Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| To Vigilantius.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Letter
LXI. To Vigilantius.
Vigilantius on his return to the West after his visit to
Jerusalem (whither he had gone as the bearer of letters from Paulinus
of Nola—see Letter LVIII. §11.) had openly accused Jerome of
a leaning to the heresy of Origen. Jerome now writes to him in the most
severe tone repudiating the charge of Origenism and fastening upon his
opponent those of ignorance and blasphemy. He singles out for especial
reprobation Vigilantius’s explanation of ‘the stone cut out
without hands’ in Daniel and urges him to repent of his sins in
which case he will have as much chance of forgiveness as the devil has
according to Origen! The letter is often referred to as showing
Jerome’s way of dealing with Origen’s works. Jerome
subsequently wrote a refutation of Vigilantius’s work, of all his
controversial writings the most violent and the least reasonable. See
the translation of it in this volume. See also Letter CIX. The date of
this letter is 396 a.d.
1. Since you have refused to believe your own ears, I
might justly decline to satisfy you by a letter; for, if you have
failed to credit the living voice, it is not likely that you will give
way to a written paper. But, since Christ has shown us in Himself a
pattern of perfect humility, bestowing a kiss upon His betrayer and
receiving the robber’s repentance upon the cross, I tell you now
when absent as I have told you already when present, that I read and
have read Origen only as I read Apollinaris, or other writers whose
books in some things the Church does not receive. I by no means say
that everything contained in such books is to be condemned, but I admit
that there are things in them deserving of censure. Still, as it is my
task and study by reading many authors to cull different flowers from
as large a number as possible, not so much making it an object to prove
all things as to choose what are good. I take up many writers that from
the many I may learn many things; according to that which is written
“reading all things, holding fast those that are good.”1900
Hence I am much surprised that you have tried
to fasten upon me the doctrines of Origen, of whose mistaken teaching
on many points you are up to the present altogether unaware. Am I a
heretic? Why pray then do heretics dislike me so? And are you orthodox,
you who either against your convictions and the words of your own mouth
signed1901
| 1901 Probably Aterbius (for
whom see Jerome Apol. iii. 33, and note on Letter LXXXVI.) had brought
with him some test-formula of orthodoxy which he called upon all
anti-Origenists to sign. | unwillingly and are consequently a
prevaricator, or else signed deliberately and are consequently a
heretic? You have taken no account of Egypt; you have relinquished all
those provinces where numbers plead freely and openly for your sect;
and you have singled out me for assault, me who not only censure but
publicly condemn all doctrines that are contrary to the church.
2. Origen is a heretic, true; but what does that take
from me who do not deny that on very many points he is heretical? He
has erred concerning the resurrection of the body, he has erred
concerning the condition of souls, he has erred by supposing it possible that the
devil may repent, and—an error more important than these—he
has declared in his commentary upon Isaiah that the Seraphim mentioned
by the prophet1902
are the divine Son
and the Holy Ghost. If I did not allow that he has erred or if I did
not daily anathematize his errors I should be partaker of his fault.
For while we receive what is good in his writings we must on no account
bind ourselves to accept also what is evil. Still in many passages he
has interpreted the scriptures well, has explained obscure places in
the prophets, and has brought to light very great mysteries, both in
the old and in the new testament. If then I have taken over what is
good in him and have either cut away or altered or ignored what is
evil, am I to be regarded as guilty on the score that through my agency
those who read Latin receive the good in his writings without knowing
anything of the bad? If this be a crime the confessor Hilary must be
convicted; for he has rendered from Greek into Latin Origen’s
Explanation of the Psalms and his Homilies on Job.
Eusebius of Vercellæ, who witnessed a like confession, must also
be held in fault; for he has translated into our tongue the
Commentaries upon all the Psalms of his heretical namesake,
omitting however the unsound portions and rendering only those parts
which are profitable. I say nothing of Victorinus of Petavium and
others who have merely followed and expanded Origen in their
explanation of the scriptures. Were I to do so, I might seem less
anxious to defend myself than to find for myself companions in guilt. I
will come to your own case: Why do you keep copies of his treatises on
Job? In these, while arguing against the devil and concerning the stars
and heavens, he has said certain things which the Church does not
receive. Is it for you alone, with that very wise head of yours, to
pass sentence upon all writers Greek and Latin, with a wave of your
censor’s wand to eject some from our libraries and to admit
others, and as the whim takes you to pronounce me either a Catholic or
a heretic? And am I to be forbidden to reject things which are wrong
and to condemn what I have often condemned already? Read what I have
written upon the epistle to the Ephesians, read my other works,
particularly my commentary upon Ecclesiastes, and you will clearly see
that from my youth up I have never been terrified by any man’s
influence into acquiescence in heretical pravity.
3. It is no small gain to know your own ignorance. It is
a man’s wisdom to know his own measure, that he may not be led
away at the instigation of the devil to make the whole world a witness
of his incapacity. You are bent, I suppose, on magnifying yourself and
boast in your own country that I found myself unable to answer your
eloquence and that I dreaded in you the sharp satire of a Chrysippus.1903
| 1903 A disciple of
Cleanthes and Zeno, and after them the leading teacher of the Stoic
school at Athens. He was born in 280 a.d. | Christian modesty holds me back and I do
not wish to lay open the retirement of my poor cell with biting words.
Otherwise I should soon shew up all your bravery and your parade of
triumph.1904
| 1904 This expression is
given in Greek. | But these I leave to others either to
talk of or to laugh at; while for my own part as a Christian speaking
to a Christian I beseech you my brother not to pretend to know more
than you do, lest your pen may proclaim your innocence and simplicity,
or at any rate those qualities of which I say nothing but which, though
you do not see them in yourself others see in you. For then you will
give everyone reason to laugh at your folly. From your earliest
childhood you have been taught other lessons and have been used to a
different kind of schooling. One and the same person can hardly be a
tester both of gold coins on the counter and also of the scriptures, or
be a connoisseur of wines and an adept in expounding prophets or
apostles.1905
| 1905 The father of
Vigilantius is said by Jerome to have been an inn-keeper. | As for me, you tear me limb from limb,
our reverend brother Oceanus you charge with heresy, you dislike the
judgment of the presbyters Vincent and Paulinian, and our brother
Eusebius also displeases you. You alone are to be our Cato, the most
eloquent of the Roman race, and you wish us to accept what you say as
the words of prudence herself. Pray call to mind the day when I
preached on the resurrection and on the reality of the risen body, and
when you jumped up beside me and clapped your hands and stamped your
feet and applauded my orthodoxy. Now, however, that you have taken to
sea travelling the stench of the bilge water has affected your head,
and you have called me to mind only as a heretic. What can I do for
you? I believed the letters of the reverend presbyter Paulinus, and it
did not occur to me that his judgment concerning you could be wrong.
And although, the moment that you handed me the letter, I noticed a
certain incoherency in your language, yet I fancied this due to want of
culture and knowledge in you and not to an unsettled brain. I do not
censure the reverend writer who preferred, no doubt, in writing to me
to keep back what he knew rather than to accuse in his missive one who
was both under his patronage and entrusted with his letter; but I find
fault with myself that I have rested in another’s judgment rather than
my own, and that, while my eyes saw one thing, I believed on the
evidence of a scrap of paper something else than what I saw.
4. Wherefore cease to worry me and to overwhelm me with
your scrolls. Spare at least your money with which you hire secretaries
and copyists, employing the same persons to write for you and to
applaud you. Possibly their praise is due to the fact that they make a
profit out of writing for you. If you wish to exercise your mind, hand
yourself over to the teachers of grammar and rhetoric, learn logic,
have yourself instructed in the schools of the philosophers; and when
you have learned all these things you will perhaps begin to hold your
tongue. And yet I am acting foolishly in seeking teachers for one who
is competent to teach everyone, and in trying to limit the utterance of
one who does not know how to speak yet cannot remain silent. The old
Greek proverb is quite true “A lyre is of no use to an
ass.”1906
For my part I imagine that even your
name was given you out of contrariety.1907
| 1907 Jerome subsequently
(Letter CIX.) nicknamed his opponent Dormitantius (‘the Sleepy
One’), his own name Vigilantius meaning ‘the
Wakeful.’ |
For your whole mind slumbers and you actually snore, so profound is the
sleep—or rather the lethargy—in which you are plunged. In
fact amongst the other blasphemies which with sacrilegious lips you
have uttered you have dared to say that the mountain in Daniel1908
out of which the stone was cut without
hands is the devil, and that the stone is Christ, who having taken a
body from Adam (whose sins had before connected him with the devil) is
born of a virgin to separate mankind from the mountain, that is, from
the devil. Your tongue deserves to be cut out and torn into fragments.
Can any true Christian explain this image of the devil instead of
referring it to God the Father Almighty, or defile the ears of the
whole world with so frightful an enormity? If your explanation has ever
been accepted by any—I will not say Catholic but—heretic or
heathen, let your words be regarded as pious. If on the other hand the
Church of Christ has never yet heard of such an impiety, and if yours
has been the first mouth through which he who once said “I will
be like the Most High”1909
has declared that
he is the mountain spoken of by Daniel, then repent, put on sackcloth
and ashes, and with fast-flowing tears wash away your awful guilt; if
so be that this impiety may be forgiven you, and, supposing
Origen’s heresy to be true, that you may obtain pardon when the
devil himself shall obtain it, the devil who has never been convicted
of greater blasphemy than that which he has uttered through you. Your
insult offered to myself I bear with patience: your impiety towards God
I cannot bear. Accordingly I may seem to have been somewhat more acrid
in this latter part of my letter than I declared I would be at the
outset. Yet having once before repented and asked pardon of me, it is
extremely foolish in you again to commit a sin for which you must anew
do penance. May Christ give you grace to hear and to hold your peace,
to understand and so to speak.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
