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| Jerome's complaint of new doctrines may be retorted on himself. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
36. I will address the Master in one of his own phrases.2883
2883 Jerome, Letter lxxxiv, 8. | Why, after nearly four hundred
years, do you give such teachings as these to the Latin people with
their peaceable and simple minds! Why do you inflict on unaccustomed
ears new-sounding words, which no one finds in the writings of the
Apostles? I beseech you, spare the ears of the Romans, spare that faith
which the Apostle praised.2884 Why do you
bring out in public what Peter and Paul were unwilling to publish? Did
not the Christian world exist without any of these things
until—not as you say I made my translations, but up to the time
when you wrote what I have quoted, that is till some fifteen years ago?
For what is this teaching of yours, that in the world to come there
will still be risings and fallings,—that some will go forward and
some go back? If that be true, then what you say, that in this world
life is either acquired or lost, is not true; unless it has some occult
meaning. I do not find that you repent of any of these doctrines which
these commentaries contain. Again, you teach that the Church is to be
understood as being one body made up not of men only but of angels and
all the powers of heaven. You say in commenting on the passage of the
same book, in which the words occur2885
“And gave him to be head over all the Church,” a little way
down: “The Church may be understood as consisting not of men
alone, but also of angels, and of all the powers, and reasonable
creatures.” Again, you say that souls, because in that former
life they knew God, now know him not as one previously unknown, but as
though after having forgotten him they came to recognize him again.
These are the words used in a passage of the same book:
“The words which he uses
“In the knowledge of him”2886 some interpret by recalling that
between γνωσις and ᾽επίγνωσις
(Gnosis and Epignosis) that is, between knowing and
recognition there is this difference, that Knowing has reference to
things which we did not know before and have since begun to know, while
Recognition has to do with those things which we afterwards remember.
Our souls, then, they say, have a kind of apprehension of a former
life, after they have been cast down into human bodies, and have
forgotten God their Father; but now we know him by revelation,
according to that which is written:2887
“All the ends of this world shall remember and turn to the
Lord;” and there are many similar passages.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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