(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was 
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors. If you 
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Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves 
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially 
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi = 
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute = 
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe, 
when necessary.


ST. JEROME

APOLOGY AGAINST THE BOOKS OF RUFINUS.

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

[Translated by the Hon. and Rev. William Henry Fremantle, M.A., Canon of 
Canterbury, Fellow and Tutor of Baliol College, Oxford.]


BOOK I.

    I have learned not only from your letter but from those of many others 
that cavils are raised against me in the school of Tyrannus,[1] "by the 
tongue of my dogs from the enemies by himself"[2] because I have translated 
the books Peri` Archw^n 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."[3] 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?[4] 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 Pseface 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 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?[2] 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,[1] 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 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:[3] "Their blows have become as the arrows of the little 
ones," and[4] "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

    [5]"Weary of work

    They ply the arms of Ceres,")

that I have translated into the Latin tongue the books of Origen Peri` 
Archw^n, 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 
interpolated 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,[1] 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` 
Archw^n, 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 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[1] 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` Archw^n. 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,[2] so that 
the men of your party all speak of you as their Coryphaeus, I will not 
suppose that you are ignorant of Eusebius'[3] Catalogue, which states the 
fact that the martyr Pamphilus never wrote a single book.[1] 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` Archw^n. 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 that it has been depraved by the 
presbyter Eusebius.[1] 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[2] 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` Archw^n, 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` Archw^n 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:[1] "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:[2] "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` Archw^n 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 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(1) 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(1) 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(2) 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?(3) 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 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(1) "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(2) 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` Archw^n 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 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(1) 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 must 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.(1)

    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(2) '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.(4) It is 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:(1) "Into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter, nor dwell in the 
body that is subject to sin. For the Holy Spirit of discipline(2) 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(3) 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(4) 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(3) 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(1) '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;(2) 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 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,(1) and says(2) "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 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:(1) "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:(2) 
"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:(3) "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death?" and(4) "It is better to return and to be with Christ;" 
and(5) "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` Archw^n 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(1) 
is that in 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 these powers, 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:(1) "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(1) 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(2) "The children of this world are wiser than the children of 
light," and(3) "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 
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.(1) "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 words,(1) "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:(2)

    "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:(1) "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.

The same is said by the same Apostle in another place:(1) "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(2) or an Asinius Pollio of the race of the Cornelii,(3) 
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(4) great 
question. My answer on the general subject is contained in the short 
treatise which I then wrote to him.(5) 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:(1)

    '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.(2) 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,(3) how to detect the clever turns of the Pseudomenos(4) 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 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,(1) 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(2) and the contortions of Chrysippus,(3) 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(4) 
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(1) "The evil speakers(2)  shall not 
inherit the kingdom of God," and(3)  "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 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:(1) "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:(2) "While the wicked stood before me I was dumb 
and was humbled and kept silence even from good words;" and again:(3) "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:(4) 
"Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord": and in another place:(5) 
"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,(6) 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 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;(1) nor do we, by favouring heretics, show that we are heretics 
ourselves. As for money, we neither have it nor desire to have it.(2) " 
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:(3) "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.


JEROME'S APOLOGY AGAINST RUFINUS


BOOK II

    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,(1) 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,(1)" Lord increase our faith," and received 
for answer: "If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed;" and even to Peter 
it is said:(1) "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(2) 
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(3) "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:(1) "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, 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,(1) 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 klhronomh'sousin.(2) which can be rendered in Latin by the single 
word Haereditabunt, he said Haereditate potientur(3) 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 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(1) 'from our heart come forth evil thoughts, murders adulteries, 
fornications, thefts, false witnesses, railings,' and of Judas we read in 
the Gospel;(2) "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;(3) "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(4) "Cleanse thou me from my secret faults, 
and keep back thy servant from alien sins." We read also in Ecclesiastes(5) 
"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:(6) "Their worm shall not die neither shall their 
fire be quenched." And in the words addressed to Babylon:(7) "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;(8) "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,(9) "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:(1) "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,(2) "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;(3) "Thou hast become 
perdition and shall not be for ever;" and as the Lord speaks to Job 
concerning the devil(4) "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 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!(1) "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(1) or 
Carneades(2) 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,(3) "Who shall 
declare his generation?" 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.(1) 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:(1) 
"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?(2)

    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` Archw^n 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."(3) 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 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."(1)

  What wonderful eloquence! Varied, too, with flowers of the Attic style. 
"Moreover also!"(2) 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(a). 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 Peri` Archw^n 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 translating 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:(1) "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;"(2) 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 Peri` Archw^n 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 Peri` Archw^n 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 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 
Peri` Archw^n."

    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,(1) 
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