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| What Latin! The poor souls must be tormented by his barbarisms.
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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 he 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!3104
| 3104 The
words are translated literally here, so as to shew how they lend
themselves to Jerome’s strictures. | “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 fresh: “I, however, do not deny that I
have both read each of these things, and as yet confess that I am
ignorant.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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