JEROME'S APOLOGY FOR HIMSELF AGAINST THE BOOKS OF RUFINUS. 



     Addressed to Pammachius and Marcella from Bethlehem, A.D. 402. 



                                 BOOK I. 

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

   The heads of the First Book are as follows. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



483 



15. The accusations seem inconsistent, but I knew them only by report. 16. The 
office of a commentator. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I have learned not only from your letter but froth those of many others 
that cavils are raised against me in the school of Tyrannus, "by the tongue 
of my dogs from the enemies by himself" because I have translated the books 
Pr<S210i Arkpn into Latin. What 
unprecedented shamelessness is this! They accuse the physician for detecting 
the poison: and this in order to protect their vendor of drugs, not in 
obtaining the reward of innocence but in his partnership with the criminal; as 
if the number of the offenders diminished the crime, or as if the accusation 
depended on our personal feelings not on the facts. Pamphlets are written 
against me; they are forced on every one's attention; and yet they are not, 
openly published, so that  the hearts of the simple are disturbed, and no 
opportunity is given me of answering. This is a new way of injuring a man, to 
make accusations which you are afraid of sending abroad, to write what you are 
obliged to hide. If what he writes is true why is he afraid of the public? if 
it is false, why has he written it? We read when we were boys the words of 
Cicero: "I consider it a lack of self-control to write anything which you 
intend to keep hidden." I ask, What iS it of which they complain? Whence 
comes this heat, this madness of theirs? Is it because I have rejected a 
reigned laudation? Because I refused the praise offered in insincere words? 
Because under the name of a friend I detected the snares of an enemy? I am 
called in this Preface brother and colleague, yet my supposed crimes are set 
forth openly, and it is proclaimed that I have written in favour of Origen, 
and have by my praises exalted him to the skies. The  writer says that he has 
done this with a good intention. How then does it come to pass that he now 
casts in my teeth, as an open enemy, what he then praised as a friend? He 
declared that he had meant to follow me as his predecessor in his translation, 
and to borrow an authority for his work from some poor works of mine. If that 
was so, it would have been sufficient for him to have stated once for all that 
I had written. Where was the necessity for him to repeat the same things, and 
to force them on men's notice by iteration, and to turn over the same words 
again and again, as if no one would believe in his praises? A praise which is 
simple and genuine does not show all this anxiety about its credit with the 
reader. How is it that he is afraid that, unless he produces my own words as 
witnesses, no one will believe him when he praises me? You see that we 
perfectly understand his arts; he has evidently been to the theatrical school, 
and has learned up by constant practice the part of the mocking encomiast. It 
is of no use to put on a veil of simplicity, when the schemer is detected in 
his malicious purpose. To have made a mistake once, or, to stretch the point, 
even twice, may be an unlucky chancel but how is it that he makes the supposed 
mistake with his eyes open, and repeats it, and weaves this mistake into the 
whole tissue of his writings so as to make it impossible for me to deny the 
things for which he praises me? A true friend who knew what he was about 
would, after our previous misunderstanding and our reconciliation, have 
avoided all appearance of suspicious conduct, and would have taken care not to 
do through inadvertence what might seem to be done advisedly. Tully says in 
his book of pleadings for 'Galinius': "I have always felt that it was a 
religious duty of the highest kind to presence every friendship that I have 



484 



formed; but most of all those in which kindness has been restored after some 
disagreement. In the case of friendships which have never been shaken, if some 
attention has not been paid, the excuse of forgetfulness, or at the worst of 
neglect is readily accepted; but after a return to friendship, if anything is 
done to cause offence, it is imputed not to neglect but to an unfriendly 
intention, it is no longer a question of thoughtlessness but of breach of 
faith."So Horace writes in his Epistle to Florus 



    1. "Kindness, ill-knit, cleaves not but flies apart." 



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

    3. I have in my hands your letter, in which you tell me that I have 
been accused, and expect me to reply to my accuser lest silence should be 
taken as an acknowledgment of his charges. I confess that I sent the reply; 
but, though I felt hurt, I observed the laws of friendship, and defended 
myself without accusing my accuser. I put it as if the objections which one 
friend had raised at Rome were being bruited about by many enemies in all 
parts of the world, so that every one should think that I was replying to the 
charges, not to the man. Will you tell me that another course was open to me, 
that I was bound by the law of friendship to keep silence under accusation, 
and, though I felt my face, so to say, covered with dirt and bespattered with 
the filth of heresy, not even to wash it with simple water, for fear that an 
act of injustice might be imputed to him. This demand is not such as any man 
ought to make or such as any man ought to accept. You openly assail your 
friend, and set out charges against him under the mask of an admirer; and he 
is not even to be allowed to prove himself a catholic, or to reply that the 
supposed heresy on which this laudation is grounded arises not from any 
agreement with a heresy, but from admiration of a great genius. He thought it 
desirable to translate this book into Latin; or, as he prefers to have it 
thought he was compelled, though unwilling, to do it. But what need was there 
for him to bring me into the question, when I was in retirement, and separated 
from him by vast intervals of land and sea? Why need he expose me to the 
ill-will of the multitude, and do more harm to me by his praise than good to 
himself by putting me forward as his example? Now also, since I have 
repudiated his praise, and, by erasing what he had written, have shewn that I 
am not what my friend declared, I am told that be is in a fury, and has 
composed three books against me full of graceful Attic raillery, making those 
very things the object of attack which he had praised before, and turning into 
a ground of accusation against me the impious doctrines of Origen; although  
in that Preface in which he so landed me, he says of me: "I shall follow the 
rules of translation laid down by my predecessors, and particularly those 
acted on by the writer whom I have just mentioned. He has rendered into Latin 
more than seventy of Origen's homiletical treatises, and a few also of his 
commentaries on the Apostle; and in 



485 



these, wherever the Greek text presents a stumbling block, he has smoothed it 
down in his version and has so emended the language used that a Latin writer 
can find no word that is at variance with our faith. In his steps, therefore, 
I propose to walk, if not displaying the same vigorous eloquence, at least 
observing the same rules." 

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

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



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



    Though he may brandish the spear of his accusations and hurl them against 
us with all his might, we trust in tim Lord our Saviour that his truth will 
encompass us as with a shield, and we shall be able to sing with the 
Psalmist: "Their blows have become as the arrows of the little ones," 
and "Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; 
though war should rise against me, even then will I he confident." But of this 
at another time. Let us now return to the point where we began. 6. His 
followers object to me, (and 



      "Weary of work 

They ply the arms of Ceres,") 



that I have translated into the Latin tongue the books of Origen 
Arkpn, which are pernicious and repugnant to the faith of the 
Church. My answer to them is brief and succinct: "Your letters, my brother 
Pammachius, and those of your friends, have compelled me. You declared that 
these books had been falsely translated by another, and that not a few things 
had been inter- 



486 



polated or added or altered. And, lest your letters should fail to carry 
conviction, you sent a copy of tiffs translation, together with the Preface in 
which I was praised. As soon as I had run my eye over these documents, I at 
once noticed that the impious doctrine enunciated by Origen about the Father, 
the Son and the Holy Spirit, to which the ears of Romans could not bear to 
listen, had been changed by the translator so as to give a more orthodox 
meaning. His other doctrines, on the fall of the angels, the lapse of human 
souls, his prevarications about the resurrection, his ideas about the world, 
or rather Epicurus's middle-spaces, on the restitution of all to a state of 
equality, and others much worse than these, which it would take too long to 
recount, I found that he had either translated as they stood in the Greek, or 
had stated them in a stronger and exaggerated manner in words taken from the 
books of Didymus, who is the most open champion of Origen. The effect of all 
this is that the reader, finding that the book expressed the catholic doctrine 
on the Trinity, would take in these heretical views without warning. 

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

    8. I had given Latin versions, as my friend tauntingly says, of seventy 
books of Origen, and of some parts of his Tomes, but no question was ever 
raised about my work; no commotion was felt on the subject in Rome. What need 
was there to commit to the ears of the Latins what Greece denounces and the 
whole world blames? I, though translating many of Origen's work in the course 
of many years, never created a scandal: but you, though unknown before, have 
by your first and only work become notorious for your rash proceeding. Your  
Preface tells us that you have also translated  the work of Pamphilus the 
martyr in defence 



487 



of Origen; and you strive with all your might to prevent the church from 
condemning a man whose faith the martyr attests. The real fact is that 
Eusebius Bishop of Caesarea, as I have already said before, who was in his day 
the standard bearer of the Arian faction, wrote a large and elaborate work in 
six books in defence of Origen, showing by many testimonies that Origen was in 
his sense a catholic, that is, in our sense, an Arian. The first of these six 
books you have translated and assigned it to the martyr. I must not wonder, 
therefore, that yon wish to make me, a shall man and of no account, appear as 
an admirer of Origen, when you bring the same calumny against the martyr. You 
change a few statements about the Son of God and the holy Spirit, which yon 
knew would offend the Romans, and let the rest go unchanged from beginning to 
end; you did, in fact, in the case of this Apology of Pamphilus as you call 
it, just what you did in the translation of Origen's Peri 
Arkpn. If that book is Pamphilus's, which of the six books is 
Eusebius's first? In the very volume which you pretend to be Pamphilus's, 
mention is made of the later books. Also, in the second and following books. 
Eusebius says that he had said such and such things in the first book and 
excuses himself for repeating them. If the whole work is Pamphilus's, why do 
you not translate the remaining books? If it is the work of the other, why do 
you change the name? You cannot answer; but the facts make answer of 
themselves: You thought that men would believe the martyr, though they would 
have turned in abhorrence from the chief of the Arians. 

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

    10. The champion of Origen, you see, the encomiast of Pamphilus, declares 
that Pamphilus wrote nothing whatever, that he composed no single treatise of 
his own. And you cannot take refuge in the hypothesis that Pamphilus wrote 
this book after Eusebius's publication, since Eusebius wrote after Pamphilus 
had attained the crown of martyrdom. What then can you now do? The consciences 
of a great many persons have been wounded by the book which yon have published 
under the name of the martyr; they give no heed to the authority of the 
bishops who condemn Origen, since they think that a martyr has praised him. Of 
what use are the letters of the bishop Theophilus or of the pope Anastasius, 
who follow out the heretic in every part of the world, when your book passing 
under the name of Pamphilus is there to oppose their letters, and the 
testimony of the martyr can be set against the authority of the Bishops? I 
think you had better do with this mistitled volume what you did with the books 
'Peri Arkpn. Take my advice as a friend, and do 
not be distrustful the power of your art; say either that yon never wrote it, 
or else 



488 



that it has been depraved by the presbyter Eusebius. It will be impossible 
to prove against you that the book was translated by you. Your handwriting is 
not forthcoming to shew it; your eloquence is not so great as that no one can 
imitate your style. Or, in the last resort, if the matter comes to the proof, 
and your effrontery is overborne by the multitude of testimonies, sing a 
palinode after the manner of Stesichnus. It is better that you should repent 
of what you have done than that a martyr should remain under calumny, and 
those who have been deceived under error. And you need not feel ashamed of 
changing your opinion; you are not of such fame or authority as to feel 
disgraced by the confession of an error. Take me for your example, whom you 
love so much, and without whom you can neither live nor die, and say what I 
said when you had praised me and 12 defended myself. 

    11. Eusebius the Bishop of Caesarea, of whom I have made mention above, in 
the sixth book of his Apology for Origen makes the same complaint against 
Methodius the bishop and martyr, which you make against me in your praises of 
me. He says: How could Methodius dare to write now against Origen, after 
having said this thing and that of his doctrines? This is not the place in 
which to speak of the martyr; one cannot discuss every thing in all places 
alike. Let it suffice for the present to mention that one who was an Arian 
complains of the same things in a most eminent and eloquent man, and a martyr, 
which you first make a subject of praise as a friend and afterwards, when 
offended turn into an accusation. I have given you an opportunity of 
constructing a calumny against me if you choose, in the present passage."How 
is it", you may ask, "that I now depreciate Eusebius, after having in other 
places praised him?" The name Eusebius indeed is different from Origen; but 
the ground of complaint is in both cases identical. I praised Eusebius for his 
Ecclesiastical History, for his Chronicle, for his description of the holy 
land; and these works of his I gave to the men of the same language as 
myself by translating them into Latin. Am I to be called an Arian because 
Eusebius, the author of those books, is an Arian? If you should dare to call 
me a heretic, call to mind your Preface to the Peri 
Arkpn, in which you bear me witness that I am of the same faith 
with yourself: and I at the same time entreat you to hear patiently the 
expostulation of one who was formerly your friend. You enter into a warm 
dispute with others, and bandy mutual reproaches with men of your own order; 
whether you are right or wrong in this is for you to say. But as against a 
brother even a true accusation is repugnant to me. I do not say this to blame 
others; I only say that I would not myself do it. We are separated from one 
another by a vast interval of space. What sin had I committed against you? 
What is my offence? Is it that I answered that I was not an Origenist? Are you 
to be held to be accused because I defend myself? If you say you are not an 
Origenist and have never been one, I believe your solemn affirmation of this: 
if you once were one, I accept your repentance. Why do you complain if I am 
what you say that you are? Or is my offence this that I dared to translate the 
Peri Arkpn after yon had done it, and that my 
translation is supposed to detract from your work? But what was I to do? Your 
laudation of me, or accusation against me, was sent to me. Your 'praise' was 
so strong and so long that, if I had acquiesced in it, every one would have 
thought me a heretic. Look at what is said in the end of the letter which I 
received from Rome: "Clear yourself from the suspicions which men have 
imbibed against you, and convict your accuser of speaking falsely; for if you 
leave him unnoticed, you will be held to assent to his charges." When I was 
pressed by such conditions, I determined to translate these books, and I ask 
your attention to the answer which I made. It was this: "This is the 
position which my friends have made for me, (observe that I did not say 'my 
friend,' for fear of seeming to aim at you); if I keep silence I am to be 
accounted guilty: if I answer, I am accounted an enemy. Both these conditions 
are hard; but of the two I will choose the easier: for a quarrel can be healed 
but blasphemy admits of no forgiveness." You observe that I felt this as a 
burden laid upon me; that I was unwilling and recalcitrating; that I could 
only quiet my presentiment of the quarrel which would ensue from this 
undertaking by the plea of necessity. If you had translated the books 
Peri Arkpn without alluding to me, you would 
have a right to complain that I had afterwards translated them to your 
prejudice. But now you have no right to complain, since my work was only an 
answer to the attack you bad made on me under the guise 



489 



of praise; for what you call praise all understand as accusation. Let it be 
understood between us that you accused me, and then you will not be indignant 
at my having replied. But now suppose that you wrote with a good intention, 
that you were not merely innocent but a most faithful friend, out of whose 
mouth no untruth ever proceeded, and that it was quite unconsciously that you 
wounded me. What is that to me who felt the wound Am I not to take remedies 
for my wound because you inflicted it without evil intention? I am stricken 
down and stricken through, with a wound in the breast which will not be 
appeased; my limbs which were white before are stained with gore; and you say 
to me: "Pray leave your wound untouched, for fear that I may be thought to 
have wounded you." And vet the translation in question is a reproof to Origen 
rather than to you. You altered for the better the passages which you 
considered to have been Put in by the heretics. I brought to light what the 
whole Greek world with one voice attributes to him. Which of our two views is 
the truer it is not for me nor for you to judge; let each of them be touched 
by the censor's rod of the reader. The whole of that letter in which I make 
answer for myself is directed against the heretics and against my accusers. 
How does it touch you who profess to be both an orthodox person and my 
admirer, if I am a little too sharp upon heretics, and expose their tricks 
before the public? You should rejoice in my invectives: otherwise, if you are 
vexed at them, you may be thought to be yourself a heretic. When anything is 
written against some particular vice, but without the mention of any name, if 
a man grows angry he accuses himself. It would have been the part of a wise 
man, even if he felt hurt, to dissemble his consciousness of wrong, and by the 
serenity of his countenance to dissipate the cloud that lay upon his heart. 

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

    13. I am told, further, that you touch with some critical sharpness upon 
some points of my letter, and, with the well-known wrinkles rising on your 
forehead and your eyebrows knitted, make sport of me with a wit worthy of 
Plautus, for having said that I had a Jew named Barabbas for my teacher. I do 
not wonder at your writing Barabbas for Baranina, the letters of the names 
being somewhat similar, when you allow yourself such a license in changing the 
names themselves, as to turn Eusebius into Pamphilus, and a heretic into a 
martyr. One must be cautious of such a man as you, and give you a wide berth; 
otherwise I may find my own name turned in a trice, and without my knowing it, 
from Jerome to Sardanapalus. Listen, then, O pillar of wisdom, and type of 
Catonian severity. I never spoke of him as my master; I merely wished to 
illustrate my method of studying the Holy Scriptures by saying that I had read 
Origen just in the same way as I had taken lessons from this Jew. Did I do you 
an injury because I attended the lectures of Apollinarius and Didymus rather 
than yours? Was there anything to prevent my naming in my letter that most 
eloquent man Gregory?  a Which of all the Latins is his equal? I may well 
glory and exult in him. But I only mentioned those who were subject to 
censure, so as to show that I only read Origen as I had listened to them, that 
is, not on account of his soundness in the faith hut on account of the 
excellence of his learning. Origen himself, and Clement and Eusebius, and 



490 



many others, when they are discussing scriptural points, and wish to have 
Jewish authority for what they say, write: "A Hebrew stated this to me," or "I 
heard from a Hebrew," or, "That is the opinion of the Hebrews." Origen 
certainly speaks of the Patriarch Huillus who was his contemporary, and in the 
conclusion of his thirtieth Tome on Isaiah (that in the end of which he 
explains the words  "Woe to Ariel which David took by storm") uses his 
exposition of the words, and confesses that he had adopted through his 
teaching a truer opinion than that which he had previously held. He also takes 
as written by Moses not only the eighty-ninth Psalm  which is entitled "A 
prayer of Moses the Man of God," but also the eleven following Psalms which 
have no title according to Huillus's opinion; and he makes no scruple of 
inserting in his commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures the views of the Hebrew 
teachers. 

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

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

    16. For instance, Chrysippus and Antipater occupy themselves with thorny 
questions: Demosthenes and AEschines speak with the voice of thunder against 
each other; Lysias and Isocrates have an easy and pleasing style. There is a 
wonderful difference in these writers, though each of them is perfect in his 
own line. Again: read the book of Tully To Herennius; read his Rhetoricians; 
or, since he tells us that these books fell from his hands in a merely 
inchoate and unfinished condition, look through his three books On the orator, 
in which he introduces a discussion between Crassus and Antony, the most 
eloquent orators of that day; and a fourth book called The Orator 



491 



which he wrote to Brutus when already an old man; and you will realize that 
History, Oratory, Dialogue, Epistolary writing, and Commentaries, have, each 
of them, their special style. We have to do now with Commentaries. In those 
which I wrote upon the Ephesians I only followed Origen and Didymus and 
Apollinarius, (whose doctrines are very different one from another) so far as 
was consistent with the sincerity of my faith: for what is the function of a 
Commentary? It is to interpret another man's words, to put into plain language 
what he has expressed obscurely. Consequently, it enumerates the opinions of 
many persons, and says, Some interpret the passage in this sense, some in 
that; the one try to support their opinion and understanding of it by such and 
such evidence or reasons: so that the wise reader, after reading these 
different explanations, and having many brought before his mind for acceptance 
or rejection, may judge which is the truest , and, like a good banker, may 
reject the money of spurious mintage. Is the commentator to be held 
responsible for all these different interpretations, and all these mutually 
contradicting opinions because he puts down the expositions given by many in 
the single work on which he is commenting? I suppose that when you were a boy 
you read the commentaries of Asper upon Virgil and Sallust, those of Vulcatius 
upon Cicero's Orations, of Victorinus upon his Dialogues and upon the Comedies 
of Terence, and also those of my master Donatus on Virgil, and of others on 
other writers such as Plautus, Lucretius, Flaccus, Persius and Lucan. Will you 
find fault with those who have commented on these writers because they have 
not held to a single explanation, but enumerate their own views and those of 
others on the same passage? 

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



To steer the ship the untaught landsman fears; 

Th' untrain'd attendant dares not give the sick 

The drastic southernwood. The healing drug 

The leech alone prescribes. Th' artificer 

Alone the tools can wield. But poetry 

Train'd or untrain'd we all at random write.  



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

    "Paul thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad." You who 
can hardly do more than mutter in Latin, and who rather creep like a tortoise 
than walk, ought either to write in Greek, so that among those who are 
ignorant of Greek you may pass for one who knows a foreign tongue; or else, if 
you attempt to write Latin, you should first have a grammar-master, and flinch 
from the ferule, and begin again as an old scholar among children to learn the 
art of speaking. Even if a man is bursting with the wealth of Croesus and 
Darius, letters will not follow the money-bag. They are the companions of toil 
and of labour, the associates of the fasting not of the full-fed, of 
self-mastery not of self-indulgence.  It is 



492 



told of Demosthenes that he consumed more oil than wine, and that no workman 
ever shortened his nights as he did. He for the sake of enunciating the single 
letter Rho was willing to take a dog as his teacher; and yet you make it a 
crime in me that I took a man to teach me the Hebrew letters. This is the sort 
of wisdom which makes men remain unlearned: they do not choose to learn what 
they do not know. They forget the words of Horace: 



Why through false shame do I choose ignorance, Rather than seek to learn? 



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



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



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

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

    19. I am told that he also carps at me for the translation I have given of 
a phrase in the Second Psalm. In the Latin it 



493 



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

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

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



494 



and not another's. However, that I should not be thought to be raising 
quibbles, and by this artifice of self-excuse to be escaping from boldly 
meeting him, I will set out the actual passages which are adduced as evidences 
of my fault. 

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



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



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



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



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



    "The Apostle does not say 'He chose us before the foundation of the world 
because we were then holy and without blemish;' but 'He chose us that we might 
be holy and without blemish,' that is, that we who before were not holy and 
without blemish might afterwards become such. This expression will apply even 
to sinners who turn to better things; and thus the words remain true, 'In thy 
sight shall no man living be justified,' that is, no one in his whole life, in 
the whole of the time that he has existed in the world. If the passage be thus 
understood, it makes against the opinion that before the foundation of the 
world certain souls were elected because of their holiness, and that they had 
none of the corruption of sinners. It is evident that Paul and those like him 
were not elected because they were holy and without blemish, but they were 
elected and predestinated so that in their after life, by means of their works 
and their virtues, they should become holy and  without blemish." 



    Does any one dare, then, after this statement of my opinion, to accuse me 
of assent to the heresy of Origen? It is now almost eighteen years since I 
composed those books, at a time when the name of Origen was highly esteemed in 
the world, and when as yet his work the Peri 
Arkpn had not reached the ears of the Latins: and yet I 
distinctly stated my belief and pointed out what I did not agree with. Hence, 
even if my opponent could have pointed out anything heretical in other places, 
I should be held guilty only of the fault of carelessness, not of the perverse 
doctrines which both in this place and in my other works I have condemned. 

    23. I will deal shortly with the second passage which my brother tells me 
has been marked for blame, because the complaint is exceedingly frivolous, and 
bears on its face its calumnious character. The passage  is that in 



495 



which Paul declares that God "made him to sit at his right hand in the 
heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and 
every, name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to 
come." After stating various expositions which have been given, I came to the 
offices of the ministers of God, and spoke of the principalities and powers, 
the virtues and dominions: and I add: 



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

principalities, and dominions." 



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



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



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

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

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



    "The words which describe Paul as the prisoner of Jesus Christ for the 
Gentiles may be understood of his martyrdom, since it was when he was 



496 



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



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

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



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



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



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



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

    28. The sixth and last point which I am told that he brings against me 
(that is if my brother has not left anything unreported) is that, in the 
interpretation of the Apostle's 



497 



words,  "He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no one ever hated his 
own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church," 
after my own simple explanation I propounded the question raised by Origen, 
speaking his views though without mentioning his name, and saying: 



    "I may be met by the objection that the statement of the Apostle is not 
true when he says that no man hates his own flesh, since those who labour 
under the jaundice or consumption or cancer Or abscesses, prefer death to 
life, and hate their own bodies;" and my own opinion follows immediately: "The 
words, therefore, may be more properly taken in a metaphorical sense." 



    When I say metaphorical, I mean to shew that what is said is not actually 
the case, but that the truth is shadowed forth through a mist of allegory. 
However, I will set out the actual words which are found in Origen's third 
book: "We may say that the soul loves that flesh which is to see the salvation 
of God, that it nourishes and cherishes it, and trains it by discipline and 
satisfies it with the bread of heaven, and gives it to drink of the blood of 
Christ: so that it may become we through wholesome food, and may follow 
husband freely, without being weighed down by any weakness. It is by a 
beautiful image that the soul is said to nourish and cherish the body as 
Christ nourishes and cherishes the church, since it was he who said to 
Jerusalem:  



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



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



    "Taking the simple sense of the words, we have a command, following on the 
precept of mutual kindness between man and wife, that we should nourish and 
cherish our wives: that is, that we should supply them with the food and 
clothing which are necessary." 



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



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



    You might justly be staggered, if I had not after what goes before, said 
"We may begin to be what it is promised that we shall be in heaven." When I 
say, "We shall begin to be on earth," I do not take away the difference of 
sex; I only take away lust, and sexual intercourse, as the Apostle does when 
he says, "The time is short; it remaineth therefore that those who have wives 
be as though they had none;" and as the Lord implied when, in reply to the 
question of which of the seven brothers the woman would be the wife, he 
answered:  "Ye err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God; for in 
the resurrection they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage: but they 
shall be as the angels of God." And, indeed, when chastity is observed between 
man and woman, it begins to be true that there is neither male nor female; 
but, though living in the body, they are being changed into angels, among whom 
there is neither male nor female. 



498 



The same is said by the same Apostle in another place:  "As many of you as 
were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor 
Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female: 
for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." 

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

    He brings against me the charge of perjury and sacrilege together, 
because, in a book written for the instruction of one of Christ's virgins, I 
describe the promise which I once made when I dreamed that I was before the 
tribunal of the Judge, that I would never again pay attention to secular 
literature, and that nevertheless I have sometimes made mention of the 
learning which I then condemned. I think that I have here lighted on the man 
who, under the name of Sallustianus Calpurnius, and through the letter written 
to me by the orator Magnus, raised a not very  great question. My answer on 
the general subject is contained in the short treatise which I then wrote to 
him.  But at the present moment I must make answer as to the sacrilege and 
perjury of my dream. I said that I would thenceforward read no secular books: 
it was a promise for the future, not the abolition of my memory of the past. 
How, you may ask me, can you retain what you have been so long without 
reading? I must give my answer by recurring to one of these old books:  



    'Tis much to be inured in tender youth. 



    But by this mode of denial I criminate myself; for bringing Virgil as my 
witness I am accused by my own defender. I suppose I must weave a long web of 
words to prove what each man is conscious of. Which of us does not remember 
his infancy? I shall make you laugh though you are a man of such extreme 
gravity; and you will have at last to do as Crassus did, who, Lucilius tells 
us, laughed but once in his life, if I recount the memories of my childhood: 
how I ran about among the offices where the slaves worked; how I spent the 
holidays in play; or bow I had to be dragged like a captive from my 
grandmother's lap to the lessons of my enraged Orbilius.  You may still more 
be astonished if I say that, even now that my head is gray and bald, I often 
seem in my dreams to be standing, a curly youth, dressed in my toga, to 
declaim a controversial thesis before the master of rhetoric; and, when I 
wake, I congratulate myself on escaping the peril of making a speech. Believe 
me, our infancy brings back to us many things most accurately. If you had had 
a literary education, your mind would retain what it was originally imbued 
with as a wine cask retains its scent. The purple dye on the wool cannot be 
washed out with water. Even asses and other brutes know the inns they have 
stopped at before, however long the journey may have been. Are you astonished 
that I have not forgotten my Latin books when you learnt Greek without a 
master? I learned the seven forms of Syllogisms in the Elements of logic; I 
learned the meaning of an Axiom, or as it might be called in Latin a 
Determination; I learned how every sentence must have in it a verb and a noun; 
how to heap up the steps of the Sorites,  how to detect the clever turns of 
the Pseudomenos  and the frauds of the stock sophisms. I can swear that I 
never read any of these things after I left school. I suppose that, to escape 
from having what I learned made into a crime, I must, according to the fables 
of the poets, go and drink of the river 



499 



Lethe. I summon you, who accuse me for my scanty knowledge, and who think 
yourself a literateur and a Rabbi, tell me how was it that you dared to write 
some of the things you have written, and to translate Gregory,  that most 
eloquent man, with a splendour of eloquence like Iris own? Whence have you 
obtained that flow of words, that lucidity of statement, that variety of 
translations,--you who in youth had hardly more than a first taste of 
rhetoric? I must be very much mistaken if you do not study Cicero in secret. I 
suspect that, being yourself so cultivated a person, you forbid me trader 
penalties the reading of Cicero, so that you may be left alone among our 
church writers to boast of your flow of eloquence. I must say, however, that 
you, seem rather to follow the philosophers, for your style is akin to that of 
the thorny sentences of Cleanthes  and the contortions of Chrysippus,  not 
from any art, for of that you say you are ignorant, but from the sympathy of 
genius. The Stoics claim Logic as their own, a science which you despise as a 
piece of fatuity; on this side, therefore, you are an Epicurean, and the 
principle of your eloquence is, not style but matter. For, indeed, what does 
it matter that no one else understands what you wish to say, when you write 
for your own friends alone, not for all? I must confess that I myself do not 
always understand what you write, and think that I am reading  Heraclitus; 
however I do not complain, nor lament for my sluggishness; for the trouble of 
reading what you write is not more than the trouble you must have in writing 
it. 

    31. I might well reply as I have done even if it were a question of a 
promise made with full consciousness. But this is a new and shameless thing; 
he throws in my teeth a mere dream. How am I to answer? I have no time for 
thinking of anything outside my own sphere. I wish that I were not prevented 
from reading even the Holy Scriptures by the throngs that beset this place, 
and the gathering of Christians from all parts of the world. Still, when a man 
makes a dream into a crime, I can quote to him the words of the Prophets, who 
say that we are not to believe dreams; for even to dream of adultery does not 
condemn us to hell, and to dream of the crown of martyrdom does not raise us 
to heaven. Often I have seen myself in dreams dead and placed in the grave: 
often I have flown over the earth and been carried as if swimming through the 
air, over mountains and seas. My accuser might, therefore, demand that I 
should cease to live, or that I should have wings on my shoulders, because my 
mind has often been mocked in sleep by vague fancies of this kind. How many 
people are rich while asleep and wake to find themselves beggars! or are 
drinking water to cool their thirst, and wake up with their throats parched 
and burning! You exact from me the fulfilment of a promise given in a dream. I 
will meet you with a truer and closer question: Have you done all that you 
promised in your baptism? Have you or I fulfilled all that the profession of a 
monk demands? I beg you, think whether you are not looking at the mote in my 
eye through the beam in your own. I say this against my will; it is by sorrow 
that my reluctant tongue is forced into words. As to you, it is not enough for 
you to make up charges about my waking deeds, but you must accuse me for my 
dreams. You have such an interest in my actions that you must discuss what I 
have said or done in my sleep. I will not dwell on the way in which, in your 
zeal to speak against me, you have besmirched your own profession, and have 
done all you can by word and deed for the dishonouring of the whole body of 
Christians. But I give you fair warning, and will repeat it again and again. 
You are attacking a creature who has horns: and, if it were not that I lay to 
heart the words of the Apostle  "The evil speakers   shall not inherit the 
kingdom of God," and   "By hating one another you have been consumed one of 
another," I would make you feel what a vast discord you have stirred up after 
a slight and pretended reconciliation. What advantage is it to you to heap up 
slanders against me both among friends and strangers? Is it because I am not 
an Origenist, anti do not believe that I sinned in heaven, that I am accused 
as a sinner upon earth? And was the result of our renewal of friendship to be, 
that I was not to speak against heretics for fear that my notice of them 
should be taken for an assault upon you? So long as I did not refuse to be 
belauded by you, you followed me as a master, you called me friend and 
brother, and acknowledged me as a catholic in every respect. But when I asked 
to be spared your praises, and judged myself unworthy to have such a great man 
for my trumpeter, you immediately ran your pen through what you had written, 
and began to abuse all that you had praised 



500 



before, and to pour forth from the same mouth both sweet and bitter words. I 
wish you could understand what self-repression I am exerting in not suiting my 
words to the boiling heat of my breast; and how I pray, like the Psalmist:  
"Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, keep the door of my lips. Incline not 
my heart to the words of malice;" and, as he says elsewhere:  "While the 
wicked stood before me I was dumb and was humbled and kept silence even from 
good words;" and again:  "I became as a man that heareth not and in whose 
mouth are no reproofs." But for me the Lord the Avenger will reply, as he says 
through the Prophet:  "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord": and 
in another place:  "Thou satest and spakest against thy brother, and hast 
slandered thy mother's son. These things bast thou done, and I kept silence; 
thou thoughtest indeed by that I should be such an one as thyself; but I will 
reprove thee, and set them before thine eyes;" so that you may see yourself 
brought in guilty of those things which you falsely lay to another's charge. 

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



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



501 



                 JEROME'S APOLOGY AGAINST RUFINUS--BOOK 



                        SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTERS. 



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

    2. He professes in the first place to be replying to insinuations made at 
Rome against his orthodoxy, he being a man most fully approved in respect both 
of divine faith and of charity. He says that he would have wished to come 
himself, were it not that he had lately returned, after thirty years' absence, 
to his parents, and that it would have seemed harsh and inhuman to leave them 
after having been so long in coming to them; and also if he had not become 
somewhat less robust through his long and toilsome journey, and too infirm to 
begin his labours again. As he had not been able to come himself, he had sent 
his apology as a kind of literary cudgel which the bishop might hold in his 
hand and drive away the dogs who were raging against him. If he is a man 
approved for his divine faith and charity by all, and especially by the Bishop 
to whom he writes; how is it that at Rome he is assailed and reviled, and that 
the reports of the attacks upon his reputation grow thicker. Further, what 
sort of humility is this, that a man speaks of himself as approved for his 
divine faith and charity? The Apostles prayed, " Lord 



502 



increase our faith," and received for answer: "If ye had faith as a grain of 
mustard seed;" and even to Peter it is said:  "O thou of little faith, 
wherefore didst thou doubt?" Why should I speak of charity, which is greater 
than either faith or hope, and which Paul says he hopes for rather than 
assumes: without which even the blood shed in martyrdom and the body given up 
to the flames has no reward to crown it. Yet both of these our friend claims 
as his own: in such a way, however, that there still remain creatures who bark 
against him, and who will go on barking unless the illustrious Pontiff drives 
them away with his stick. But how absurd is this plea which he puts forward, 
of having returned to his parents after thirty years. Why, he has got neither 
father nor mother! He left them alive when he was a young man, and, now that 
he is old, he pines for them when they are dead. But perhaps, he means by 
"parents," what is meant in the talk of the soldiers and the common people, 
his kinsfolk and relations; well, he says he does not wish to be thought so 
harsh and inhuman as to desert them; and therefore he leaves his home  and 
goes to live at Aquileia. That most approved faith of his is in great peril at 
Rome, and yet he lies on his back, being a bit tired after thirty years, and 
cannot make that very easy journey m a carnage along that Flaminian Way. He 
puts forward his lassitude after his long journey, as if he had done nothing 
but move about for thirty years, or as if, after resting at Aquileia for two 
years, he was still worn out with the labour of his past travels. 

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



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



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

  4. He goes on: 



    "Still, since there may be some persons, who may wish to prove my faith, 
or to hear and learn what it is. I will declare that I thus think of the 
Trinity;" 



and so on. At first you said that you entrusted your faith to the Bishop as a 
stick with which he might fortify himself on your behalf against those barking 
dogs. Now you speak a little less confidently, "There may be some persons who 
wish to prove my faith." You begin to hesitate when the barking which reach 
your ears are so numerous. I will not stop to discuss the forms of diction 
which you use, for these you look down upon and condemn: I will answer 
according to the meaning alone. You are asked about one thing, and you give 
account for yourself upon another. As to the doctrines of Arius, you contended 
against them at Alexandria a long time ago, by imprisonment and exile, not 
with words but with blood. But the question now relates to the heresy of 
Origen, and the feeling aroused against you on the subject. I should be sorry 
that you should trouble yourself to cure wounds which are already healed. You 
confess a Trinity in one Godhead. The whole world now confesses this, and I 
think that even the devils confess that the Son of God was born of the Virgin 
Mary, and took upon him the flesh and the soul belonging to human nature. But 
I must beg you not to think me a contentious man if I examine you a little 
more strictly. You say that the Son of God took the flesh and soul belonging  
to human nature. Well then, I would ask you not to be vexed with me but to 
answer this question. That soul which Jesus took upon him, did it exist before 
it was born of Mary ? Was it created together with the body in that original 
Virgin nature which was begotten by the Holy Spirit? or, 



503 



when the body was already formed within the womb, was it made all at once, and 
sent down from heaven? I wish to know which one of these you choose as your 
opinion. If it existed before it was born from Mary, then it was not yet the 
soul of Jesus; and it was employed in some way, and, for a reward of its 
virtues, it was made his soul. If it arose by traduction,  then human souls, 
which we believe to be eternal, are subject to the same condition as those of 
the brutes, which perish with the body. But if it is created and sent into the 
body after the body has been formed, tell us so simply, and free us from 
anxiety. 

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

    6. Of the devil he thus frames his opinion: 



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



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

    7. To proceed: 



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



    You seem to me here to speak a little too hardly of the devil, and to 
assail the accuser of all with false accusations. You say 'he 



504 



is the universal cause of sin ;' and, while you make him the author of all 
crimes, you tree men from fault, and take away the freedom of the will. Our 
Lord says that  'from our heart come forth evil thoughts, murders 
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, railings,' and of Judas we 
read in the Gospel;  "After the sop Satan entered into him," that is, 
because he had before the sop sinned voluntarily, and had not been brought to 
repentance either by humbling himself or by the forbearance of the Saviour. So 
also the Apostle says;  "Such men I delivered to Satan, that they might be 
taught not to blaspheme." He delivered to Satan as to a torturer, with a view 
to their punishment those who, before they had been delivered to him learned 
to blaspheme by their own will. David also draws the distinction in a few 
words between the faults due to his own will and the incentives of vice when 
he says  "Cleanse thou me from my secret faults, and keep back thy servant 
from alien sins." We read also in Ecclesiastes  "If the spirit of a ruler 
rise up against thee, leave not thy place;" from which we may clearly see that 
we commit sin if we give opportunity to the power which rises up, and if we 
fail to hurl down headlong the enemy who is scaling our walls. As to your 
threatening your brothers, that is, those who accuse you, with eternal fire in 
company with the devil, it seems to me that you do not so much drag your 
brethren down as raise the devil up, since he, according to you, is to be 
punished only with the same fires as Christian men. But you well know, I 
think, what eternal fires mean according to the ideas of Origen, namely, the 
sinners' conscience, and the remorse which galls their hearts within. These 
ideas he thinks are intended in the words of Isaiah:  "Their worm shall not 
die neither shall their fire be quenched." And in the words addressed to 
Babylon:  "Thou hast coals of fire, thou shall sit upon them, these shall be 
thy help." So also in the Psalm it  is said to the penitent;  "What shall be 
given to thee, or what shall be done more for thee against thee false tongue? 
Sharp arrows of the mighty, with desolating coals;" which means (according to 
him) that the arrows of God's precepts (concerning which the Prophet says in 
another place,  "I lived in 

misery while a thorn pierces me") should wound and strike through the crafty 
tongue, and make an end of sins in it. He also interprets the place where the 
Lord testifies saying:  "I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish 
that it may burn" as meaning "I wish that all may repent, and burn out through 
the  Holy spirit their vices and their sins; for I am he of whom it is 
written,  "Our God is a consuming fire;" it is no great thing then to say 
this of the devil, since it is prepared also for men." You ought rather to 
have said, if you wished to avoid the suspicion of believing in the salvation 
of the devil;  "Thou hast become perdition and shall not be for ever;" and 
as the Lord speaks to Job concerning the devil  "Behold his hone shall fail 
him and in the sight of all shall he be cast down. I will not arouse him as 
one that is cruel, for who can resist my countenance? Who has first given to 
me that I may return it to him? for all things beneath the heaven are mine. I 
will not spare him and his words that are powerful and fashioned to turn away 
wrath." Hence, these things may pass as the work of a plain man. Their bearing 
is evident enough to those who understand these matters; but to the unlearned 
they may wear the appearance of innocence. 

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



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



505 



Church delivers it as an article of faith that God is the creator of souls as 
well as of bodies." 



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



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



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

    10. Unhappy souls! stricken through with all these barbarisms as with so 
many lances! I doubt whether they had so much trouble when, according to the 
erroneous theory of Origen, they tell from heaven to earth, and were clothed 
in these gross bodies, as they have now in being knocked about on all sides by 
these strange words and sentences: not to mention that word of ill omen which 
says that they are infused through the channel of the human seed. I know that 
it is not usual in Christian writings to criticise mere faults of style; but I 
thought it well to shew by a few examples how rash it is to teach what you are 
ignorant of, to write what you do not know: so that, when we come to the 
subject-matter, we may be prepared to find the same amount of wisdom. He sends 
a letter, which he calls a very strong stick, as a weapon for the Bishop of 
Rome; and on the very subject about which the dogs are barking at him he 
professes entire ignorance of the question. If he is ignorant on the subject 
for which ill-reports are current against him, what need was there for him to 
send an Apology, which contains no defence of himself, but only a confession 
of his ignorance? This course is calculated to sow a crop of suspicious, not 
to calm them. He gives us three opinions about the origin of souls; and his 
conclusion at the end is: "I do not deny that I have read each of them, and I 
confess that I still am ignorant." You would suppose him to be Arcesilaus  
or Carneades  who declare that there is no certainty; though be surpasses 
even them in his cautiousness; for they were driven by the intolerable 
ill-will which they aroused among philosophers for taking all truth out of 
human life, to invent the doctrines of probability, so that by making their 
probable assertions they might temper their agnosticism; but he merely says 
that he is uncertain, and does not know which of these opinions is true. If 
this was all the answer he had to make, what could have induced him to invoke 
so great a Pontiff as the witness of his lack of theological culture. I 
presume this is the lassitude about which he tells us that he is exhausted 
with his thirty-years' journey and cannot come to Rome. There are a great many 
things of which we are all ignorant; but we do not ask for witnesses of our 
ignorance. As to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, as to the nativity of our 
Lord and Saviour, about which Isaiah cries,  "Who shall declare his gen- 



506 



eration?" he speaks boldly, and a mystery of which all past ages knew nothing 
he claims as quite within his knowledge: this alone he does not know, the 
ignorance of which causes men to stumble. As to how a virgin became the mother 
of God, he has full knowledge; as to how he himself was born he knows nothing. 
He confesses that God is the maker of souls and bodies. whether souls existed 
before bodies or whether they came into being with the germs of bodies, or are 
sent into them when they are already formed in the womb. In any case we 
recognize God as their author. The question at issue is not whether the souls 
were made by God or by another, but which of the three opinions which he 
states is true. Of this he professes ignorance. Take care! You may find people 
saying that the reason for your confession of your ignorance of the three is 
that you do not wish to be compelled to condemn one. You spare Tertullian and 
Lactantius so as not to condemn Origen with them. As far as I remember (though 
I may he mistaken) I am not aware of having read that Lactantius spoke of the 
soul as planted at the same time as the body.  But, as you say that you have 
read it, please to tell me in what book it is to be found, so that you may not 
be thought to have calumniated him in his death as you have me in my slumber. 
But even here you walk with a cautious and hesitating step. You say: "I think 
that, among the Latins, Tertullian or Lactantius held this opinion, perhaps 
also some others. You not only are in doubt about the origin of souls, but you 
have only 'thoughts' as to the opinion which each writer holds: yet the matter 
is of some importance. On the question of the soul, however, you openly 
proclaim your ignorance, and confess your untaught condition: as to the 
authors, your knowledge amounts only to 'thinking,' hardly to 'presuming.' But 
as to Origen alone you are quite clear. "This is Origen's opinion," you say. 
But, let me ask you: Is the opinion sound or not? Your reply is, "I do not 
know." Then why do you send me messengers and letter-carriers, who are 
constantly coming, merely to teach me that you are ignorant? To prevent the 
possibility of my doubting whether your incapacity is as great as you say, and 
thinking it possible that you are cunningly concealing all you know, you take 
an oath in the presence of God that up to the present moment yon hold nothing 
for certain and definite on this subject, and that you leave it to God to know 
what is true, and to any one to whom it may please Him to reveal it. What! 
Through all these ages does it seem to you that there has been no one worthy 
of having this revealed to him? Neither patriarch, nor prophet, nor apostle, 
nor martyr? Were not these mysteries made clear even to yourself when you 
dwelt amidst princes and exiles? The Lord says in the Gospel:  "Father, I 
have revealed thy name to men." Did he who revealed the Father keep silence on 
the origin of souls? And are you astonished if your brethren are scandalized 
when you swear that you know nothing of a thing which the churches of Christ 
profess I to know?  

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



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



    "I hear," he says, "that thence dispute has arisen."  How clever this 
is, to speak of it as a dispute, when it is really an accusation against him. 
"That I have, at the request of my brethren, translated certain things of 
Origen's into Latin." Yes, but what are these "certain things"? Have they no 
name? Are you silent? Then the bills of charge brought by the accusers will 
speak for you. "I suppose," he says, "that every one understands that it is 
only through envy that these things are made matters of blame." What envy? Are 
people envious of your eloquence? Or have you done what no other man has ever 
been able to do? Here am I, who have translated many works of Origen's; yet, 
except you, no one shews envy towards me or calumniates me for it. "If there 
is any offensive statement in the author, why is it to be twisted into a fault 
of 



507 



the translator? I was asked to exhibit in Latin what stands written in the 
Greek text; and I did nothing more than fit Latin words to Greek ideas. If, 
therefore, there is anything to praise in these ideas, the praise does not 
belong to me, and similarly as to anything to which blame may attach." Can you 
be astonished that men think ill of you when you say of open blasphemies 
nothing more than, "If there are any offensive statements in the author"? What 
is said in those books is offensive to all men; and you stand alone in your 
doubt and ill your complaint that this is "twisted into a fault of the 
translator," when you have praised it in your Preface. 'You were asked to turn 
it into Latin as it stood in the Greek text.' I wish you had done what you 
pretend you were asked. You would not then be the object of any ill will. If 
you had kept faith as a translator, it would not have been necessary for me to 
counteract your false translation by my true one. You know in your own 
conscience what you added, what you subtracted, and what you altered on one 
side or the other at your discretion; and after this you have the audacity to 
tell us that what is good or evil is not to be attributed to you but to the 
author. You shew your sense of the ill will aroused against you by again 
toning down your words: and as if you were walking with your steps in the air 
or on the tops of the ears of corn, you say, "Whether there is praise or blame 
in these opinions." You dare not defend him, but you do not choose to condemn 
him. Choose which of the two you please; the option is yours; if this which 
you have translated is good, praise it, if bad, condemn it. But he makes 
excuses, and weaves another artifice, He says: 



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



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

    11 . I wish to know who gave you permission to cut out a number of 
passages from the work you were translating? You were asked to turn a Greek 
book into Latin, not to correct it; to draw out another man's words, not to 
write a book of your own. You confess, by the fact of pruning away so much, 
that you did not do what you were asked. And I wish that what you curtailed 
had all been the bad parts, and that you had not put in many things of your 
own which go to support what is bad. I will take an example, from which men 
may judge of the rest. In the first book of the IIeri 
Arkpn where Origen had uttered that impious blasphemy, that the 
Son does not see the Father, you supply the reasons for this, as if in the 
name of the writer, and translate the note of Didymus, in which he makes a 
fruitless effort to defend another man's error, trying to prove that Origen 
spoke rightly; but we, poor simple men, like the tame creatures spoken of by 
Ennius, can understand neither his wisdom nor that of his translator. Your 
Preface, which you allege in explanation, in which you flatter and praise me 
so highly shows you to be guilty of the most serious faults of translation. 
You say that you have cut out many things from the Greek, but you noticing of 
what you have put in. Were the parts cut out good or bad? Bad, I suppose. Was 
what you kept good or bad? Good, presume; for you could not translate the bad. 
Then I suppose you cut off what was bad and left what was good? Of course. But 
what you have translated can be shewn to be almost wholly bad. Whatever 
therefore in your translation I can shew to be must be laid to your account, 
since you translated it as being good. It is a strange thing if you are to act 
like an unjust censor, who is himself guilty of the crime, and are allowed at 
your will to expel some from the Senate and keep others in it. But you say: 
"It was impossible to change everything only thought I might cut away what had 
been added by the heretics." Very good. Then if you cut away all that you 
thought had been added by the heretics, all that you left belongs to the work 
which you were translating. Answer me then, are these good or bad? You could 
not translate what was had, since once for all you had cut away what had been 
added by the heretics, that is, unless you thought it your duty to cut away 
the bad parts due to the heretics, while trans- 



508 



lating the errors of Origen himself unaltered into Latin. Tell me then, why 
you turned Origen's heresies into Latin. Was it to expose the author of the 
evil, or to praise him? If your object is to expose him, why do you praise him 
in the Preface? If you praise him you are convicted of being a heretic. The 
only remaining hypothesis is that you published these things as being good. 
But if they are proved to be bad, then author and translator are involved in 
the same crime, and the Psalmist's word is fulfilled:  "When thou sawest a 
thief, thou consentedst unto him and hast been partaker with the adulterers." 
It is needless to make a plain matter doubtful by arguing about it. As to what 
follows, let him answer whence this suspicion arose in his mind of these 
additions by heretics. "It was," he says, "because I found the same things 
treated by this author in other places in a catholic sense." 

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

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

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



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

    Here at last he has vomited forth what he wanted to say, and all his 
inflamed mind has broken oat into this malicious accusation against me. When 
he translates the IIeri Arkpn he declares that 
he is following me. When he is accused for having done it, he gives me as his 
example: whether he is in danger or out of danger, he cannot live without me. 
Let me tell him, therefore, what he professes not to know. No one reproaches 
you because you translated Origen, otherwise Hilary and Ambrose would be 
condemned: but because you translated a heretical work, and tried to gain 
support for it by praising me in the Preface. I myself, whom you criminate, 
translated seventy homilies of Origen, and parts of his Tomes, in order that 
by translating his best works I might withdraw the worst from notice: and I 
also have openly translated the IIeri Arkpn  to 
prove the falsity of your translation, so as to show the reader what to avoid. 
If you wish to translate Origen into Latin, you have at hand many 



509 



homilies and Tomes of his, in which some topic of morality is handled or some 
obscure passage of Scripture is opened. Translate these give these to those 
who ask them of you. Why should your first labour begin with what is infamous? 
And why, when you were about to translate a heretical work, did you preface 
and support it by the supposed book of a martyr, and force upon the ears of 
Romans a book the translation of which threw the world into panic? At all 
events, if you translate such a work with the view of exhibiting the author as 
a heretic, change nothing from the Greek text, and make this clear in the 
Preface. It is this which the Pope Anastasius most wisely embodies in the 
letter which he has addressed to the Bishop John against you; he frees me who 
have done this froth all blame, but condemns you who would not do it. You will 
perhaps deny the existence of this letter; I have therefore subjoined a copy 
of it; so that, if you will not listen to your brother when he advises, you 
may listen to the Bishop when he condemns. 

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



    "The cause of this diversity I have set forth more fully for you in the 
Apology which Pamphilus wrote among his treatises, adding a very short 
document of my own, in which I have shewn by what appear to me evident proofs, 
that his works have been depraved in many places by heretics and ill-disposed 
persons, and especially those which I am now translating, the 
IIeri Arkrn." 



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



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



    16. These are his own words, he cannot deny them. Now I do not want to be 
put off with such expressions as "since he 



510 



said above" but I want to have the name of the book in which he first spoke 
rightly and then wrongly: in which he first says that the Holy Spirit and the 
Son are of the substance of God, and in what immediately follows declares that 
they are creatures. Do you not know that I possess the whole of Origen's works 
and have read a vast number of them? 



"Your trappings to the mob! I know you well; What lies within and on the skin 
I see."  



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

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



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



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



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



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



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



    If, I reply, we admit that everything in a book which is offensive is 
corruptly inserted by others, nothing will remain belonging to the author 
under whose name the book passes, but everything can be assigned to those by 
whom it is supposed to have been corrupted. But then it will not belong to 
them either, since we do not know who they were: and the result will be that 
every book belongs to everybody and nothing to any one in particular. In this 
confusion which this method of defence introduces, it will be impossible to 
convict Marcion of error, or Manichus or Arius or Eunomius; because, as soon 
as we point out a statement of their unbelief, their disciples will answer 
that was not what the master wrote, but was corruptly inserted by his 
opponents. According to this principle, this very book of yours will not be 
yours nor mine. And as to this very book in which I am making reply to your 
accusations, whatever you find fault with in it will be held not be written by 
me but by you who now find fault with it. And further, while you assign 
everything to the heretics, there 



511 



will be nothing left which you can assign to churchmen as their own. 

    But you may ask, How is it then that in their books some false views 
occur? Well, if I answer that I do not know the parties whence these false 
views came, I must not be thought to have said that they are heretics. It is 
possible that they may have fallen into error unawares, or that the words bore 
a different meaning, or that they may have been gradually corrupted by 
unskilful copyists It must be admitted that, before Arius arose in Alexandria 
as a demon of the south, things were said incautiously which cannot be 
defended against a malevolent criticism. But when glaring faults are exposed 
in Origen, you do not defend him but accuse others; you do not deny the 
faults, but summon up a host of criminals. If you were asked to name those who 
have been the companions of Origen in his heresies, it would be right enough 
to call in these others. But what you are now asked to tell us is whether 
those statements in the books of Origen are good or evil; and you say nothing, 
but bring in irrelevant matters, such as: This is what Clement says; this is 
an error of which Dionysius is found guilty; these are the words in which the 
bishop Athanasius defends the error of Dionysius; in a similar way the 
writings of the Apostle have been tampered with: and then, while the charge of 
heresy is fastened upon you, you say nothing in your own defence, but make 
confessions about me. I make no accusations, and am content with answering for 
myself. I am not what you try to prove me: whether you are what you are 
accused of being, is for you to consider. The fact that I am acquitted of 
blame does not prove me innocent nor the fact that you are accused prove you a 
criminal. 

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



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

them." 



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



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



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



    "We believe that not only those who have committed great sins will be cast 
out from the kingdom of heaven, such as fornicators and adulterers, and those 
who defile themselves with mankind, and thieves, but those also who have done 
evil of a less flagrant kind, since it is written;  'Neither drunk- 



512 



ards nor evil speakers shall inherit the kingdom of God;" and that the 
standard by which men will be judged is as much the goodness as the severity 
of God. Therefore we strive to act thoughtfully in all things, in drinking 
wine, and in moderation of language, so that we dare not speak evil of any 
man. Now, because, through the fear of God, we are careful not to utter 
maledictions against any one, remembering that the words 'He dared not bring 
against him a railing accusation,' are spoken of Michael in his dealing with 
the devil; as it is said also in another place,  'They set at naught 
dominions and rail at dignities;' certain of these men who seek for matters of 
contention, ascribe to us and our teaching the blasphemy (as to which they 
have to lay to heart the words which apply to them, 'Neither drunkards nor 
evil speakers shall inherit the kingdom of God'), namely, that the father of 
wickedness find perdition of those who shall be cast out of the kingdom of God 
can be saved; a thing which not even a madman can say." 



    The rest which comes in the same letter he has  set down instead of the 
later words of Origen which I have translated: "Now, because through the fear 
of God we  are careful not to utter maledictions against  any one," and so on; 
he fraudulently cuts off the earlier part, on which the later depends,  and 
begins to translate the letter, as though the former part began with this 
statement, and says: 



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



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

    It is not enough for him to calumniate the Greeks and the men of old time, 
about whom the distance either of time or space gives him the power to tell 
any falsehood he pleases. He comes to the Latins, and first takes the case of 
Hilary the Confessor, whose book, he states, was falsified by the heretics 
after the Council of Ariminum. A question arose about him on this account in a 
council of bishops, and he then ordered the book to be brought from his own 
house. The book in its heretical shape was in his desk, though he did not know 
it; and when it was produced, the author of the book was condemned as a 
heretic and excommunicated, and left the council room. This is the story, a 
mere dream of his own, which he tells to his intimates; and he imagines his 
authority to be so great that no one will dare to contradict him when he says 
such things. I will ask him a few questions. In what city was the synod held 
by which Hilary was excommunicated? What were the names of the Bishops 
present? Who subscribed the sentence? Who were content, and who non-content? 
Who were the consuls of the year? and who was the emperor 



513 



who ordered the assembly of the council? Were the Bishops present those of 
Gaul alone, or of Italy and Spain as well? and for what purpose was the 
council called together? You tell us none of these things; yet, in order to 
defend Origen, you treat as a criminal and as excommunicated a man of the 
highest eloquence, the very clarion of the Latin tongue against the Arians. 
But we are in the presence of a confessor, and even his calumnies must be 
borne with patience. He next passes to Cyprian the illustrious martyr, and he 
tells us that a book by Tertullian entitled "On the Trinity" is read as one of 
his works by the partisans of the Macedonian heresy at Constantinople. In this 
charge of his he tells two falsehoods. The book in question is not 
Tertullian's, nor does it pass under the name of Cyprian. It is by Novatian 
and is called by his name; the peculiarity of the style proves the authorship 
of the work. 

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

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



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



    22. Who are these men who are wont to dispute at such great length in the 
churches, and to write books, and whose discourses and writings are taken 
wholly from Origen; these men who are afraid of their literary thefts becoming 
known, and shew ingratitude towards their master, and who therefore deter men 
of simple mind from reading him? You ought to mention them by name, and 
designate the men themselves. Are the reverend bishops  Anastasius and 
Theophilus, Venerius and Chromatius, and the whole council of the Catholics 
both in the East and in the West, who publicly denounce him as a heretic, to 
be esteemed to be plagiarists of his books? Are we to believe that, when they 
preach in the churches, they do not preach the mysteries of the Scriptures, 
but merely repeat what they have stolen from Origen? Is it not enough for you 
to disparage them all in general, but you must specially aim the spear of your 
pen against a reverend and eminent Bishop of the church? Who is this who 
considers 



514 



that he has a necessity laid on him of reviling Origen, as the Gospel which he 
must preach among all nations and tongues? this man who proclaimed in the 
audience of a vast multitude of the brethren that he had read six thousand of 
his books? You yourself were in the very centre of that multitude and company 
of the brethren, when, as he complains in his letter,  the monstrous 
doctrines of Origen were enlarged upon by you. Is it to be imputed to him as a 
crime thai he knows the Greek, the Syrian, the Hebrew, the Egyptian, and in 
part also the Latin language? Then, I suppose, the Apostles and Apostolic men, 
who spoke with tongues, are to be condemned; and you who know two languages 
may deride me who know three. But as for the six thousand books which you 
pretend that be has read, who will believe that you are speaking the truth, or 
that he was capable of telling such a lie? If indeed Origen had written six 
thousand books, it is possible that a man of great learning, who had been 
trained from his infancy in sacred literature might have read books alien from 
his own convictions, because he had an inquiring spirit and a love of 
learning. But how could be read what Origen never wrote? Count up the index 
contained in the third volume of Eusebius, in which is his life of Pamphilus: 
you will not find, I do not say six thousand, but not a third of that number 
of books. I have by me the letter of the above named Pontiff, in which he 
gives his answer to this calumny of yours uttered when you were still in the 
East; and it confutes this most manifest falsehood with the open countenance 
of truth. 

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



515 



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

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



    I have received letters so long and eagerly desired from my dear 
Desiderius  who, as if the  future had been foreseen, shares his name with 
Daniel,  entreating me to put our friends in possession of a translation of 
the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Latin. The work is certainly hazardous and it 
is exposed to the  attacks of my calumniators, who maintain that it is 
through contempt of the Seventy that I have set to work to forge a new version 
to take the place of the old. They thus test ability as they do wine; whereas 
I have again and again declared that I dutifully offer, in the Tabernacle of 
God what I can, and have pointed out that the great gifts which one man brings 
are not marred by the inferior gifts of another. But I was stimulated to 
undertake the task by the zeal of Origen, who blended with the old edition 
Theodotion's translation and used throughout the work as distinguishing marks 
the 



516 



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



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

    33. In reference to Daniel my answer will be that I did not say that he 
was not a prophet; on the contrary, I confessed in the very beginning of the 
Preface that he was a prophet. But I wished to show what was the opinion 
upheld by the Jews; and what were the arguments on which they relied for its 
proof. I also told the reader that the version read in the Christian churches 
was not that of the Septuagint translators but that of Theodotion. It is true, 
I said that the Septuagint version was in this book very 



517 



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

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

    35. By all this it is made clear, first that the version of the Seventy 
translators which has gained an established position by having been so long in 
use, was profitable to the churches, because that by its means the Gentiles 
heard of the coming of Christ before he came; secondly, that the other 
translators are not to be reproved, since it was not their own works that they 
published but the divine books which they translated; and, thirdly, that my 
own familiar friend should frankly accept from a Christian and a friend what 



518 



he has taken great pains to obtain from the Jews and has written down for him 
at great cost. I have exceeded the bounds of a letter; and, though I had taken 
pen in hand to contend against a wicked heresy, I have been compelled to make 
answer on my own behalf, while waiting for my friend's three books, and in a 
state of constant mental suspense about the charges he had heaped up against 
me. It is easier to guard against one who professes hostility than to make 
head against an enemy who lurks under the guise 

[of a friend. 



            JEROME'S APOLOGY IN ANSWER TO RUFINUS--BOOK III. 



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



519 



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

    2. But, before I make my answer to your letter, I must expostulate with 
you; you who are first in age among the thanks, good presbyter, follower of 
Christ; is it possible for you to wish to kill your brother, when even to hate 
him is to be a homicide? Have you learned from your Saviour the lesson that if 
one strike you on the one cheek you should turn to him the other also? Did not 
he make answer to the man who struck him,  "If I have spoken evil, bear 
witness of the evil, but if well, why smitest thou me?" You threaten me with 
death, which can be inflicted on us even by serpents. To die is the lot of 
all, to commit homicide only of the weak man. What then? If you do not kill me 
shall I never die? Perhaps I ought to be grateful to you 



520 



that you turn this necessity into a virtue We read of Apostles quarrelling, 
namely Paul and Barnabas who were angry with each other on account of John 
whose surname was Mark; those who were united by the bonds of Christ's gospel 
were separated for a voyage; but they still remained friends. Did not the same 
Paul resist Peter to the face because he did not walk uprightly in the Gospel? 
Yet he speaks of him as his predecessor in the Gospel, and as a pillar of the 
church; and he lays before him his mode of preaching,  ' lest he should be 
running, or had run in vain.' Do not children differ from parents and wives 
from husbands in religions matters, while yet domestic affections remain 
unimpaired. If you are as I am, why should you hate me? Even if you believe 
differently, why should you wish to kill me? Is it so, that whoever differs 
from you is to be slain? I call upon Jesus who will judge what I am now 
writing and your letter also, as a witness upon my conscience, that when the 
reverend bishop Chromatius begged the to keep silence, my wish was to do so, 
and thus to make an end of our dissensions, and to overcome evil with good. 
But, now that yon threaten me with destruction, I am compelled to reply; 
otherwise, my silence will be taken as an acknowledgment of the crime, and you 
will interpret my moderation as the sign of an evil conscience. 

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

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

    4. Your letter goes on: 



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



    I should have thought you would be ashamed of such a beginning of your 
work. What! I bribe your Secretary! Is there any one who would attempt to vie 
with the wealth of Croesus  and Darius?  who is there that does not 
tremble when he is suddenly confronted with a Demaratus  or a Crassus?  
Have you become so brazen-faced, theft you put your trust in lies and think 
lies will protect you and that we shall believe every fiction which you choose 
to frame? Who then was 



521 



it who stole that letter in which you were so highly praised, from the cell of 
our brother Eusebius? Whose artfulness was it, and whose accomplices, through 
which a certain document was found in the lodgings of that Christian woman 
Fabiola and of that wise man Oceanus, which they themselves had never seen? Do 
you think that you are innocent because you can cast upon others all the 
imputations which properly belong to you? Is every one who offends you, 
however guiltless and harmless he may be, at once held to become a criminal? 
You think so, I suppose, because you are possessed of that through which the 
chastity of Danae  was broken down, that which had more power with Gihazi 
than his master's sacred character, that for which Judas betrayed his 
Master.  

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

    However, I hardly see which way your argument tends. I suppose you mean 
that the papers being uncorrected and not having undergone a final revising 
were more easily falsified by Eusebius. Perhaps I am stupid; but the argument 
appears to me somewhat foolish and pointless. If the papers were uncorrected 
and had not undergone their final revision, the errors in them mast be imputed 
not to Eusebius but to your sloth and delay in putting off their correction; 
and all the blame that can be laid upon him is that he circulated among the 
body of Christians writings which you had intended in course of time to 
correct. But if, as you assert, Eusebius falsified them, why do you put 
forward the allegation that they were uncorrected, and that they had gone out 
before the public without their final revision? For papers whether corrected 
or uncorrected are equally susceptible of falsification. But, No one, you say 
possessed these books, or very few. What contradictions this single sentence 
exhibits! If no one bad these books, how could they be in the hands of a few? 
If a few possessed them, why do you state falsely that there were none? Then, 
when you say that a few had them, and by your own confession the statement 
that no one had them is overthrown, what becomes of your complaint that your 
secretary was bribed with money? Tell us the secretary's name, the amount oF 
the bribe, the place, the intermediary, the recipient. Of course the traitor 
has been cast off from 



522 



you, and one convicted of so great a crime has been separated from all 
familiarity with you. Is it not more likely to be true that the copies of the 
work which Eusebius obtained were given him by those few friends whom you 
speak of, especially since these copies agree and coincide with one another so 
completely that there is not the difference of a single stroke. We might ask 
also whether it was quite wise to give a copy to others which you bad not yet 
corrected? The documents had not received their last corrections, and yet 
other men possessed these errors of yours which needed correction. Do you not 
see that your falsehood will not hold together? Besides, what profit was there 
for you, at that particular moment--how would it have helped you in escaping 
from the condemnation of the bishops--that the book which was the subject of 
discussion should be open to everyone, and that you should thus be refuted by 
your own words? From all this it is clear, according to the epigram of the 
famous orator, that you have a good will for a lie, but not the art of framing 
it. 

    6. I will follow the order of your letter, and subjoin your very words as 
you spoke them. "I admit, that, as you say, I praised, your eloquence in my 
Preface; and I would praise it again now were it not that contrary to the 
advice of your Tully, you make it hateful by excessive boastfulness." Where 
have I boasted of my eloquence? I did not even accept willingly the praise 
which you bestowed on it. Perhaps your reason for saying this is that you do 
not wish, yourself, to be flattered by public praise given in guile. Rest 
assured you shall be accused openly; you reject one who would praise you; you 
shall have experience of out who openly arraigns you. I was not so foolish as 
to criticize your illiterate style; no one can expose it to condemnation so 
strongly as you do whenever you write. I only wished to show your 
fellow-disciples who shared your lack of literary training what progress you 
had made during your thirty years in the East, an illiterate writer, who takes 
impudence for eloquence, and universal evil speaking a sign of a good 
conscience. I am not going to administer the ferule; I do not assume, as you 
put it, to apply the strokes of the leather thong to teach an aged pupil his 
letters. But the fact is your eloquence and teaching is so sparkling that we 
mere tract-writers cannot bear it, and you dazzle our eyes with the acuteness 
of your talents to such an extent that we must all seem to be envious of you; 
and we must really join in the attempt to suppress you, for, if once you 
obtain the primacy among us as a writer, and stand on the summit of the 
rhetorical arch, all of us who profess to know anything will not be allowed to 
mutter a word. I am, according to you, a philosopher and an orator, 
grammarian, dialectician, one who knows Hebrew, Greek and Latin, a 
'trilingual' man. On this estimate, you also will be 'bilingual,' who know 
enough Latin and Greek to make the Greek think you a Latin scholar and the 
Latin a Greek: and the bishop Epiphanius will be a 'pentaglossic  man' since 
he speaks in five languages against you and your favorite.  But I wonder at 
the rashness which made you dare to say to one so accomplished as you profess 
to think me: " You, whose accomplishments give you so many watchful eyes, how 
can you be pardoned if you go wrong? How can you fail to be buried in the 
silence of a never ending shame?" When I read this, and reflected that I must 
somewhere or other have made a slip in my words (for " if any man does not 
go wrong in word, the same is a perfect man") and was expecting that he was 
about to expose some of my faults; all of a sudden I came upon the words: "Two 
days before the carrier of this letter set out your declamation against me was 
put into my hands." What became then of those threats of yours, and of your 
words: "How can you be pardoned if you go wrong? How Call you fail to be 
covered with the silence of a never ending shame?" Yet perhaps, 
notwithstanding the shortness of the time, you were able to put this in order; 
or else you were intending to hire in one of the learned sort, who would 
expect to find in my works the ornaments and gems of an eloquence like yours. 
You wrote before this: "Accept the document which I send which you wished to 
buy at a great price;" but now you speak with the pretence of humility. "I 
intended to follow your example; but, since the messenger who was returning to 
yon was hurrying back again I thought it better to write shortly to you than 
at greater length to others." In the meantime you boldly take pleasure in your 
illiteracy. Indeed you once confessed it, declaring that ' it was superfluous 
to notice a few faults of style, when it was acknowledged that there were 
faults in every part.' I will not therefore find fault with you for putting 
down that a document was acquired when you meant that it was bought; though 
acquiring is said of things like in kind, whereas buying implies the 



523 



counting out of money: nor for such a sentence as " as he who was returning to 
you was hurrying hack again" which is a redundancy worthy of the poorest style 
of diction. I will only reply to the arguments, and will convict you, not of 
solaecisms and barbarisms, but of falsehood, cunning and impudence. 

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

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

    9. I call Jesus the Mediator to witness that it is against my will, and 
fighting against necessity, that I come down into the arena of this war of 
words, and that, had you not challenged me, I would have never broken silence. 
Even now, let your charges against 



524 



me cease, and my defence will cease. For it is no edifying spectacle that is 
presented to our readers, that of two old men engaging in a gladiatorial 
conflict on account of a heretic; especially when both of them wish to be 
thought catholics. Let us leave off all favouring of heretics, and there will 
be no dispute between us. We once were zealous in our praise of Origen; let us 
be equally zealous in condemning him now that he is condemned by the whole 
world. Let us join hands and hearts, and march with a ready step behind the 
two trophy-bearers of the East and West.  We went wrong in our youth, let us 
mend our ways in our age. If you are my brother, be glad that I have seen my 
errors; if I am your friend, I must give you joy on your conversion. So long 
as we maintain our strife, we shall be thought to hold the right faith not 
willingly but of necessity. Our enmity prevents our affording the spectacle of 
a true repentance. If our faith is one, if we both of us accept and reject the 
same things, (and it is from this, as even Catiline testifies, that firm 
friendships arise), if we are alike in our hatred of heretics, and equally 
condemn our former mistakes, why should we set out to battle against each 
other, when we have the same objects both of attack and defence? Pardon me for 
having praised Origen's zeal for Scriptural learning in my youthful clays 
before I fully knew his heresies; and I will grant you forgiveness for having 
written an Apology for his works when your head was grey. 

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

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

    12. About the book of Pamphilus, what happened to me was, not comical as 
you call it, but perhaps ridiculous; namely that. after I had asserted it to 
be by Eusebius not by Pamphilus, I stated at the end of the discussion that I 
had for many years believed that it was by Pamphilus, and that I 



525 



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

    13. Moreover, you make a charge against 



526 



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

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



527 



wounds mortify while you put plasters on a healthy body. 

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

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

    17. Now, as to the question which you raise, when it was that I began to 
admit the authority of the pope Theophilus, and was associated with him in 
community of belief. You make answer to yourself: "Then, I suppose, when you 
were the supporter of Paul whom he bad condemned and made the greatest effort 
to help him, and instigated him to recover through an imperial rescript the 
bishopric from which he had been removed by the episcopal tribunal." I will 
not begin by answering for myself, but first speak of the injury which you 
have here done to another. What humanity or charity is there in rejoicing over 
the misfortunes of others and in exhibiting their wounds to the world? Is that 
the lessen you have learned from that Samaritan who carried back the man that 
was half dead to the inn? Is this what you understand by pouring oil into his 
wounds, and paying the host his expenses? Is it thus that you interpret the 
sheep brought back to the fold, the piece of money recovered, the prodigal son 
welcomed back? Suppose that you had a right to speak evil of me, because I had 
injured you, and, to use your words, had goaded you to madness and stimulated 
you to evil speaking: what harm had a man who remains in obscurity done you, 
that you should lay bare his scars, and when they were skinned over, should  
tear them open by inflicting this uncalled for  pain? Even if he was worthy of 
your re preaches, were you justified in doing this? If I am not mistaken, 
those whom you wish to strike at through him (and I speak the open opinion of 
many) are the enemies of the Origenists; you use the troubles of one of them 
to show your violence against both.  If the decisions of the pope Theophilus 
so greatly please you, and you think it impious that an episcopal decree 
should be nullified, what do you say about the rest of those whom he has 
condemned? And what do you say about the pope Anastasius, about whom you 
assert most truly that no one thinks him capable as the bishop of so great a 
city, of doing an injury to an innocent or an absent man? I do not say this 
because I 



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set myself up as a judge of episcopal decisions, or wish what they have 
determined to be rescinded; but I say, Let each of them do what he thinks 
right at his own risk, it is for him alone to consider how his judgment will 
be judged. Our duties in our monastery are those of hospitality; we welcome 
all who come to us with the smile of human friendliness. We must take care 
lest it should again happen that Mary and Joseph do not find room in the inn, 
and that Jesus should be shut out and say to us, "I was a stranger and ye took 
me not in." The only persons we do not welcome are heretics, who are the only 
persons who are welcomed by you: for our profession binds us to wash the feet 
of those who come to us, not to discuss their merits. Bring to your 
remembrance, my brother, how he whom we speak of had confessed Christ: think 
of that breast which was gashed by the scourges: recall to mind the 
imprisonment he had endured, the darkness, the exile, the work in the mines, 
and you will not be surprised that we welcomed him as a passing guest. Are we 
to be thought rebels by you because we give a cup of cold water to the thirsty 
in the name of Christ? 

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

    19. You allude to Vigilantius. What dream this is that you have dreamed 
about him I do not know. Where have I said that he was defiled by communion 
with heretics at Alexandria? Tell me the book, produce the letter: but you 
will find absolutely no such statement. Yet with your wonted carelessness of 
statement or rather impudence of lying, which makes you imagine that every one 
will believe what you say, you add: " When you quoted a text of Scripture 
against him in so insulting a way that I do not dare to repeat it with my own 
mouth." You 



529 



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

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

    21. You produce a letter of Siricius  who now sleeps in Christ, and the 
letter of the living Anastasius you despise. What injury you ask, can it do 
you that he should have written (or perhaps not written at all) when you knew 
nothing of it? If he did write, still it is enough for you that yon have the 
witness of the whole world in your favor, and that no one thinks it possible 
that the bishop of so great a city could have done 



530 



an injury to an innocent man, or even to one who was simply absent. You speak 
of yourself as innocent, though your translation made all Rome shudder; you 
say you were absent, but it is only because you dare not reply when you are 
accused. And you so shrink from the judgment of the city of Rome that you 
prefer to subject yourself to an invasion of the barbarians  than to the 
opinion of a peaceful city. Suppose that the letter of last year was forged by 
me; who then wrote the letters which have lately been received in the East? 
Yet in these last the pope Anastasius pays you such compliments that, when you 
read them, you will be more inclined to set to work to defend yourself than to 
accuse me. 

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

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

    23. As regards our reverend friend 



531 



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

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

    24. It is somewhat the same argument which you use against the pope 
Anastasius, namely, that, since you hold the letters of the bishop Siricius, 
it was impossible that he should write against you. I am afraid you suspect 
that some injury has been done you. I cannot understand how a man of your 
acuteness and capacity can condescend to such nonsense; you suppose that your 
readers are foolish, but you shew that you are foolish yourself. Then after 
this extraordinary argumentation, you subjoin this little sentence: " Far be 
such conduct from these reverend persons. It is from your school that such 
actions proceed. You gave us all the  signs of peace at our departure, and 
then threw missiles charged with venom from behind our backs." In this clause 
or rather declamatory speech, you intended, no doubt, to I shew your 
rhetorical skill. It is true we gave you the signs of peace, but not to em- 



532 



brace heresy; we joined hands, we accompanied you as you set forth on your 
journey, on the understanding that you were catholic not that we were 
heretical. But I want to learn what these poisoned missiles are which you 
complain that I threw from behind your back. I sent the presbyters, 
Vincentius, Paulinianus, Eusebius, Rufinus. Of these, Vincentius went to Rome 
long before you Paulinianus and Eusebius set out a year after you had sailed; 
Rufinus two years after, for the cause of Claudius; all of them either for 
private reasons, or because another was in peril of his life. Was it possible 
for me to know that when you entered Rome, a nobleman had dreamed that a ship 
full of merchandise was entering with full blown sails? or that all questions 
about fate were being solved by a solution which should not itself be fatuous? 
or that you were translating the book of Eusebius as if it were Pamphilus'? or 
that you were putting your own cover upon Origen's poisoned dish by lending 
your majestic eloquence to this translation of his notorious work 
Peri'Arkpn? This is a new way of calumniating a 
man. We sent out the accusers before you had committed the crime. It was not, 
I repeat, it was not by our plan, but by the providence of God, that these 
men, who were sent out for another reason, came to fight against the rising 
heresy. They were sent, like Joseph, to relieve the coming famine by the 
fervour of their faith. 

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

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



533 



you recommend; I will stop my nose, so that it may not be put to the torture 
by the delightful odour of your truth-speaking and your benedictions. 

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

    28. You pass on to the origin of souls, and at great length exclaim 
against the smoke which you say I raise. You want to be allowed to express 
ignorance on a point on which you advisedly dissemble your knowledge; and 
therefore begin questioning me about angels and archangels; as to the mode of 
their existence, the place and nature of their abodes, the differences, if 
there be any, existing between them; and then as to the course of the sun, the 
waxing and waning of the moon, the character and movements of the stars. I 
wonder that you did not set down the whole of the lines:  



Whence come the earthquakes, whence the high swoll'n seas 

Breaking their bounds, then sinking back to rest; 

The Sun's eclipse, the labours of the moon; 

The race of men and beasts, the storm, the fire, 

Arcturus' rainy Hyads, and the Bears: 

Why haste the winter's suns to bathe themselves 

Beneath the wave, what stays its lingering nights. 



    Then, leaving things in heaven, and condescending to those on earth, you 
philosophize on minor points. You say: " Tell us what are the causes of the 
fountains, and of the wind; what makes the hail and the showers; why the sea 
is salt, the rivers sweet; what account is to be given of clouds and storms, 
thunderbolts, and thunder and lightning." You mean that if do not know all 
this, you are entitled to say you know nothing about the origin of souls. You 
wish to balance your ignorance on a single point by mine on many. But do not 
you, who in page after page stir up what you call my smoke, understand that I 
can see your mists and whirlwinds? You wish to be thought a than of extensive 
knowledge, and among the disciples of Calpurnius  to enjoy a great 
reputation for wisdom, and therefore you raise up tile whole physical world in 
front of me, as if Socrates had said in vain when he passed over to the study 
of Ethics: " What is above us is nothing to us." So then, if I cannot tell you 
why the ant, which is such a little creature, whose body is a mere point, has 
six feet, whereas an elephant with its vast bulk has only four to walk on; why 
serpents and snakes glide along on their chests and bellies; why the worm 
which is commonly called the millipede has such a swarming array of feet; I am 
prohibited from knowing anything about the origin of souls! You ask me what I 
know about souls, so that, when I make any statement about them, you may at 
once attack it. And if I say that the church's doctrine is that God forms 
souls every day, and sends them into the bodies of those who are born, you 
will at once bring out the snares your master invented, and ask, Where is 
God's justice if 



534 



he grants souls to those who are born of adultery or incest? Is he not an 
accessory to men's sins, if he creates souls for the adulterers who make the 
bodies? as if, when you hear that seed corn had been stolen, you are to 
suppose the fault to lie in the nature of the corn, and not in the man who 
stole the wheat; and that therefore the earth had no business to nourish the 
seed in its bosom, because the hands of the sower who cast them in were 
unclean. Hence comes also your mysterious question, Why do infants die? since 
it is because of their sins, as you. hold, that they received bodies. There 
exists a treatise of Didymus addressed to you, in which he meets this inquiry 
of yours, with the answer, that they had not sinned much, and therefore it was 
enough punishment for them just to have touched their bodily prisons. He, who 
was your master and mine also, when you asked this question, wrote at my 
request three books of comments on the prophet Hosea, and dedicated them to 
me. This shows what parts of his teaching we respectively accepted. 

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



  "Thou art that hero, well-nam'd Maximus, 

   Thou who alone by writing sav'st the state." 



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

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

    31. Another part of my 'smoke' which 



535 



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

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

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

    34. "But why," you ask, "did you 



536 



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

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

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



537 



difficulty which you have made for yourself, and which cannot be solved, 
except by confessing that you have erred as all men err, and condemning your 
former opinion. 

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

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

    39. In order to parry the charge of falsehood, it is your humour to become 
quite exacting. You are not to be called to produce the six thousand books of 
Origen, of which you speak; but you expect me to be acquainted with all the 
records of Pythagoras. What truth is there in all the boastful language, which 
you blurted out from your inflated cheeks, declaring that you had corrected 
the Peri'Arkpn by introducing words which you 
had read in other books of Origen, and thus had not put in other men's words 
but restored his own? Out of all this forest of his works you cannot produce a 
single bush or sucker. You accuse me of raising up smoke and mist. Here you 
have smoke and mist indeed. You know that I have dissipated and done away with 
them; but, though your neck is broken, you do not bow it down, but, with an 
impudence which exceeds even your ignorance, you say that I am denying what is 
quite evident, so as to excuse yourself, after promising mountains of gold. 
for not producing even a leatherlike farthing from your treasury. I 
acknowledge 



538 



that your animosity against me rests on good grounds, and that your rage and 
passion is genuine; for, unless I made persistent demands for what does not 
exist, you would be thought to have what you have not. You ask me for the 
books of Pythagoras. But who has informed you that any books of his are 
extant? It is true that in my letter which you criticize these words occur: 
"Suppose that I erred in youth, and that, having been trained in profane 
literature, I at the beginning of my Christian course had no sufficient 
doctrinal knowledge, and that I attributed to the Apostles things which I had 
read in Pythagoras or Plato or Empedocles;" but I was speaking not of their 
books but of their tenets, with which I was able to acquaint myself through 
Cicero, Brutus, and Seneca. Read the short oration for  Vatinius, and others 
in which mention is made of secret societies. Turn over Cicero's dialogues. 
Search through the coast of Italy which used to be called Magna Graecia, and 
you will find there various doctrines of Pythagoras inscribed on brass on 
their public monuments. Whose are those Golden Rules? They are Pythagoras's; 
and in these all his principles are contained in a summary form. Iamblicus  
wrote a commentary upon them, following in this, at least partly, Moderatus a 
man of great eloquence, and Archippus and Lysides who were disciples of 
Pythagoras. Of these, Archippus and Lysides held schools in Greece, that is, 
in Thebes; they retained so fully the precepts of their teacher, that they 
made use of their memory instead of books. One of these precepts is: "We must 
cast away by any contrivance, and cut out by fire and sword and contrivances 
of all kinds, disease from the body, ignorance from the soul, luxury from the 
belly, sedition from the state, discord from the family, excess from all 
things alike."  There are other precepts of Pythagoras, such as these. 
"Friends have all things in common." "A friend is a second self." "Two moments 
are specially to be observed, morning and evening: that is, things which we 
are going to do, and things which we have done." "Next to God we must worship 
truth, for this alone makes men akin to God." There are also enigmas which 
Aristotle has collated with much diligence in his works: "Never go beyond the 
Stater," that is, "Do not transgress the rule of justice; " "Never stir the 
fire with the  sword," that is, "Do not provoke a man  when he is angry and 
excited with hard words." "We must not touch the crown," that is "We must 
maintain the laws of the state." "Do not eat out your heart," that is, "Cast 
away sorrow from your mind." "When you have started, do not returns" that is, 
"After death do not regret this life." "Do not walk on the public road," that 
is, "Do not follow the errors of the multitude." "Never admit a swallow into 
the family," that is, "Do not admit chatterers and talkative persons under the 
same roof with you." "Put fresh burdens on the burdened; put  none on those 
who lay them down;" that is, "When men are on the road to virtue, ply them 
with fresh precepts; when they abandon themselves to idleness, leave them 
alone." I said I had read the doctrines of the Pythagoreans. Let me tell you 
that Pythagoras was the first to discover the immortality of the soul and its 
transmigration from one body to another. To this view Virgil gives his 
adherence in the sixth book of the AEneid in these words:  



These, when the wheel full thousand years has turned, 

God calls, a long sad line, in Lethe's stream 

To drown the past, and long once more to see 

The skies above, and to the flesh return. 



    40. Pythagoras taught, accordingly, that he had himself been originally 
Euphorbus, and then Callides, thirdly Hermotimus, fourthly Pyrrhus, and lastly 
Pythagoras; and that those things which had existed, after certain revolutions 
of time, came into being again; so that nothing in the world should be thought 
of as new. He said that true philosophy was a meditation on death; that its 
daily struggle was to draw forth the soul from the prison of the body into 
liberty: that our learning was recollection, and many other things which Plato 
works out in his dialogues, especially in the Phaedo and Timaeus. For Plato, 
after having formed the Academy and gained innumerable disciples, felt that 
his philosophy was deficient on many points, and therefore went to Magna 
Graecia, and there learned the doctrines of Pythagoras from Archytas of 
Tarentum and Timaeus of Locris: and this system he embodied in the elegant 
form and style which he had learned from Socrates. The whole of this, as we 
can prove, Origen carried over into his book 
Peri'Arkpn, only changing the name. What 
mistake, then, was I making, when I said that in my youth I had imputed to the 
Apostles ideas which I had found in Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles? I did 
not speak, as you calumniously pretend, of what I had read in the books of 
Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles, but of what I 



539 



had read as having existed in their writings, that is, what other men's 
writings shewed me to have existed in them. This mode of speaking is quite 
common. I might say, for instance "The opinions which I read in Socrates I 
believed to be true," meaning what I read as his opinions in Plato and others 
of the Socratic school, though Socrates himself wrote no books. So I might 
say, I wished to imitate the deeds which I had read of in Alexander and 
Scipio,  not meaning that they described their own deeds, but that I had 
read in other men's works of the deeds which I admired as done by them. 
Therefore, though I may not be able to inform you of any records of Pythagoras 
himself as being extant, and proved by the attestation of his son or daughter 
or others of his disciples, yet you cannot hold me guilty of falsehood, 
because I said not that I had read his books, but his doctrines. You are quite 
mistaken if you thought to make this a screen for your falsehood, and to 
maintain that because I cannot produce any book written by Pythagoras, you 
have a right to assert that six thousand books of Origen have been lost. 

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

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



"What words thou speakest, thou the like shalt hear." 



    One thing I should like to learn from one of such eminent sanctity and 
fastidiousness, (whose holiness is such that in the presence of your very 
handkerchiefs and aprons the devils cry out); whom do you take for your model 
in your writings? Has any one of the catholic writers, in a controversy of 
opinions, imputed moral offences to the man with whom he is arguing? Have your 
masters taught you to do this? Is this the system in which you have been 
trained, that, when you cannot answer a man, you should take off his head? 
that when you cannot silence a man's tongue, you should cut it out? You have 
nothing much to boast of, for you are doing only what the scorpions and 
cantharides do. This is what Fulvia  did to Cicero and Herodias to John. 
They could not bear to hear the truth, and there- 



540 



fore they pierced the tongue that spoke truth with the pin that parted their 
hair. The duty of dogs is to bark in their masters' service; why may I not 
bark in the service of Christ? Many have written against Marcion or 
Valentinus, Arius or Eunomius. By which of them was any accusation brought of 
immoral conduct? Did they not in each case bring their whole effort to bear 
upon the refutation of the heresy? It is the machination of the heretics, that 
is of your masters, when convicted of betrayal of the faith, to betake 
themselves to evil speaking. So Eustathius  the Bishop of Antioch was made 
into a father unawares. So Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria cut off a third 
hand of Arsenius; for, when he appeared  alive after having been supposed to 
be dead, he was found to have two. Such things also now are falsely charged 
against the Bishop of the same church, and the true faith is assailed by gold, 
which constitutes the power of yourself and your friends. But I need pot speak 
of controversy with heretics, who, though they are really without, yet call 
themselves Christians. How many of our writers have contended with those most 
impious men, Celsus and Porphyry! but which of them has left the cause he was 
engaged in to busy himself with the imputation of crime to his adversary, such 
as ought to be set down not in church-writings but in the calendar of the 
judge? For what advantage have you gained if you establish a man's criminality 
but tail in your argument? It is quite unnecessary that in bringing an 
accusation you should risk your own head. If your object is revenge, you can 
hire an executioner, and satisfy your desire. You pretend to dread a scandal, 
and yet you are ready to kill a man who was once your brother, whom you now 
accuse, and whom you always treat as an enemy. Yet I wonder how a man like 
you, who knows what he is about, should be so blinded by madness as to wish to 
confer a benefit upon me by drawing forth my soul out of prison,  and should 
not suffer it to remain with you in the darkness of this world. 

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



    "Foolish men, while they desire injuries, become impious and hate 
wisdom.  Devise not evil against thy friend. Be not angry with a man without 
a cause. The impious exalt contumely.  Remove from thee the evil mouth, keep 
far from thee the wicked lips, the eyes of him that speaketh evil, the tongue 
of the unjust, the hands which shed the blood of the just,  the heart that 
deviseth evil thoughts, and the feet which hasten to do evil. He that resteth 
upon falsehood feedeth the winds, and followeth the flying birds. For he hath 
left the ways of his own vineyard, and hath made the wheels of his tillage to 
err. He walketh through the dry and desert places, and with his hands he 
gathereth barrenness.  The mouth of the froward is near to destruction, 
and  he who uttereth evil words is the chief of fools. Every simple man is a 
soul that is blessed; but a violent man is dis-honourable.  By the fault of 
his lips the sinner falleth into a snare.  All the ways of a fool are right 
in his own eyes.  The fool showeth his anger on that very day.  Lying lips 
are an abomination to the Lord.(10) He that keepeth his lips guardeth his own 
soul; but he that is rash with his lips shall be a terror to himself.(11) The 
evil man in his violence doeth evil things, and the fool spreadeth out his 
folly.(12) Seek for wisdom among the evil and thou shall not find it.(13) The 
rash man shall eat of the fruit of his own ways.(14) The wise man by taking 
heed avoideth the evil; but the fool is confident, and joins himself to 
it.(15) A long-suffering man is strong in his wisdom; the man of little mind 
is very unwise.(15) He who oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker.(17) The 
tongue of the wise knoweth good things, but the mouth of fools speaketh 
evil.(18) A quarrelsome man preferreth strife, and every one that lifteth up 
his heart is unclean before God.(19) Though hand join with hand unjustly, they 
shall not be unpunished.(20) He that loveth life must be sparing to his 
mouth.(21) Insolence goeth before bruising, and evil thoughts before a 
fall.(22) He who closeth his eyes speaketh perverse things, and provoketh all 
evil with his lips.(23) The lips of a fool lead him into evil, and the 
foolhardy speech calleth down death. The man of evil counsel shall suffer much 
loss.(24) Better is a poor man who is just than a rich man that speaketh 
lies.(25) It is a glory to a man to turn away from evil words; but he that is 
foolish bindeth'himself therewith.(26) Love 



541 



not detraction, lest thou be rooted out.  The bread of lying is sweet to a 
man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.  He that gaineth 
treasures with a lying tongue followeth vanity, and shall come into the snares 
of death.  Say thou nought in the ear of a fool, lest haply the wise mock at 
thy words.  The bludgeon and the sword and the arrow are hurtful things;  
so is the man who beareth false witness against his friend.  As the birds 
and the sparrows fly away, so the curse shall be vain and shall not overtake 
him.  Answer not an unwise man according to his lack of wisdom, lest thou 
become like unto him; but answer a fool according to his folly, lest he appear 
to himself to be wise.  He who layeth wait for his friends when he is 
discovered saith, I did it in sport.  A faggot for the coals, and wood for 
the fire, and a man of evil words for the tumult of strife.(10) If thine enemy 
ask thee aught, sparingly but with a loud voice,(11) consent thou not to him, 
for there are seven degrees of wickedness in his heart.(12) The stone is 
heavy, and the sand hard to be borne; but the anger of a fool is heavier than 
either; indignation is cruel, anger is sharp, and envy is impatient.(13) The 
impious man speaketh against the poor; and he that trusteth in the audacity of 
his heart is most foolish.(14) The unwise man putteth forth all his anger, but 
the wise dealeth it out in parts.(15) An evil son--his teeth are swords, and 
his grinders are as harrows, to consume the weak from off the earth, and the 
poor from among men." 



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



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



    And again:  



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



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