have not done it." And indeed, as to why the saints did not do this, the excuse is easy.

For it does not follow that everyone who is a saint and prudent in Latin also has sufficient knowledge of the Greek tongue. Nor is anything detracted from his sanctity who lacks knowledge of a foreign language. Or again, it does not follow that if someone has knowledge of the Greek language, he also has the will to translate. Or even if he has it, one who has translated a few things is not immediately to be called to account as to why he did not translate more, or why these things rather than those.

For there is freedom in a work of this kind, resting either in the judgment of the writer or in the desire of the one who requests it; and yet he speaks of holy Hilary, and of holy Victorinus no: of whom I think the one translated nothing at all from the Greek under the title of interpreter; the other, he himself says, made use of the knowledge of a certain Presbyter Heliodorus, so that what the latter drew for himself from the fount of the Greeks, he himself might arrange in Latin speech, because he knew little or nothing of Greek. As to why they did not do this, then, the excuse is easy and manifest; but as to you, it is indeed to be wondered at why you did this. For what is more audacious, or what more rash, than to translate these books of Origen, whose whole content you had already almost entirely written in other books?

Whose sayings—all those which you now call reprehensible—you had already set forth under the discourse of your own name? 32.

Or was it that you might alter, by a new interpretation now changed by the Jews, the books of the divine Scriptures which the Apostles handed down to the Churches of Christ as the fullest instrument of the faith? Which of these two causes seems to you more unlawful? For the sayings of Origen, whether they please, please as the sayings of a man; or whether they displease, are easily despised as the false sayings of a man. But these things which you now translate, and send through churches and monasteries, through towns and strongholds, how shall we receive them? As divine, or as human? And what shall we do, seeing that things which bear the titles of Prophets or of Lawgivers are affirmed by you to be truer than those which the Apostles approved? Tell me, how shall this crime be corrected—nay, how shall this impiety be expiated?

For if, in explaining the law, to have understood something differently is held by you to be damnable, how much more often must it be judged damnable to pervert the very law into something other than what the Apostles handed down? Why should we not rather say, on account of the rashness of this daring deed: Who, out of so many and so great prudent and holy men who lived before you, has dared to set his hand to this work? Who has presumed to tamper with the sacred voices of the Holy Spirit and the divine Volumes? Who besides you has laid hands upon the divine gift and the inheritance of the Apostles?

And indeed, since it is related that from the beginning there was a great abundance in the Churches of God, and especially at Jerusalem, of those who had believed from among the circumcision, in whom, certainly, perfect knowledge of both languages, and approved skill in the law, is attested by the office of the priesthood administered—who then, among such an abundance of learned men, dared to compile the divine Instrument which the Apostles handed down to the Churches, and the deposit of the Holy Spirit? Or is it not a compiling, when certain things are changed, and it is said that an error is being corrected? For that whole story of Susanna, which offered an example of chastity to the Churches of God, has been cut off and cast away and set aside by this man. The hymn of the three children, which is especially sung in the Church of God on solemn days, has been utterly erased by him from its place.

And why should I recount one by one those things whose number I cannot even grasp? To say nothing of this, that the one and harmonious voice of the seventy-two men who translated separately in their cells is not to be doubted to have been brought forth by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and ought to be of greater authority than that which has been translated by one man, with Barabbas breathing upon him. So, to omit this, see what we are saying, for example's sake. Peter presided over the Roman Church for twenty-four years: it is not to be doubted that, just as other things pertaining to instruction, so also he himself handed down the Instruments of the books to the Church, which certainly, even then, while he sat and taught, were being read aloud. What then?

Did the Apostle Peter deceive the Church of Christ, and hand down to it false books containing nothing of truth, and, though he knew that what is true is held among the Jews, did he wish that what is false should be held among the Christians? But perhaps he says that Peter was without letters, and knew indeed that the books of the Jews were truer than these which were in the Church, but was unable to translate them on account of his ignorance of the language. And what then? Did the fiery tongue given from heaven through the Holy Spirit accomplish nothing in him? Did not the Apostles then speak in all tongues? 34.

But let us grant that the Apostle Peter could not have done what this man has now done: what shall we say of Paul? Was Paul too without letters?

A Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Pharisee according to the law, taught at the feet of Gamaliel—he too, being placed at Rome, if anything had been lacking to Peter, do you not think he could have supplied it? How then is it that these men, who instructed their disciples to attend to reading, did not give them corrected and true readings; and who instruct us not to attend to Jewish fables and genealogies, which afford questions rather than edification; and again bid us beware, and especially to watch those who are of the circumcision—how did they not foresee through the Spirit that a time would come, after about four hundred years, when the Church, having learned that the truth of the Old Instrument had not been handed down to it by the Apostles, would send envoys to those whom they then called the Circumcision, beseeching and entreating that they might grant her something of the truth which is with them?

Would she confess that throughout all those four hundred years she had erred, and had been ignorant of what is true? That she indeed, as a bride taken from the Gentiles for Christ through the Apostles, had not been adorned by them with true jewels: that she had thought them to be precious stones, but now has discovered that these are not the true gems which the Apostles of Christ had put upon her: that she blushes to go forth in public, adorned with false and not true stones, and therefore asks that they send to her that very Barabbas, whom she once, in order to marry Christ, had spurned, so that he, together with one chosen man of their own, might restore to her the true ornaments which the Apostles had not provided? 35.

What wonder is it, then, if he tears at me, a man of least account and of no number, if he cuts up Ambrose, if he reproaches Hilary, Lactantius, Didymus?

Nor ought I to grieve much over the injury done to me, since he has himself again undertaken to translate my own work, having made me equal to the Seventy interpreters in this insult. But how is this also to be taken? How much, do you reckon, has this deed added to the unbelief of the Gentiles? For what is done among us does not escape them. Knowing then that our law has now been corrected or changed, do they not say among themselves, "These men err, and there is no truth among them"? Behold, they themselves, when they wish, correct and amend their own laws. But it is certain that error preceded, where correction has followed, and that what is altered by man cannot appear divine. This is what your excessive wisdom has procured for us, that we should be judged fools even by the Gentiles. I want no wisdom that Peter and Paul did not teach; I want no truth that the Apostles did not approve.

These are your own words: "After four hundred years, the simple ears of the Latins ought not to be struck by the voice of new doctrine." Yet now you say: everyone who thought that Susanna had provided an example of chastity to the married and unmarried has erred. It is not true. And everyone who thought that the boy Daniel was filled with the Holy Spirit, and convicted the adulterous old men, has erred: it was not true. And the whole Church throughout the world, whether of those who are in the body, or of those who have gone to the Lord, whether they were holy Confessors, or even holy Martyrs, whoever sang the Hymn of the three children in the Church of the Lord, all have erred, and have sung false things. So now, after four hundred years, the truth of the Law comes to us bought at a price from the Synagogue.

Since the world has grown old, and all things are hastening to their end, let us even write upon the tombs of the ancients, that they too, who had read otherwise here, may know that Jonah did not have the shade of a gourd, but of ivy; and again, when the lawgiver wishes, neither of ivy, but of some other little shrub. 36. "

But Origen too," he says, "made asterisks, taking them from the translation of Theodotion, in order to compose the volumes which are called the Hexapla." And why do you bring forward this Origen, when it pleases you, to be condemned, and when it pleases you, to be imitated? It is a likely thing indeed, that you should employ the same man both as defender and as defendant! Can you have as the author of your deed him whom you yourself are first to condemn, and whom, by your letters, you compel the Roman senate to condemn? You ought to have foreseen this beforehand.

No one cuts down the tree on which he intends to lean; no one, in his own case, invokes the credibility of one whose credibility he himself rejects. Whether Origen did this or did not do it, what is that to you? If you wish to be judged by his example, read again your own sentences, and see what you have said. "This," you say, "is not to clear oneself, but to seek accomplices in crime." Do not you, then, also seek accomplices in crime, but seek rather the justification of your deed. Nevertheless, let us see what sort of thing Origen, who is at once defendant and plaintiff, has done. I find not even a single passage of his translated from the Hebrew out of the divine Scriptures. And how can your deed and his appear alike? Apostates indeed, and Jews, translated those texts which the Jews chiefly use in their reading.

And because, whenever a dispute arose, they used to lie, saying that certain things were altered, or lacking, or superabundant in our Scriptures, Origen wished to show to our people what sort of reading of the Scriptures was held among the Jews, and in separate pages or little columns he transcribed each of their several editions, and marked, with certain signs added at the heads of the verses, those things which among them were added or excised, and in a work not his own but another's he fixed only his own marks: so that we might know, not what seemed to us, but what seemed to be lacking or superabundant to the Jews contending against us.

This was of the same sort as if someone, having received a Roll containing the names of soldiers, should endeavor to inspect how many of the soldiers survive, how many have fallen in battle; and the one sent to inspect, for example, as is customary, should write his own mark, say θ, against the name of each deceased man, and again mark the survivor with his own mark. Will it then seem that he who places a mark against the name of the deceased, and again marks the survivor with his own mark, has done something to claim the case either of the dead man here, or of the living man there? But rather he has indicated, by marks of annotation, those who were slain by others. So then did that man also do: those things which had been either omitted or set forth more fully by other Interpreters, he marked with certain signs of his own, that is, with the little marks of the asterisk and the obelisk.

Moreover, he inserted not even a single word of his own, nor did he cause the credibility of our copies to waver in any point; but those things which, according to the mere course of the letter, seemed less clear and less plain, he showed to be full of mysteries by spiritual understanding. What comfort, then, can the deed of Origen afford you in this matter, when you can show no similar work of yours, and when you labor so hard at this, that the letter should kill the one who follows it: while he, on the contrary, strives to be the assertor of the spirit that gives life? 37.

This deed, brother, is yours, yours alone, and it is certain that you had no companion or ally in the Church in this, save that one man alone whom you so often mention, Barabbas. For who else would dare to tamper with the instruments handed down by the Apostles to the Church, unless a Jewish spirit?

These, O my dearest brother, before you were seized by the Jews—these are the ones who hurl you headlong into these evils. These are they who make you, by published pamphlets, brand Christians with marks of disgrace; these make you spare not even the martyrs, and write down about every rank of Christians things fit and unfit to be spoken, to disturb our peace, to generate scandals in the Church. These same also compel you to pass sentence against yourself and your own writings, as though against things you had once spoken as a Christian. And so all of us seem base to you, while they, by their most wicked arts, please you far too much. For if you had complied with the words of Paul, who says: "If a brother be overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness", would you have boiled over in such a way that you kept absolutely none of the order of spiritual instruction?

Suppose, for instance, that I had written something insulting; suppose that I had done an injury to you, a man of the highest eloquence, and my brother and colleague, whom I said should be imitated in the discipline of interpreting; still, after that peace scarcely restored with the utmost effort, this was still the first complaint of injuries against me that had reached you. But let us also grant that injury of yours, that in interpreting Origen, imitating you, I passed over certain things which seemed to me to have less edification for the faith. Was I to be blamed for this, perhaps, and corrected? Letters, as you say, were sent to you from brothers, demanding that the faults of the interpreter be exposed. What do you do, a spiritual man? What example and pattern do you offer to others in such matters? You not only report to those outside the shame of a brother already laid bare, but you strip bare what was covered.

Suppose that I did this not in imitation of you, but that some drunkenness creeping upon me, as it did upon the Patriarch, laid bare our nakedness: would you not have incurred a curse, if, walking backward, you had covered our disgrace with the light cloak of your rewriting, and if the letter of one awake had veiled what the pen of one sleeping had exposed? 38.

But I could not write back otherwise to those who had sent me such a letter, than as I did, lest, unless I had so replied, or had re-translated word for word what you had translated according to sense, I too should seem to be following Origen. I do not yet say what that letter was, or of what kind; yet, since it bears the name of the noble Pammachius, what would have been absurd, if you had made some such reply to him? Brother, one must not judge rashly of another's work.

For you yourself know what you did, when I sent to Rome my little books against Jovinian: since some understood them otherwise than I remembered having dictated them. Did you not, when they were already being read by very many, and almost all were offended, among whom you yourself were supposed to be numbered, withdraw the copies already from the marketplace, already from public circulation, and send them back—not to someone else, but to me—suggesting at the same time the reason, that many seemed to be suffering scandal? Just as I copied out the Apology anew, and recalled, as far as I could, to a more correct understanding those things which were being understood otherwise. It is fair, then, that what we wish done for ourselves, we should do for others. For just as you sent my books back to me, that they might be corrected by me: so also send his books back to him, and point out what seems blameworthy, so that he himself, if he has erred in anything, may correct it.

Besides, we have already exercised our talent in many works, and many little works have already cost us labor. He approached this work almost as his first, and perhaps under compulsion: and it is no wonder if he wavered in his beginnings. Nor should occasion be seized for disparaging Christians, but the benefit of correction should be sought. 39.

If you had written this back to him, would you not have given greater grace and edification, both to him who was in the beginnings of the fear of God, and to the rest of the readers, than these Invectives of yours now afford of grief and confusion to all who fear God, who see in you a most foul lust for disparagement, and in me a wretched necessity of replying?

For if, as I have said, from your own books written against Jovinian, you should now be found asserting the very things for which you rebuked him—if indeed you now slip so far as to affirm that the filth of marriage cannot be washed away even by the blood of martyrdom, and that which is a doctrine of the Manichaeans has seemed to you easy of correction in those books which you had already published and had given to many to copy—what difficulty would there have been for me, not in my own work, but in the interpretation of another's work, if envy rather than reason had suggested that something was amiss in it, to correct it? Especially while it was still in loose sheets, which I had not yet fully reviewed or unfolded, which they found not yet published? Could not those things which had not yet been corrected be very easily corrected?

But it is not on this ground, where he had nothing to blame, but on this account entirely that he bites, fearing lest he be exposed through this by which he is all that he himself speaks, by which he is learned, by which he seems to be an Interpreter of the Scriptures. 40.

But I have set forth the reason which led me to translate, in order that he may know that I have brought these things forward not out of contention (as he himself is wont to do), nor out of any rivalry, but out of the necessity which I have explained above, for the equipment of a good and useful work, so that that man, who himself, being unskilled, was composing an ancient little work, might receive from this something of order or of coloring. Or do we not see that old buildings have benefited new structures? And sometimes a stone is taken from the hidden and secret parts of an old house, to adorn the front of a new house and embellish its entrance.

And sometimes the whole fabric of a new construction is secured by the stability of a single ancient beam. Let us then now proceed against those who rightly use old things in new. It is not lawful for you, they say, to transfer material from the old house to the new, unless you join beam to beam, and stone to stone, unless portico to portico, unless member to member: and this cannot be done, unless you transfer a closet from a closet, a sewer from a sewer. For it is necessary that even these things belong to a great house. For this is what it means to translate word for word, which was formerly judged by you to be blameworthy, but now is judged praiseworthy. But you indeed defend as lawful for yourself even what is not lawful; while you charge us as a crime with what is lawful.

For when you change the sacred Letters and divine Volumes, you wish to be praised; but us, even if, imitating you, we pass over something from the sayings of men which we believe edifies less, you do not grant pardon in those very things in which you have given the example. 41.

But let him do these things as he thinks either lawful or expedient for himself. Meanwhile, that we may review at the end those things which we have answered here and there in our own defense: when he said of me, as though I could not be a heretic without him, I have shown my faith, and I have proved that he himself errs more concerning the resurrection of the flesh, who has written that the body which is to rise again is fragile. I have also shown how he has erased the difference of sex, and has said that bodies are reduced into souls, and women into men.

I have also set forth the reasons for my translation, which I think are most just, that I transferred the wealth of ancient material, not roused by contention, nor desirous of glory, but provoked by fear of God, to be of use to the buildings of a new construction, and that I wiped clean old weapons, already covered with rust, not to stir up civil war, but to repel the enemy. I have also inserted the very chapter itself, on which forging hands were laid, and I have shown that the adultery of blasphemy against the Son of God and the Holy Spirit, alien to my name, was committed by their own crime, and by themselves.

In each of the points also, concerning which he said he was accusing Origen for this reason, that he might believe he was striking at us, and defaming the work of our translation, I have shown from his own Commentaries—from which he had said his own faith ought to be expected and tested—that concerning the state of the soul, and the restoration of all things, concerning the devil and the fallen angels, he himself has written the very same things which he blames in that other. But I have also convicted him of having said that souls are bound in this body as though held in a prison. I have also proved that he wrote in these very Commentaries that there is one body of the whole rational creation, that is, of angels and souls. I have shown that nowhere does the confederacy of perjury dwell so sacredly established as with him. Likewise I have convicted him, from these same Commentaries, of teaching that truth and the more perfect doctrine ought not to be published to all.

Then further, as to secular books, concerning which he had said to Christ sitting and scourging him before the judgment seat, "If ever I read or possess books of the Gentiles, I have denied thee"—I have shown that now he not only reads or possesses them, but even carries on all the boasting of his learning in them, to such an extent that he even glories that he was led, through the Isagoge of the most impious Porphyry, to Logic. And whereas he had said that it is a doctrine of the Gentiles to hold any such view about the soul or about the rest of creation, I have shown that he himself has said something far fouler than the Gentiles, namely that God has a mother-in-law.

But also, whereas he had said that he mentioned Origen only in two little Prefaces, as of a man ingenious rather than apostolic, I have, for brevity's sake, produced ten Prefaces alone, in which I have asserted that he called him not only an apostolic man, but a second teacher of the Churches after the Apostles, and that he followed him along with all prudent men. 43.

Besides, we have clearly shown that it is customary with him to disparage all good men, and to think himself to be something in this, if he finds fault with each man of repute, and with those who have had any name in letters. I have also shown how unworthily he has torn to pieces ministers and priests of Christ. But he has not even spared monks and virgins, whom he himself had praised, nor those living in continence, and he has defamed the whole order and rank of Christians in filthy pamphlets.

I have shown also how unworthily and shamefully he tore to pieces the holy man Ambrose, whose illustrious memory of life still flourishes fresh in the minds of all. Didymus too, whom he had formerly placed among the seers, the Prophets and Apostles, he now sets among those who teach things different from the Churches: and absolutely all writers, whether ancient or modern, he brands now with ignorance, now with folly: and, to crown all, he does not even spare the Martyrs.

And all these things, as I said above, I have proved by convicting him, not by the testimony of outsiders, but by his own writings and by himself as witness, bringing forward for each single point testimonies from those very books most approved by himself: which books also, though he says he repents of all his other sayings or writings, not because he truly repents, but because he has come into such straits that either he must feign repentance, or else he could not bite or injure whomever he wished, yet those books, as I have said, he excepted for himself alone, as though least to be repented of. And therefore I have not wished now to touch upon his other writings; so that he might be convicted almost solely out of those, concerning which he himself had already closed for himself the way of repentance.

After all this I have shown that he has changed the sacred Books, which the Apostles had entrusted to the Churches as a faithful deposit of the Holy Spirit, and that he who calls it audacity to alter men's little works, has himself with far greater sacrilege subverted the divine utterances. 44. It remains now that everyone who learns these things should bestow his favor upon one or the other of us by such a judgment as he himself wishes to be judged by God, and should not injure his own soul while showing unjust favor to another. Let that holy man Pammachius also learn through you, dearest son Apronianus—whose letter my friend (Jerome) has produced in this his Invective or accusation—that with the help of Christ, favor should be shown not to zeal but to innocence, and that in a case of truth one should act more religiously than zealously. For it is the Lord's command that we should judge righteous judgment, not according to appearance.

For as Christ is present in each one of His least ones, who hungers and thirsts and is naked, and He Himself is fed and clothed: so in those who are judged unjustly, He Himself is the one unjustly judged.

And for those who are hated without cause, He Himself will say, "You have hated me without cause." How does he reckon this case and this deed of his will be judged at the tribunal of Christ, when he has on his conscience that he withdrew from the hands of readers the copies of his work against Jovinian, which were already being publicly read and censured, and forbade those who found fault, and himself found fault; yet sent his own books back to the very author, indicating what points came in for censure, so that he might either correct them, or in some way see to the matter; whereas my writings—not books, but unfinished, uncorrected notes, stolen by the theft and fraud of some worthless fellow, and brought to him—though he had me present there, he neither offered them to me, nor complained to me, nor even deigned to rebuke or accuse me, whether through some friend or even through an enemy; but sent them to the East, and incited the tongue of that man who did not know how to restrain it.

What would he have done against religion, if he had rather met with me in person? Were we thought so unworthy of conversation with him that we did not even deserve to be reproved by him? Yet Christ died for us too, and poured out His blood for our redemption. We are sinners indeed, but we are of His flock, and are numbered among His little sheep. But because for God's sake he despised his own nobility, and made himself wholly equal to the humble, we confess indeed that this was an excellent work of his in the faith of Christ, and one that ought to be an example to others: for this reason we did not wish him to be carried away by human zeal and contentions, lest he should suffer some detriment to his faith.

Certainly when he shall have read that the very things for which that master Jerome accuses others, he himself has taught in his own chosen Commentaries even after his repentance, we shall see what true judgment he keeps, saying that these are not his own. For his former error will be thought to have been one of ignorance, if recognition amends it. But we, though compelled by necessity, have done no more than answer him who had assailed us most bitterly; yet for this very thing we ask pardon, if perchance we have pursued anything too harshly, because God is witness to our conscience that we have kept silent about far more than we have brought forward; yet we could not altogether keep silence against our conscience toward one who accuses us, since some thought our silence would be almost a loss to his own faith.

After I had dictated these things, a certain brother, who had come to us from the City to visit you, while he was assisting me as I read it over again, said that one point of excuse had still been passed over, which he had heard there brought as a charge by detractors. He was speaking of what is written in my little Preface, that I said of this man who now persecutes and accuses me, that in the things which he translated of Origen there seem to be some stumbling-blocks in the Greek, which nevertheless he so purged in translating that the Latin reader finds nothing in them at variance with our faith. They say, he said, of this passage: "See how he both praised his translation and gave testimony to him that the things which that man translated are without stumbling-block, and promised that he himself would follow him. Why then are not the things which he himself translated also without offense, just as he himself testified that those writings of that man were?" 46.

It is no wonder that I always deserve to be blamed there, where I have praised this man. And rightly so, indeed. Yet let us come to the matter. I said that he had purged in the Latin translation whatever stumbling-blocks of faith seemed to be in the Greek, and not undeservedly: yet in such a way that I approve the same things also as done by myself. For just as he, in the Homilies on Isaiah, interpreted the two Seraphim to be the Son and the Holy Spirit, and adding of his own: "Let no one think that there is a difference of nature in the Trinity, when the offices of the names are distinguished," believes that by this he was able to remedy the stumbling-blocks; so too we, by removing or changing or adding certain things, have tried to bring the author's meaning to a more correct path of understanding. What here have we done differently, or contrary, or not the same?

But because I judged of his writings without malice or calumny, I looked not at what might lie open to detraction, but at what the translator's intention had been. He, however, who seeks occasions for calumny, finds fault in my writings with things which he himself wrote before me. And truly I am to be blamed, if, according to my own judgment, what he wrote is right; but according to his own judgment, to be condemned. This, as far as concerns the faith of the Trinity, where indeed it is reckoned the crime of blasphemy that he said the two Seraphim are the Son and the Holy Spirit, if he be judged according to his own opinion, by which he proceeds against me. But according to my own judgment, by which I judged his writings without any purpose of calumny, he is acquitted for the things which he added of his own to explain the author's meaning.

Concerning the resurrection of the flesh, I think the same things are contained in our translation as are preached in the Churches. As for the other things which were said concerning the reasons of created things, that they pertain nothing to the faith of the Deity, we have already said above. But if this man now calls these things to task for calumny, which before had no stumbling-block, I do not forbid him, if it please him, to withdraw that opinion of mine by which he might have been acquitted, and to bring forward his own, by which he ought to be bound. It is not my opinion of him, then, that is to be thought culpable, but his own, which he condemns in others while approving it in himself. This indeed is a new kind of judgment, where I myself defend my own accuser: and where he only then thinks me overcome, if he proves himself guilty.

But let us suppose that a Synod of Bishops should follow your opinions, and order all books which contain such things, together with their authors, as they say, to be condemned. These books will be condemned first in the Greek: and what is condemned in the Greek is without doubt condemned in the Latin also.

Let recourse be had to your own books; they will be found to contain the same things, according to your own opinion: it is necessary that they be condemned together with their author. And just as it profited Origen nothing that he was praised by you: so it will profit you nothing that he was excused by me. For I must needs follow the judgment of the Catholic Church, whether given against the books of Origen, or against yours.