Church Fathers: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 03: 23.03.12 Jerome's Apology Part 1

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Church Fathers: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 03: 23.03.12 Jerome's Apology Part 1



TOPIC: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 03 (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 23.03.12 Jerome's Apology Part 1

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Jerome's Apology for Himself Against the Books of Rufinus.

Addressed to Pammachius and Marcella from Bethlehem, a.d. 402.

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Book I.

The documents which Jerome had before him when he wrote his Apology were (1) Rufinus' Translation of Pamphilus' Apology with the Preface prefixed to it and the book on the Falsification of the Books of Origen, (2) the Translation of the Peri 'Arxwn and Rufinus' Preface, (3) The Apology of Rufinus addressed to Anastasius (see p. 430), and (4) Anastasius' letter to John of Jerusalem (p. 432 Apol. ii, 14, iii, 20). He had also other letters of Anastasius like that addressed to the Bishop of Milan (Jerome Letter 95. See also Apol. iii, 21). But he had not the full text of Rufinus' Apology (c. 4, 15). He received letters from Pammachius and Marcella, at the beginning of the Spring of 402, when the Apology written at Aquileia at the end of 400 had become known to Rufinus' friends for some time. They had been unable to obtain a full copy, but had sent the chief heads of it, and had strongly urged Jerome to reply. At the same time his brother Paulinianus who had been some three years in the West, returned to Palestine by way of Rome, and there heard and saw portions of Rufinus' Apology, which he committed to memory (Apol. i, 21, 28) and repeated at Bethlehem. To these documents Jerome replies.

The heads of the First Book are as follows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15. The accusations seem inconsistent, but I knew them only by report.

16. The office of a commentator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have learned not only from your letter but from those of many others that cavils are raised against me in the school of Tyrannus,hyperlink "by the tongue of my dogs from the enemies by himself"hyperlink because I have translated the books Peri 'Arxwn 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."hyperlink I ask, What is it of which they complain? Whence comes this heat, this madness of theirs? Is it because I have rejected a feigned laudation?hyperlink Because I refused the praise offered in insincere words? Because under the name of a friend I detected the snares of an enemy? I am called in this Preface brother and colleague, yet my supposed crimes are set forth openly, and it is proclaimed that I have written in favour of Origen, and have by my praises exalted him to the skies. The writer says that he has done this with a good intention. How then does it come to pass that he now casts in my teeth, as an open enemy, what he then praised as a friend? He declared that he had meant to follow me as his predecessor in his translation, and to borrow an authority for his work from some poor works of mine. If that was so, it would have been sufficient for him to have stated once for all that I had written. Where was the necessity for him to repeat the same things, and to force them on men's notice by iteration, and to turn over the same words again and again, as if no one would believe in his praises? A praise which is simple and genuine does not show all this anxiety about its credit with the reader. How is it that he is afraid that, unless he produces my own words as witnesses, no one will believe him when he praises me? You see that we perfectly understand his arts; he has evidently been to the theatrical school, and has learned up by constant practice the part of the mocking encomiast. It is of no use to put on a veil of simplicity, when the schemer is detected in his malicious purpose. To have made a mistake once, or, to stretch the point, even twice, may be an unlucky chance; 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 preserve 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 Florushyperlink

"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 he had at hand 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?hyperlink 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,hyperlink 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 he 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 lauded 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 of 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.

hyperlink "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 the Lord our Saviour that his truth will encompass us as with a shield, and we shall be able to sing with the Psalmist:hyperlink "Their blows have become as the arrows of the little ones," andhyperlink "Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise against me, even then will I be confident." But of this at another time. Let us now return to the point where we began.

6. His followers object to me, (and `hyperlink "Weary of work they ply the arms of Ceres,")' that I have translated into the Latin tongue the books of Origen Peri 'Arxwn, 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 this 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,hyperlink 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 you 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 much 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 'Arxwn, 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 had 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 ishyperlink 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 you wish to make me, a small 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 you 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 'Arxwn. 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 you are renowned, for which you are praised throughout the West as an illustrious litterateur,hyperlink so that the men of your party all speak of you as their Coryphaeus, I will not suppose that you are ignorant of Eusebius'hyperlink Catalogue, which states the fact that the martyr Pamphilus never wrote a single book.hyperlink 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 that 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 you 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 mistitledhyperlink volume what you did with the books Peri 'Arxwn. Take my advice as a friend, and do not be distrustful of the power of your art; say either that you never wrote it, or else that it has been depraved by the presbyter Eusebius.hyperlink 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 I 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 workshyperlink 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 'Arxwn, 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 'Arxwn after you 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:hyperlink "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:hyperlink "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 'Arxwn 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 had 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 yet 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 translatedhyperlink 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 letterhyperlink 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 letterhyperlink 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?hyperlink 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 wordshyperlink "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 Psalmhyperlink 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 he 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 'Arxwn 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 hear 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 Aristarchushyperlink 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.hyperlink



Footnotes



1 Acts xix, 9. Rufinus's praenomen was Tyrannius.



2 Ps. lxviii, 23 Jerome's version is here, as in many cases unintelligible through a perverse literalism and an incorrect Hebrew text. In our Revised Version it stands: "That the tongue of thy dogs may have its portion from thine enemies."



3 Cic. Quaest. Acad. Lib. i.



4 That is, The Preface of Rufinus to his Translation of the IIeri 'Arxwn (p. 427-8).



5 Hor. Ep. B. i, Ep. iii, 32.



6 See Ruf. Apol. i, 11. "I had grown dull in my Latinity through the disuse of nearly 30 years."



7 Jerome Letter lxxxiii Pammachius to Jerome: "Refute your accuser; else, if you do not speak out, you will appear to consent."



8 This is altered from Virg. Aen. x, 875.



"Sic Pater ille Deum faciat, sic altus Apollo,

Incipias conferre manum."

9 Supposed to be a version of Ps. lxiv, 8.



10 Ps. xxvii, 3, Ps. xxvii, 4.



11 Aen: i, 177.



Cerealiaque arma

Expediunt, fessti rerum.

12 Intermundia. Spaces between the worlds, in which, according to Epicurus, the Gods reside.



13 See this question fully argued out by Lightfoot in the Diet. of Christian Biography, Art. Eusebius of C`saria. He says: "The Defence of Origen was the joint work of Pamphilus and Eusebius:" and "Jerome's treatment of thismatter is a painful exhibition of disingenuousness, &c." See De V. Ill. lxxv.



14 Suggrfeuj.



15 Suntagma. No work of Eusebius appears to have borne this title. The work alluded to is either the Life of Pamphilus or the Book On the Martyrs of Palestine.



16 "The existence of a work which consisted mainly of extracts from Origen with Comments, and of which he was only the joint author, is quite reconcilable with this statement. Indeed, the very form of the expression in the original, corresponding to `ipse quidem


0' `proprii


0' was probably chosen so as to exclude this work of compilation and partnership." Lightfoot, Art. Eusebius of Caesarea, in Dict. of Christian Biography.



17 Yeudepigrafw.



18 Eusebius of Cremona, Jerome's friend, whom Rufinus accused of stealing and publishing his mss.



19 Jerome translated the Chronicle and the Description of the Holy Land, but not this History. This was done later by Rufinus.



20 Jerome Letter lxxxiii.



21 Letter lxxxiv. 12.



22 Jerome, Letters 91-94.



23 Ep. lxxxiv to Pammachius and Oceanus.



24 Letter lxxxi.



25 Nazianzen, to whose instructions Jerome attached himself at Constantinople in 381.



26 Is. xxix, 1, "Where David encamped." Rev. Ver.



27 Ps. xc.



28 A native of Samothrace who died at Cyprus b.c. 157. He was tutor to the children of Ptolemy Philometor, and was renowned as a rhetorician and a critic.



29 Horace Ep. ii, 1, 114-7.