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| From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, to John, Bishop of Jerusalem.
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Letter LI. From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, to John,
Bishop of Jerusalem.
A coolness had arisen between these two bishops in
connection with the Origenistic controversy, which at this time was at
its height. Epiphanius had openly charged John with being an Origenist,
and had also uncanonically conferred priests’ orders on
Jerome’s brother Paulinian, in order that the monastery at
Bethlehem might henceforth be entirely independent of John. Naturally,
John resented this conduct and showed his resentment. The present
letter is a kind of half-apology made by Epiphanius for what he had
done, and like all such, it only seems to have made matters worse. The
controversy is fully detailed in the treatise “Against John of
Jerusalem” in this volume, esp. §11–14.
An interesting paragraph (§9) narrates how
Epiphanius destroyed at Anablatha a church-curtain on which was
depicted “a likeness of Christ or of some saint”—an
early instance of the iconoclastic spirit.
Originally written in Greek, the letter was (by the
writer’s request) rendered into Latin by Jerome. Its date is 394
a.d.
To the lord bishop and dearly beloved brother, John,
Epiphanius sends greeting.
1. It surely becomes us, dearly beloved, not to abuse
our rank as clergy, so as to make it an occasion of pride, but by
diligently keeping and observing God’s commandments, to be in
reality what in name we profess to be. For, if the Holy Scriptures say,
“Their lots shall not profit them,”1234
what pride in our clerical position1235
| 1235 A play on words.
Clericatus (“clerical position”) is a derivative of clerus
(κλῆρος), the
word used in the LXX. for “lot.” | will be able to avail us who sin not only
in thought and feeling, but in speech? I have heard, of course, that
you are incensed against me, that you are angry, and that you threaten
to write about me—not merely to particular places and provinces,
but to the uttermost ends of the earth. Where is that fear of God which
should make us tremble with the trembling spoken of by the
Lord—“Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause
shall be in danger of the judgment”?1236
Not that I greatly care for your writing
what you please. For Isaiah tells us1237
of
letters written on papyrus and cast upon the waters—missives soon
carried away by time and tide. I have done you no harm, I have
inflicted no injury upon you, I have extorted nothing from you by
violence. My action concerned a monastery whose inmates were foreigners
in no way subject to your provincial jurisdiction. Moreover their
regard for my insignificance and for the letters which I frequently
addressed to them had commenced to produce a feeling of dislike to
communion with you. Feeling, therefore, that too great strictness or
scrupulosity on my part might have the effect of alienating them from
the Church with its ancient faith, I ordained one of the brothers
deacon, and after he had ministered as such, admitted him to the
priesthood. You should, I think, have been grateful to me for this,
knowing, as you surely must, that it is the fear of God which has
compelled me to act in this way, and particularly when you recollect
that God’s priesthood is everywhere the same, and that I have
simply made provision for the wants of the Church. For, although each
individual bishop of the Church has under him churches which are placed
in his charge, and although no man may stretch himself beyond his
measure,1238
yet the love of Christ, which is
without dissimulation,1239
is set up as an
example to us all; and we must consider not so much the thing done as
the time and place, the mode and motive, of doing it. I saw that the
monastery contained a large number of reverend brothers, and that the
reverend presbyters, Jerome and Vincent, through modesty and humility,
were unwilling to offer the sacrifices permitted to their rank, and to
labor in that part of their calling which ministers more than any other
to the salvation of Christians. I knew, moreover, that you could not
find or lay hands on this servant of God1240
| 1240 Paulinian,
Jerome’s brother, at this time about 28 years of age. |
who had several times fled from you simply because he was reluctant to
undertake the onerous duties of the priesthood, and that no other
bishop could easily find him. Accordingly, I was a good deal surprised
when, by the ordering of God, he came to me with the deacons of the
monastery and others of the brethren, to make satisfaction to me for
some grievance or other which I had against them. While, therefore, the
Collect1241
| 1241 I.e. the
short service which preceded the eucharist. The words might, however,
be rendered, “When the congregation was gathered
together.” | was being celebrated in the church
of the villa which adjoins our monastery—he being quite ignorant
and wholly unsuspicious of my purpose—I gave orders to a number
of deacons to seize him and to stop his mouth, lest in his eagerness to
free himself he might adjure me in the name of Christ. First of all,
then, I ordained him deacon, setting before him the fear of God, and
forcing him to minister; for he made a hard struggle against it, crying
out that he was unworthy, and protesting that this heavy burden was
beyond his strength. It was with difficulty, then, that I overcame his
reluctance, persuading him as well as I could with passages from
Scripture, and setting before him the commandments of God. And when he had ministered in the
offering of the holy sacrifices, once more with great difficulty I
closed his mouth and ordained him presbyter. Then, using the same
arguments as before, I induced him to sit in the place set apart for
the presbyters. After this I wrote to the reverend presbyters and other
brothers of the monastery, chiding them for not having written to me
about him. For a year before I had heard many of them complain that
they had no one to celebrate for them the sacraments of the Lord. All
then agreed in asking him to undertake the duty, pointing out how great
his usefulness would be to the community of the monastery. I blamed
them for omitting to write to me and to propose that I should ordain
him, when the opportunity was given to them to do so.
2. All this I have done, as I said just now, relying on
that Christian love which you, I feel sure, cherish towards my
insignificance; not to mention the fact that I held the ordination in a
monastery, and not within the limits of your jurisdiction. How truly
blessed is the mildness and complacency of the bishops of (my own)
Cyprus, as well as their simplicity, though to your refinement and
discrimination it appears deserving only of God’s pity! For many
bishops in communion with me have ordained presbyters in my province
whom I had been unable to capture, and have sent to me deacons and
subdeacons1242
| 1242 Subdeacons cannot
be traced back earlier than the third century. At first their province
seems to have been to keep the church doors during divine service. | whom I have been glad to receive. I
myself, too, have urged the bishop Philo of blessed memory, and the
reverend Theoprepus, to make provision for the Church of Christ by
ordaining presbyters in those churches of Cyprus which, although they
were accounted to belong to my see, happened to be close to them, and
this for the reason that my province was large and straggling. But for
my part I have never ordained deaconesses nor sent them into the
provinces of others,1243
| 1243 It seems to be
implied that John had done so. | nor have I done
anything to rend the Church. Why, then, have you thought fit to be so
angry and indignant with me for that work of God which I have wrought
for the edification of the brethren, and not for their destruction?1244
Moreover, I have been much surprised at
the assertion which you have made to my clergy, that you sent me a
message by that reverend presbyter, the abbot Gregory, that I was to
ordain no one, and that I promised to comply, saying, “Am I a
stripling, or do I not know the canons?” By God’s word I am
telling you the truth when I say that I know and have heard nothing of
all this, and that I have not the slightest recollection of using any
language of the sort. As, however, I have had misgivings, lest
possibly, being only a man, I may have forgotten this among so many
other matters, I have made inquiry of the reverend Gregory, and of the
presbyter Zeno, who is with him. Of these, the abbot Gregory replies
that he knows nothing whatever about the matter, while Zeno says that
the presbyter Rufinus, in the course of some desultory remarks, spoke
these words. “Will the reverend bishop, think you, venture to
ordain any persons?” but that the conversation went no further.
I, Epiphanius, however, have never either received the message or
answered it. Do not, then, dearly beloved, allow your anger to overcome
you or your indignation to get the better of you, lest you should
disquiet yourself in vain; and lest you should be thought to be putting
forward this grievance only to get scope for tendencies of another
kind,1245
and thus to have sought out an occasion of
sinning. It is to avoid this that the prophet prays to the Lord,
saying: “Turn not aside my heart to words of wickedness, to
making excuses for my sins.”1246
3. This also I have been surprised to hear, that certain
persons who are in the habit of carrying tales backwards and forwards,
and of always adding something fresh to what they have heard, to stir
up grievances and disputes between brothers, have succeeded in
disquieting you by saying that, when I offer sacrifices to God, I am
wont to say this prayer on your behalf: “Grant, O Lord, to John
grace to believe aright.” Do not suppose me so untutored as to be
capable of saying this so openly. To tell you the simple truth, my
dearest brother, although I continually use this prayer mentally, I
have never confided it to the ears of others, lest I should seem to
dishonor you. But when I repeat the prayers required by the ritual of
the mysteries, then I say on behalf of all and of you as well as
others, “Guard him, that he may preach the truth,” or at
least this, “Do Thou, O Lord, grant him Thine aid, and guard him,
that he may preach the word of truth,” as occasion offers itself
for the words, and as the turn comes for the particular prayer.
Wherefore I beseech you, dearly beloved, and, casting myself down at
your feet, I entreat you to grant
to me and to yourself this one prayer, that you would save yourself, as
it is written, “from an untoward generation.”1247
Withdraw, dearly beloved, from the
heresy of Origen and from all heresies. For I see that all your
indignation has been roused against me simply because I have told you
that you ought not to eulogize one who is the spiritual father of
Arius, and the root and parent of all heresies. And when I appealed to
you not to go astray, and warned you of the consequences, you traversed
my words, and reduced me to tears and sadness; and not me only, but
many other Catholics who were present.1248
| 1248 Epiphanius, on a
visit to Jerusalem, had preached against Origenism in the presence of
John. See “Ag. John of Jerus.,” § 11. | This I take to be the origin of your
indignation and of your passion on the present occasion. On this
account you threaten to send out letters against me, and to circulate
your version of the matter in all directions;1249
| 1249 John actually did
write to Theophilus of Alexandria giving a full account of the
controversy from his (John’s) point of view. (Ag. J. of Jerus.,
§37.) |
and thus, while with a view to defending your heresy you kindle
men’s passions against me, you break through the charity which I
have shown towards you, and act with so little discretion that you make
me regret that I have held communion with you, and that I have by so
doing upheld the erroneous opinions of Origen.
4. I speak plainly. To use the language of Scripture, I
do not spare to pluck out my own eye if it cause me to offend, nor to
cut off my hand and my foot if they cause me to do so.1250
And you must be treated in the same way
whether you are my eyes, or my hands, or my feet. For what Catholic,
what Christian who adorns his faith with good works, can hear with
calmness Origen’s teaching and counsel, or believe in his
extraordinary preaching? “The Son,” he tells us,
“cannot see the Father, and the Holy Spirit cannot see the
Son.” These words occur in his book “On First
Principles;” thus we read, and thus Origen has spoken. “For
as it is unsuitable to say that the Son can see the Father, it is
consequently unsuitable to suppose that the Spirit can see the
Son.”1251
Can any one, moreover, brook
Origen’s assertion that men’s souls were once angels in
heaven, and that having sinned in the upper world, they have been cast
down into this, and have been confined in bodies as in barrows or
tombs, to pay the penalty for their former sins; and that the bodies of
believers are not temples of Christ,1252
but prisons
of the condemned? Again, he tampers with the true meaning of the
narrative by a false use of allegory, multiplying words without limit;
and undermines the faith of the simple by the most varied arguments.
Now he maintains that souls, in Greek the “cool things,”
from a word meaning to be cool,1253
| 1253 ψυχαὶ ἀπὸ
τοῦ
ψύχεσθαι. The etymology
is right, but the explanation of it wrong. | are so
called because in coming down from the heavenly places to the lower
world they have lost their former heat;1254
and now, that our bodies are called by the Greeks chains, from a word
meaning chain,1255
| 1255 δέμας as if from δέω, “I bind.” | or else (on the
analogy of our own Latin word) “things fallen,”1256
| 1256 πτῶμα, from πίπτειν: cadaver, from
cado. | because our souls have fallen from heaven;
and that the other word for body which the abundance of the Greek idiom
supplies1257
is by many taken to mean a funeral
monument,1258
because the soul is shut up within
it in the same way as the corpses of the dead are shut up in tombs and
barrows. If this doctrine is true what becomes of our faith? Where is
the preaching of the resurrection? Where is the teaching of the
apostles, which lasts on to this day in the churches of Christ? Where
is the blessing to Adam, and to his seed, and to Noah and his sons?
“Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”1259
According to Origen, these words must be a
curse and not a blessing; for he turns angels into human souls,
compelling them to leave the place of highest rank and to come down
lower, as though God were unable through the action of His blessing to
grant souls to the human race, had the angels not sinned, and as though
for every birth on earth there must be a fall in heaven. We are to give
up, then, the teaching of apostles and prophets, of the law, and of our
Lord and Saviour Himself, in spite of His language loud as thunder in
the gospel. Origen, on the other hand, commands and urges—not to
say binds—his disciples not to pray to ascend into heaven, lest
sinning once more worse than they had sinned on earth they should be
hurled down into the world again. Such foolish and insane notions he
generally confirms by distorting the sense of the Scriptures and making
them mean what they do not mean at all. He quotes this passage from the
Psalms: “Before thou didst humble me by reason of my wickedness,
I went wrong;”1260
and this,
“Return unto thy rest, O my soul;”1261
this also, “Bring my soul out of prison;”1262
and this, “I will make confession
unto the Lord in the land of the
living,”1263
although there
can be no doubt that the meaning of the divine Scripture is different
from the interpretation by which he unfairly wrests it to the support
of his own heresy. This way of acting is common to the Manichæans,
the Gnostics, the Ebionites, the Marcionites, and the votaries of the
other eighty heresies,1264
| 1264 Epiphanius had
written a book “against all the heresies.” | all of whom draw
their proofs from the pure well of the Scriptures, not, however,
interpreting it in the sense in which it is written, but trying to make
the simple language of the Church’s writers accord with their own
wishes.
5. Of one position which he strives to maintain I hardly
know whether it calls for my tears or my laughter. This wonderful
doctor presumes to teach that the devil will once more be what he at
one time was, that he will return to his former dignity and rise again
to the kingdom of heaven. Oh horror! that a man should be so frantic
and foolish as to hold that John the Baptist, Peter, the apostle and
evangelist John, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets, are
made co-heirs of the devil in the kingdom of heaven! I pass over his
idle explanation of the coats of skins,1265
and say nothing of the efforts and arguments he has used to induce us
to believe that these coats of skins represent human bodies. Among many
other things, he says this: “Was God a tanner or a saddler, that
He should prepare the hides of animals, and should stitch from them
coats of skins for Adam and Eve?” “It is clear,” he
goes on, “that he is speaking of human bodies.” If this is
so, how is it that before the coats of skins, and the disobedience, and
the fall from paradise, Adam speaks not in an allegory, but literally,
thus: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my
flesh;”1266
or what is the
ground of the divine narrative, “And the Lord God caused a deep
sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and
closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib which the Lord God had
taken from man, made He a woman”1267
for him? Or what bodies can Adam and Eve
have covered with fig-leaves after eating of the forbidden tree?1268
Who can patiently listen to the
perilous arguments of Origen when he denies the resurrection of this
flesh, as he most clearly does in his book of explanations of the first
psalm and in many other places? Or who can tolerate him when he gives
us a paradise in the third heaven, and transfers that which the
Scripture mentions from earth to the heavenly places, and when he
explains allegorically all the trees which are mentioned in Genesis,
saying in effect that the trees are angelic potencies, a sense which
the true drift of the passage does not admit? For the divine Scripture
has not said, “God put down Adam and Eve upon the earth,”
but “He drove them out of the paradise, and made them dwell over
against the paradise.”1269
He does not say
“under the paradise.” “He placed…cherubims and
a flaming sword…to keep the way of1270
the tree of life.”1271
He says nothing
about an ascent to it. “And a river went out of Eden.”1272
He does not say “went down from
Eden.” “It was parted and became into four heads. The name
of the first is Pison…and the name of the second is
Gihon.”1273
I myself have
seen the waters of Gihon, have seen them with my bodily eyes. It is
this Gihon to which Jeremiah points when he says, “What hast thou
to do in the way of Egypt to drink the muddy water of Gihon?”1274
I have drunk also from the great river
Euphrates, not spiritual but actual water, such as you can touch with
your hand and imbibe with your mouth. But where there are rivers which
admit of being seen and of being drunk, it follows that there also
there will be fig-trees and other trees; and it is of these that the
Lord says, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely
eat.”1275
They are like other trees and
timber, just as the rivers are like other rivers and waters. But if the
water is visible and real, then the fig-tree and the rest of the timber
must be real also, and Adam and Eve must have been originally formed
with real and not phantasmal bodies, and not, as Origen would have us
believe, have afterwards received them on account of their sin. But,
you say, “we read that Saint Paul was caught up to the third
heaven, into paradise.”1276
You explain the
words rightly: “When he mentions the third heaven, and then adds
the word paradise, he shows that heaven is in one place and paradise in
another.” Must not every one reject and despise such special
pleading as that by which Origen says of the waters that are above the
firmament1277
that they are not waters, but
heroic beings of angelic power,1278
| 1278 Fortitudines
angelicæ potestatis. | and
again of the waters that are over
the earth—that is, below the firmament—that they are
potencies1279
of the contrary sort—that
is, demons? If so, why do we read in the account of the deluge that the
windows of heaven were opened, and that the waters of the deluge
prevailed? in consequence of which the fountains of the deep were
opened, and the whole earth was covered with the waters.1280
6. Oh! the madness and folly of those who have forsaken
the teaching of the book of Proverbs, “My son, keep thy
father’s commandment, and forsake not the law of thy
mother,”1281
and have turned
to error, and say to the fool that he shall be their leader, and do not
despise the foolish things which are said by the foolish man, even as
the scripture bears witness, “The foolish man speaketh foolishly,
and his heart understandeth vanity.”1282
I beseech you, dearly beloved, and by
the love which I feel towards you, I implore you—as though it
were my own members on which I would have pity1283
—by word and letter to fulfil
that which is written, “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate
thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against
thee?”1284
Origen’s words are the
words of an enemy, hateful and repugnant to God and to His saints; and
not only those which I have quoted, but countless others. For it is not
now my intention to argue against all his opinions. Origen has not
lived in my day, nor has he robbed me. I have not conceived a dislike
to him nor quarrelled with him because of an inheritance or of any
worldly matter; but—to speak plainly—I grieve, and grieve
bitterly, to see numbers of my brothers, and of those in particular who
show the most promise, and have reached the highest rank in the sacred
ministry,1285
deceived by his persuasive
arguments, and made by his most perverse teaching the food of the
devil, whereby the saying is fulfilled: “He derides every
stronghold, and his fare is choice, and he hath gathered captives as
the sand.”1286
| 1286 Hab. i. 10, 16, 9, LXX. | But may God
free you, my brother, and the holy people of Christ which is intrusted
to you, and all the brothers who are with you, and especially the
presbyter Rufinus, from the heresy of Origen, and other heresies, and
from the perdition to which they lead. For, if for one word or for two
opposed to the faith many heresies have been rejected by the Church,
how much more shall he be held a heretic who has contrived such
perverse interpretations and such mischievous doctrines to destroy the
faith, and has in fact declared himself the enemy of the Church! For,
among other wicked things, he has presumed to say this, too, that Adam
lost the image of God, although Scripture nowhere declares that he did.
Were it so, never would all the creatures in the world be subject to
Adam’s seed—that is, to the entire human race; yet, in the
words of the apostle, everything “is tamed and hath been tamed of
mankind.”1287
For never
would all things be subjected to men if men had not—together with
their authority over all—the image of God. But the divine
Scripture conjoins and associates with this the grace of the blessing
which was conferred upon Adam and upon the generations which descended
from him. No one can by twisting the meaning of words presume to say
that this grace of God was given to one only, and that he alone was
made in the image of God (he and his wife, that is, for while he was
formed of clay she was made of one of his ribs), but that those who
were subsequently conceived in the womb and not born as was Adam did
not possess God’s image, for the Scripture immediately subjoins
the following statement: “And Adam lived two hundred and thirty
years,1288
| 1288 LXX. The Heb.
text which A.V. follows gives “an hundred and thirty
years.” | and knew Eve his wife, and she
bare him a son in his image and after his likeness, and called his name
Seth.”1289
| 1289 Gen. iv. 25; v. 3; i. 26. | And again, in the tenth
generation, two thousand two hundred and forty-two years afterwards,1290
| 1290 According to the LXX.
The chronology of the Hebrew text gives a period of 1656 years (Gen. v.). | God, to vindicate His own image and to show
that the grace which He had given to men still continued in them, gives
the following commandment: “Flesh…with the blood thereof
shall ye not eat. And surely your blood will I require at the hand of
every man that sheddeth it; for in the image of God have I made
man.”1291
From Noah to Abraham ten generations
passed away,1292
and from Abraham’s time to
David’s, fourteen more,1293
and these
twenty-four generations make up, taken together, two thousand one
hundred and seventeen years.1294
| 1294 This calculation
appears to be based on the LXX. | Yet the Holy
Spirit in the thirty-ninth1295
| 1295 Acc. to the Vulg.,
which Jerome here follows, the thirty-eighth. | psalm, while
lamenting that all men walk in a vain show, and that they are subject
to sins, speaks thus: “For all that every man walketh in the image.”1296
Also after David’s time, in the
reign of Solomon his son, we read a somewhat similar reference to the
divine likeness. For in the book of Wisdom, which is inscribed with his
name, Solomon says: “God created man to be immortal, and made him
to be an image of His own eternity.”1297
And again, about eleven hundred and
eleven years afterwards, we read in the New Testament that men have not
lost the image of God. For James, an apostle and brother of the Lord,
whom I have mentioned above—that we may not be entangled in the
snares of Origen—teaches us that man does possess God’s
image and likeness. For, after a somewhat discursive account of the
human tongue, he has gone on to say of it: “It is an unruly
evil…therewith bless we God, even the Father and therewith curse
we men, which are made after the similitude of God.”1298
Paul, too, the “chosen
vessel,”1299
who in his
preaching has fully maintained the doctrine of the gospel, instructs us
that man is made in the image and after the likeness of God. “A
man,” he says, “ought not to wear long hair, forasmuch as
he is the image and glory of God.”1300
He
speaks of “the image” simply, but explains the nature of
the likeness by the word “glory.”
7. Instead of the three proofs from Holy Scripture which
you said would satisfy you if I could produce them, behold I have given
you seven. Who, then, will put up with the follies of Origen? I will
not use a severer word and so make myself like him or his followers,
who presume at the peril of their soul to assert dogmatically whatever
first comes into their head, and to dictate to God, whereas they ought
either to pray to Him or to learn the truth from Him. For some of them
say that the image of God which Adam had previously received was lost
when he sinned. Others surmise that the body which the Son of God was
destined to take of Mary was the image of the Creator. Some identify
this image with the soul, others with sensation, others with virtue.
These make it baptism, those assert that it is in virtue of God’s
image that man exercises universal sway. Like drunkards in their cups,
they ejaculate now this, now that, when they ought rather to have
avoided so serious a risk, and to have obtained salvation by simple
faith, not denying the words of God. To God they ought to have left the
sure and exact knowledge of His own gift, and of the particular way in
which He has created men in His image and after His likeness. Forsaking
this course, they have involved themselves in many subtle questions,
and through these they have been plunged into the mire of sin. But we,
dearly beloved, believe the words of the Lord, and know that
God’s image remains in all men, and we leave it to Him to know in
what respect man is created in His image. And let no one be deceived by
that passage in the epistle of John, which some readers fail to
understand, where he says: “Now are we the sons of God, and it
doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall
appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”1301
For this refers to the glory which is then
to be revealed1302
to His saints;
just as also in another place we read the words “from glory to
glory,”1303
of which glory
the saints have even in this world received an earnest and a small
portion. At their head stands Moses, whose face shone exceedingly, and
was bright with the brightness of the sun.1304
| 1304 Exod. xxxiv. 29 sqq.; 2 Cor. iii. 7. |
Next to him comes Elijah, who was caught up into heaven in a chariot of
fire,1305
and did not feel the effects of the flame.
Stephen, too, when he was being stoned, had the face of an angel
visible to all.1306
And this which we
have verified in a few cases is to be understood of all, that what is
written may be fulfilled. “Every one that sanctifieth himself
shall be numbered among the blessed.” For, “blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God.”1307
8. These things being so, dearly beloved, keep watch
over your own soul and cease to murmur against me. For the divine
Scripture says: “Neither murmur ye [one against another1308
| 1308 Words added by
this writer. | ] as some of them also murmured, and were
destroyed of serpents.”1309
Rather give way
to the truth and love me who love both you and the truth. And may the
God of peace, according to His mercy, grant to us that Satan may be
bruised under the feet of Christians,1310
and that every occasion of evil may be shunned, so that the bond of
love and peace may not be rent asunder between us, or the preaching of
the right faith be anywise hindered.
9. Moreover, I have heard that certain persons have this
grievance against me: When I accompanied you to the holy place called
Bethel, there to join you in celebrating the Collect,1311
| 1311 See note on § 1
above. | after the use of the Church, I came to a villa called Anablatha and,
as I was passing, saw a lamp burning there. Asking what place it was,
and learning it to be a church, I went in to pray, and found there a
curtain hanging on the doors of the said church, dyed and
embroidered.1312
| 1312 Velum…tinctum
atque depictum. | It bore an image either of Christ
or of one of the saints; I do not rightly remember whose the image was.
Seeing this, and being loth that an image of a man should be hung up in
Christ’s church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I
tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a
winding sheet for some poor person. They, however, murmured, and said
that if I made up my mind to tear it, it was only fair that I should
give them another curtain in its place. As soon as I heard this, I
promised that I would give one, and said that I would send it at once.
Since then there has been some little delay, due to the fact that I
have been seeking a curtain of the best quality to give to them instead
of the former one, and thought it right to send to Cyprus for one. I
have now sent the best that I could find, and I beg that you will order
the presbyter of the place to take the curtain which I have sent from
the hands of the Reader, and that you will afterwards give directions
that curtains of the other sort—opposed as they are to our
religion—shall not be hung up in any church of Christ. A man of
your uprightness should be careful to remove an occasion of offence1313
unworthy alike of the Church of Christ
and of those Christians who are committed to your charge. Beware of
Palladius of Galatia—a man once dear to me, but who now sorely
needs God’s pity—for he preaches and teaches the heresy of
Origen; and see to it that he does not seduce any of those who are
intrusted to your keeping into the perverse ways of his erroneous
doctrine. I pray that you may fare well in the Lord.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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