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Letter CXXIV.
To Avitus.
Avitus to whom this letter is addressed is probably the
same person who induced Jerome to write to Salvina (see Letter LXXIX.,
§I, ante). The occasion of writing is as follows. Ten years
previously (that is to say in a.d. 399 or 400)
Pammachius had asked Jerome to supply him with a correct version of
Origen’s First Principles to enable him to detect the
variations introduced by Rufinus into his rendering. This Jerome
willingly did (see Letters LXXXIII. and LXXXIV.) but when the work in
its integrity was perused by Pammachius he thought it so erroneous in
doctrine that he determined not to circulate it. However, “a
certain brother” induced him to lend the ms. to him for a short time; and then, when he had got it
into his hands, had a hasty and incorrect transcript made, which he
forthwith published much to the chagrin of Pammachius. Falling into the
hands of Avitus a copy of this much perplexed him and he seems to have
appealed to Jerome for an explanation. This the latter now gives
forwarding at the same time an authentic edition of his version of the
First Principles. The date of the letter is a.d. 409 or 410.
1. About ten years ago that saintly man Pammachius sent
me a copy of a certain person’s rendering,3354
| 3354 The
‘certain person’ is of course Rufinus. | or rather misrendering, of
Origen’s First Principles; with a request that in a Latin
version I should give the true sense of the Greek and should set down
the writer’s words for good or for evil without bias in either
direction.3355
When I did as he wished and sent
him the book,3356
he was shocked
to read it and locked it up in his desk lest being circulated it might
wound the souls of many. However, a certain brother, who had “a
zeal for God but not according to knowledge,”3357
asked for a loan of the manuscript
that he might read it; and, as he promised to return it without delay,
Pammachius, thinking no harm could happen in so short a time,
unsuspectingly consented. Hereupon he who had borrowed the book to
read, with the aid of scribes copied the whole of it and gave it back
much sooner than he had promised. Then with the same rashness
or—to use a less severe term—thoughtlessness he made bad
worse by confiding to others what he had thus stolen. Moreover, since a
bulky treatise on an abstruse subject is difficult to reproduce with
accuracy, especially if it has to be taken down surreptitiously and in
a hurry, order and sense were sacrificed in several passages. Whence it
comes, my dear Avitus, that you ask me to send you a copy of my version
as made for Pammachius and not for the public, a garbled edition of
which has been published by the aforesaid brother.
2. Take then what you have asked for; but know that
there are countless things in the book to be abhorred, and that, as the
Lord says, you will have to walk among scorpions and serpents.3358
It begins by saying that Christ was
made God’s son not born;3359
that God the
Father, as He is by nature invisible, is invisible even to the Son;3360
that the Son, who is the likeness of the
invisible Father, compared with the Father is not the truth but
compared with us who cannot receive the truth of the almighty Father
seems a figure of the truth so that we perceive the majesty and
magnitude of the greater in the less, the Father’s glory limited
in the Son;3361
that God the Father is a light
incomprehensible and that Christ compared with him is but a minute
brightness, although by reason of our incapacity to us he appears a
great one.3362
The Father and the Son are
compared to two statues, a larger one and a small; the first filling
the world and being somehow invisible through its size, the second
cognisable by the eyes of men.3363
God the
Father omnipotent the writer terms good and of perfect goodness; but of
the Son he says: “He is not good but an emanation and likeness of
goodness; not good absolutely but only with a qualification, as
‘the good shepherd’ and the like.”3364
| 3364 F. P., I. 2, 9,
13. The last words are omitted by Rufinus. | The Holy Spirit he places after the
Father and the Son as third in dignity and honour. And while he declares that he does not know whether the
Holy Spirit is created or uncreated,3365
| 3365 F. P., I.
Preface, 4. | he has
later on given his own opinion that except God the Father alone there
is nothing uncreated. “The Son,” he states, “is
inferior to the Father, inasmuch as He is second and the Father first;
and the Holy Spirit which dwells in all the saints is inferior to the
Son. In the same way the power of the Father is greater than that of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Likewise the power of the Son is
greater than that of the Holy Spirit, and as a consequence the Holy
Spirit in its turn has greater virtue than other things called
holy.”3366
| 3366 F. P., I. 3, 5.
The words are omitted by Rufinus. |
3. Then, when he comes to deal with rational creatures
and to describe their lapse into earthly bodies as due to their own
negligence, he goes on to say: “Surely it argues great negligence
and sloth for a soul so far to empty itself as to fall into sin and
allow itself to be tied to the material body of an unreasoning
brute;” and in a subsequent passage: “These reasonings
induce me to suppose that it is by their own free act that some are
numbered with God’s saints and servants, and that it was through
their own fault that others fell from holiness into such negligence
that they were changed into forces of an opposite kind.”3367
He maintains that after every end a
fresh beginning springs forth and an end from each beginning, and that
wholesale variation is possible; so that one who is now a human being
may in another world become a demon, while one who by reason of his
negligence is now a demon may hereafter be placed in a more material
body and thus become a human being.3368
So far
does he carry this transforming process that on his theory an archangel
may become the devil and the devil in turn be changed back into an
archangel. “Such as have wavered or faltered but have not
altogether fallen shall be made subject, for rule and government and
guidance, to better things—to principalities and powers, to
thrones and dominations”; and of these perhaps another human race
will be formed, when in the words of Isaiah there shall be “new
heavens and a new earth.’3369
But such
as have not deserved to return through humanity to their former estate
shall become the devil and his angels, demons of the worst sort; and
according to what they have done shall have special duties assigned to
them in particular worlds.” Moreover, the very demons and rulers
of darkness in any world or worlds, if they are willing to turn to
better things, may become human beings and so come back to their first
beginning. That is to say, after they have borne the discipline of
punishment and torture for a longer or a shorter time in human bodies,
they may again reach the angelic pinnacles from which they have fallen.
Hence it may be shewn that we men may change into any other reasonable
beings, and that not once only or on emergency but time after time; we
and angels shall become demons if we neglect our duty; and demons, if
they will take to themselves virtues, may attain to the rank of
angels.
4. Bodily substances too are to pass away utterly or
else at the end of all things will become highly rarified like the sky
and æther and other subtle bodies. It is clear that these
principles must affect the writer’s view of the resurrection. The
sun also and the moon and the rest of the constellations are alive. Nay
more; as we men by reason of our sins are enveloped in bodies material
and sluggish; so the lights of heaven have for like reasons received
bodies more or less luminous, and demons have been for more serious
faults clothed with starry frames. This, he argues, is the view of the
apostle who writes:—“the creation has been subjected to
vanity and shall be delivered for the revealing of the sons of
God.”3370
That it may not be supposed that
I am imputing to him ideas of my own I shall give his actual words.
“At the end and consummation of the world,” he writes,
“when souls and beings endowed with reason shall be released from
prison by the Lord, they will move slowly or fly quickly according as
they have previously been slothful or energetic. And as all of them
have free will and are free to choose virtue or vice, those who choose
the latter will be much worse off than they now are. But those who
choose the former will improve their condition. Their movements and
decisions in this direction or in that will determine their various
futures; whether, that is, angels are to become men or demons, and
whether demons are to become men or angels.” Then after adducing
various arguments in support of his thesis and maintaining that while
not incapable of virtue the devil has yet not chosen to be virtuous, he
has finally reasoned with much diffuseness that an angel, a human soul,
and a demon—all according to him of one nature but of different
wills—may in punishment for great negligence or folly be
transformed into brutes. Moreover, to avoid the agony of punishment and
the burning flame the more sensitive may choose to become low
organisms, to dwell in water, to assume the shape of this or that
animal; so that we have reason to fear a metamorphosis not only into
four-footed things but even into fishes. Then, lest he should be held guilty of maintaining
with Pythagoras the transmigration of souls, he winds up the wicked
reasoning with which he has wounded his reader by saying: “I must
not be taken to make dogmas of these things; they are only thrown out
as conjectures to shew that they are not altogether
overlooked.”
5. In his second book he maintains a plurality of
worlds; not, however, as Epicurus taught, many like ones existing at
once, but a new one beginning each time that the old comes to an end.
There was a world before this world of ours, and after it there will be
first one and then another and so on in regular succession. He is in
doubt whether one world shall be so completely similar to another as to
leave no room for any difference between them, or whether one world
shall never wholly be indistinguishable from another. And again a
little farther on he writes: “if, as the course of the discussion
makes necessary, all things can live without body, all bodily existence
shall be swallowed up and that which once has been made out of nothing
shall again be reduced to nothing. And yet a time will come when its
use will be once more necessary.” And in the same context:
“but if, as reason and the authority of scripture shew, this
corruptible shall put on incorruption and this mortal shall put on
immortality, death shall be swallowed up in victory and corruption in
incorruption.3371
And it may be
that all bodily existence shall be removed, for it is only in this that
death can operate.” And a little farther on: “if these
things are not contrary to the faith, it may be that we shall some day
live in a disembodied state. Moreover, if only he is fully subject to
Christ who is disembodied, and if all must be made subject to Him, we
too shall lose our bodies when we become fully subject to Him.”
And in the same passage: “if all are to be made subject to God,
all shall lay aside their bodies; and then all bodily existence shall
be brought to nought. But if through the fall of reasonable beings it
is a second time required it will reappear. For God has left souls to
strive and struggle, to teach them that full and complete victory is to
be attained not by their own efforts but by His grace. And so to my
mind worlds vary with the sins which cause them, and those are exploded
theories which maintain that all worlds are alike.” And again:
“three conjectures occur to me with regard to the end; it is for
the reader to determine which is nearest to the truth. For either we
shall be bodiless when being made subject to Christ we shall be made
subject to God and He shall be all in all; or as things made subject to
Christ shall be with Christ Himself made subject to God and brought
under one law, so all substance shall be refined into its most perfect
form and rarified into æther which is a pure and uncompounded
essence; or else the sphere which I have called motionless and all that
it contains will be dissolved into nothing, and the sphere in which the
antizone3372
| 3372 This word is
doubtful. | itself is contained shall be
called ‘good ground,’3373
and
that other sphere which in its revolution surrounds the earth and goes
by the name of heaven shall be reserved for the abode of the
saints.”
6. In speaking thus does he not most clearly follow the
error of the heathen and foist upon the simple faith of Christians the
ravings of philosophy? In the same book he writes: “it remains
that God is invisible. But if He is by nature invisible, He must be so
even to the Saviour.” And lower down: “no soul which has
descended into a human body has borne upon it so true an impress of its
previous character as Christ’s soul of which He says: ‘no
man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.’”3374
And in another place: “we must
carefully consider whether souls, when they have won salvation and have
attained to the blessed life, may not cease to be souls. For as the
Lord and Saviour came to seek and to save that which was lost3375
that it might cease to be lost; so the
lost soul which the Lord came to save, when saved, will cease to be a
soul. We must ask ourselves whether, as the lost was not lost once and
again will not be, the soul likewise may have been and again may be not
a soul.”3376
| 3376 The paralogism
in this reasoning—so obvious to modern minds—is due to the
confusion of the copula with the verb substantive. | And after a
good many remarks upon the soul he brings in the following,
“νοῦς or”
intelligence by falling becomes a soul; and by acquiring virtue this
will become intelligence again. This at least is a fair inference from
the case of Esau who for his old sins is condemned to lead a lower
life. And concerning the heavenly bodies we must make a similar
acknowledgment. The soul of the sun—or whatever else you like to
call it—does not date its existence from the creation of the
world; it already existed before it entered its shining and glowing
body. So also with the moon and stars. From antecedent causes they have
been made subject to vanity not willingly but for future reward,3377
and are forced to do not their own
will but the creator’s who has assigned to them their several
spheres.”
7. Hellfire, moreover, and the torments with which holy scripture threatens sinners he
explains not as external punishments but as the pangs of guilty
consciences when by God’s power the memory of our transgressions
is set before our eyes. “The whole crop of our sins grows up
afresh from seeds which remain in the soul, and all our dishonourable
and undutiful acts are again pictured before our gaze. Thus it is the
fire of conscience and the stings of remorse which torture the mind as
it looks back on former self-indulgence.” And again: “but
perhaps this coarse and earthly body ought to be described as mist and
darkness; for at the end of this world and when it becomes necessary to
pass into another, the like darkness will lead to the like physical
birth.” In speaking thus he clearly pleads for the transmigration
of souls as taught by Pythagoras and Plato.3378
And at the end of the second book
in dealing with our perfection he has said: “when we shall have
made such progress as not only to cease to be flesh or body but perhaps
also to cease to be souls our perfect intelligence and perception,
undimmed with any mist of passion, will discern reasonable and
intelligible substances face to face.
8. In the third book the following faulty statements are
contained. “If we once admit that, when one vessel is made to
honour and another to dishonour,3379
this is
due to antecedent causes; why may we not revert to the mystery of the
soul and allow that it is loved in one and hated in another because of
its past actions, before in Jacob it becomes a supplanter and before in
Esau it is supplanted?”3380
And again:
“the fact that souls are made some to honour and some to
dishonour is to be explained by their previous history.” And in
the same place: “on this hypothesis of mine a vessel made to
honour which fails to fulfil its object will in another world become a
vessel made to dishonour; and contrariwise a vessel which has from a
previous fault been condemned to dishonour will, if it accepts
correction in this present life, become in the new creation a vessel
‘sanctified and meet for the Master’s use and prepared unto
every good work.’”3381
And he
immediately goes on to say: “I believe that men who begin with
small faults may become so hardened in wickedness that, if they do not
repent and turn to better things, they must become inhuman energies;3382
and contrariwise that hostile and
demonic beings may in course of time so far heal their wounds and check
the current of their former sins that they may attain to the abode of
the perfect. As I have often said, in those countless and unceasing
worlds in which the soul lives and has its being some grow worse and
worse until they reach the lowest depths of degradation; while others
in those lowest depths grow better and better until they reach the
perfection of virtue.” Thus he tries to shew that men, or rather
their souls, may become demons; and that demons in turn may be restored
to the rank of angels. In the same book he writes: “this too must
be considered; why the human soul is diversely acted upon now by
influences of one kind and now by influences of another.” And he
surmises that this is due to conduct which has preceded birth. It is
for this, he argues, that John leaps in his mother’s womb when at
Mary’s salutation Elizabeth declares herself unworthy of her
notice.3383
And he immediately subjoins:
“on the other hand infants that are hardly weaned are possessed
with evil spirits and become diviners and soothsayers;3384
indeed, some are indwelt from their
earliest years with the spirit of a python. Now as they have done
nothing to bring upon themselves these visitations, one who holds that
nothing happens without God’s permission, and that all things are
governed by His justice, cannot suppose that God’s providence has
abandoned them without good reason.”
9. Again, of the world he writes thus: “The belief
commends itself to me that there was a world before this world and that
after it there will be another. Do you wish to know that after the
decay of this world there will be a new one? Hear the words of Isaiah:
‘the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain
before me.’3385
Do you wish
to know that before the making of this world there have previously been
others? Listen to the Preacher who says: ‘the thing which hath
been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which
shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there
anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already
of old time, which was before us.’3386
A passage which proves not only that
other worlds have been but that other worlds shall be; not, however,
simultaneously and side by side but one after another.” And he
immediately adds: “I hold that heaven is the abode of the deity,
the true place of rest; and that it was there that reasonable creatures
enjoyed their ancient bliss, before coming down to a lower plane and
exchanging the invisible for the visible, they fell to the earth and
came to need material bodies. Now that they have fallen, God the
creator has made for them bodies suitable to their surroundings; and
has fashioned this visible world, and has sent into it ministers to
ensure the salvation and correction
of the fallen. Of these ministers some have held assigned positions and
have been subject to the world’s necessary laws; while others
have intelligently performed duties laid upon them in times and seasons
determined by God’s plan. To the former class belong the sun,
moon, and stars called by the apostle ‘the creation;’ and
these have had allotted to them the heights of heaven. Now the creation
is subjected to vanity3387
because it
is encased in material bodies and visible to the eye. And yet it is
‘made subject to vanity not willingly but by reason of him who
hath subjected the same in hope.’ Others again of the second
class, at particular places and times known to their Maker only, we
believe to be His angels sent to steer the world.” A little
farther on he says: “the affairs of the world are so ordered by
Providence that while some angels fall from heaven others freely glide
down to earth. The former are hurled down against their will; the
latter descend from choice alone. The former are forced to continue in
a distasteful service for a fixed period; the latter spontaneously
embrace the task of lending a hand to those who fall.” Again he
writes: “whence it follows that these different movements result
in the creation of different worlds; and that this world of ours will
be succeeded by one quite unlike it. Now, as regards this falling and
rising, this rewarding of virtue and punishment of vice, whether they
take place in the past, present, or future, God, the creator, can alone
apportion desert and make all things converge to one end. For He only
knows why He allows some to follow their own inclination and to descend
from the higher planes to the lowest; and why He visits others and
giving them His hand draws them back to their former state and places
them once more in heaven.”
10. In discussing the end of the world he has made use
of the following language. “Since, as I have often said, a new
beginning springs from the end, it may be asked whether bodies will
then continue to exist, or whether, when they have been annihilated, we
shall live without bodies and be incorporeal as we know God to be. Now
there can be no doubt but that, if bodies or, as the apostle calls
them, visible things, belong only to our sensible world, the life of
the disembodied will be incorporeal.” And a little farther on:
“when the apostle writes, ‘the creation shall be delivered
from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the
children of God,’3388
I explain
his words thus. Reasonable and incorporeal beings are the highest of
God’s creatures, for not being clothed with bodies they are not
the slaves of corruption. Since where there are bodies, there
corruption is sure to be found. But hereafter ‘the creation shall
be delivered from the bondage of corruption,’ and then men shall
receive the glory of the children of God and God shall be all in
all.” And in the same passage he writes: “that the final
state will be an incorporeal one is rendered credible by the words of
our Saviour’s prayer: ‘as thou, Father, art in me and I in
thee, that they also may be one in us.’3389
For we ought to realize what God is
and what the Saviour will finally be, and how the likeness to the
Father and the Son here promised to the Saints consists in this that as
They are one in Themselves so we shall be one in Them. For if in the
end the life of the Saints is to be assimilated to the life of God, we
must either admit that the Lord of the universe is clothed with a body
and that he is enveloped in matter as we are in flesh; or, if it is
unbecoming to suppose this, especially in persons who have but small
clues from which to infer God’s majesty and to guess at the glory
of His innate and transcendent nature, we are reduced to the following
dilemma. Either we shall always have bodies and in that case must
despair of ever being like God; or, if the blessedness of the life of
God is really promised to us, the conditions of His life must be the
conditions of ours.”
11. These passages prove what his view is regarding the
resurrection. For he evidently maintains that all bodies will perish
and that we shall be incorporeal as according to him we were before we
received our present bodies. Again when he comes to argue for a variety
of worlds and to maintain that angels will become demons, demons either
angels or men, and men in their turn demons; in a word that everything
will be turned into something else, he thus sums up his own opinion:
“no doubt, after an interval matter will exist afresh and bodies
will be formed and a different world will be created to meet the
varying wills of reasonable beings who, having forfeited the perfect
bliss which continues to the end, have gradually fallen into so great
wickedness as to change their nature and refuse to keep their first
estate of unalloyed blessedness. Many reasonable beings, it is right to
say, keep it until a second, a third, and a fourth world, and give God
no ground for changing their condition. Others deteriorate so little
that they seem to have lost hardly anything, and others again have to
be hurled headlong into the abyss. God who orders all things alone
knows how to use each class according to its deserts in a suitable sphere; for He only
understands opportunities and motives and the course in which the world
must be steered. Thus one who has borne away the palm for wickedness
and has sunk into the lowest degradation will in the world which is
hereafter to be fashioned be made a devil, a kind of first fruits of
the Lord’s handiwork, to be a laughing stock to the angels who
have lost their first virtue.” What is this but to argue that the
sinful men of this world may become a devil and demons in another; and
contrariwise that those who are now demons may hereafter become either
men or angels? And after a lengthy discussion in which he maintains
that all corporeal creatures must exchange their material for subtle
and spiritual bodies and that all substance must become one pure and
inconceivably bright body, of which the human mind can at present form
no conception, he winds up thus:—“‘God shall be all
in all;’ that is to say, all bodily existence shall be made as
perfect as possible; it shall be brought into the divine essence, than
which there is none better.”
12. In the fourth and last book of his work the
following passages deserve the church’s condemnation. “It
may be that as, when men die in this world by the separation of soul
and body, they are allotted different positions in hell according to
the difference in their works; so when angels die, out of the system of
the heavenly Jerusalem, they come down to this world as a hell and are
placed on earth according to their deserts.” And again: “as
we have compared the souls which pass from this world to hell with
those which as they come from heaven to us are in a manner dead; so we
must carefully inquire whether this is true of all souls without
exception. For in that case souls born on earth when they desire better
things rise out of hell and assume human bodies or when they desire
worse things come down to us from better worlds; and in the firmament
above us likewise there are souls on their way from our world to higher
ones, and others who, while they have fallen from heaven, have not
sinned so grievously as to be thrust down to earth.” He thus
tries to prove that the firmament, that is the sky, is hell compared
with heaven; and that this earth is hell compared with the firmament;
and again that our world is heaven to hell. Or in other words what is
hell to some is heaven to others. And not content with saying this he
goes on: “at the end of all things when we shall return to the
heavenly Jerusalem the hostile powers shall declare war3390
| 3390 Reading
adversariorum fortitudinum…bella consurgere. | against the people of God to breathe and
exercise their valour and strengthen their resolve. For this they
cannot have until they have faced and foiled their foes; of whom we
read in the book of Numbers3391
that they are
overcome by reason, discipline, and tactical skill.”
13. After saying that according to the apocalypse of
John “the everlasting gospel” which shall be revealed in
heaven3392
as much surpasses our gospel as
Christ’s preaching does the sacraments3393
| 3393 This term had
not in Jerome’s time become restricted to its later sense.
Anything mysterious or sacred was called a sacrament. Here it refers to
the mystic teaching of the O.T. | of the ancient law, he has asserted
what it is sacrilegious even to think; that Christ will once more
suffer in the sky for the salvation of demons. And although he has not
expressly said it, it is yet implied in his words that as for men God
became man to set men free, so for the salvation of demons when He
comes to deliver them He will become a demon. To shew that this is no
gloss of mine, I must give his own words: “As Christ,” he
writes, “has fulfilled the shadow of the law by the shadow of the
gospel, and as all law is a pattern and shadow of things done in
heaven, we must inquire whether we are justified in supposing that even
the heavenly law and the rites of the celestial worship are still
incomplete and need the true gospel which in the apocalypse of John is
called everlasting to distinguish it from ours which is only temporal,
set forth in a world that shall pass away. Now if we extend our inquiry
to the passion of our Lord and Saviour, it may indeed be overbold to
suppose that He will suffer in heaven; yet if there is spiritual
wickedness in heavenly places3394
and if we
confess without a blush that the Lord has once been crucified to
destroy those things which He has destroyed by His passion; why need we
fear to imagine a like occurrence in the upper world in the fulness of
time, so that the nations of all realms shall be saved by a passion of
Christ?”
14. Here is another blasphemy which he has spoken of the
Son. “Assuming that the Son knows the Father, it would seem that
by this knowledge He can comprehend Him as much as a craftsman can
comprehend the rules of his art. And, doubtless, if the Father is in
the Son, He is also comprehended by Him in whom He is. But if we mean
by comprehension not merely that the knower takes a thing in by
perception and insight but that he contains it within himself by virtue
of a special faculty; in this sense we cannot say that the Son
comprehends the Father. For the Father comprehends all things, and of
these the Son is one; therefore, He comprehends the Son.” And to
shew us reasons why, while the Father comprehends the Son, the Son cannot comprehend
the Father, he adds: “the curious reader may inquire whether the
Father knows Himself in the same way that the Son knows Him. But if he
recalls the words: ‘the Father who sent me is greater than
I,’3395
he will allow that they must be
universally true and will admit that, in knowledge as in everything
else, the Father is greater than the Son, and knows Himself more
perfectly and immediately than the Son can do.”
15. The following passage is a convincing proof that he
holds the transmigration of souls and annihilation of bodies. “If
it can be shewn that an incorporeal and reasonable being has life in
itself independently of the body and that it is worse off in the body
than out of it; then beyond a doubt bodies are only of secondary
importance and arise from time to time to meet the varying conditions
of reasonable creatures. Those who require bodies are clothed with
them, and contrariwise, when fallen souls have lifted themselves up to
better things, their bodies are once more annihilated. They are thus
ever vanishing and ever reappearing.” And to prevent us from
minimizing the impiety of his previous utterances he ends his work by
maintaining that all reasonable beings, that is, the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, angels, powers, dominations, and virtues, and even
man by right of his soul’s dignity, are of one and the same
essence. “God,” he writes, “and His only-begotten Son
and the Holy Spirit are conscious of an intellectual and reasonable
nature. But so also are the angels, the powers, and the virtues, as
well as the inward man who is created in the image and after the
likeness of God.3396
From which I
conclude that God and they are in some sort of one essence.” He
adds “in some sort” to escape the charge of blasphemy; and
while in another place he will not allow the Son and the Holy Spirit to
be of one substance with the Father lest by so doing he should appear
to make the divine essence divisible, he here bestows the nature of God
almighty upon angels and men.
16. This being the nature of Origen’s book, is it
anything short of madness to change a few blasphemous passages
regarding the Son and the Holy Spirit and then to publish the rest
unchanged with an unprincipled eulogy when the parts unaltered as well
as the parts altered flow from the same fountain head of gross impiety?
This is not the time to confute all the statements made in detail; and
indeed those who have written against Arius, Eunomius, Manichæus,
and various other heretics must be supposed to have answered these
blasphemies as well. If anyone, therefore, wishes to read the work let
him walk with his feet shod towards the land of promise; let him guard
against the jaws of the serpent and the crooked jaws of the scorpion;
let him read this treatise first and before he enters upon the path let
him know the dangers which he will have to avoid. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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