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Letter LXXXIV. To Pammachius and Oceanus.
A calm letter in which Jerome defines and justifies his
own attitude towards Origen, but unduly minimizes his early enthusiasm
for him. He admires him in the same way that Cyprian admired Tertullian
but does not in any way adopt his errors. He then describes his own
studies and recounts his obligations to Apollinaris, Didymus, and a Jew
named Bar-anina. The rest of the letter deals with the errors of
Origen, the state of the text of his writings, and the eulogy of him
composed by the martyr Pamphilus (the authenticity of which Jerome
assails without any sufficient reason). The date of the letter is 400
a.d.
Jerome to the brothers Pammachius and Oceanus, with all
good wishes.
1. The sheets that you send me2548
| 2548 i.e.
Rufinus’s version of Origen’s treatise, On First
Principles, with the Preface, translated in vol. iii. of this
series. See also Letters LXXX. and LXXXI. | cover me at once with compliments and
confusion; for, while they praise my ability, they take away my
sincerity in the faith. But as both at Alexandria and at Rome and, I
may say, throughout the whole world good men have made it a habit to
take the same liberties with my name, esteeming me only so far that
they cannot bear to be heretics without having me of the number, I will
leave aside personalities and only answer specific charges. For it is
of no benefit to a cause to encounter railing with railing and to retaliate
for attacks upon oneself by attacks upon one’s opponents. We are
commanded not to return evil for evil2549
but to overcome evil with good,2550
to take our
fill of insults, and to turn the other cheek to the smiter.2551
2. It is charged against me that I have sometimes
praised Origen. If I am not mistaken I have only done so in two places,
in the short preface (addressed to Damasus) to his homilies on the Song
of Songs and in the prologue to my book of Hebrew Names. In these
passages do the dogmas of the church come into question? Is anything
said of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost? or of the resurrection
of the flesh? or of the condition and material of the soul? I have
merely praised the simplicity of his rendering and commentary and
neither the faith nor the dogmas of the Church come in at all. Ethics
only are dealt with and the mist of allegory is dispelled by a clear
explanation. I have praised the commentator but not the theologian, the
man of intellect but not the believer, the philosopher but not the
apostle. But if men wish to know my real judgement upon Origen; let
them read my commentaries upon Ecclesiastes, let them go through my
three books upon the epistle to the Ephesians: they will then see that
I have always opposed his doctrines. How foolish it would be to
eulogize a system so far as to endorse its blasphemy! The blessed
Cyprian takes Tertullian for his master, as his writings prove; yet,
delighted as he is with the ability of this learned and zealous writer
he does not join him in following Montanus and Maximilla.2552
| 2552 Of these the two
founders of Montanism the first was a Phrygian of the second century
who professed to be the special organ of the Holy Ghost while the
second was a female disciple who claimed to exercise the gift of
prophecy in furtherance of his aims. | Apollinaris is the author of a most
weighty book against Porphyry, and Eusebius has composed a fine history
of the Church; yet of these the former has mutilated Christ’s
incarnate humanity,2553
| 2553 Dimidiatam Christi
introduxit œconomiam. Apollinaris taught that in Christ the divine
personality supplied the place of a human soul. In his view, therefore,
Christ ceased to be “very man.” | while the latter
is the most open champion of the Arian impiety.2554
| 2554 Eusebius, although
he sided with the Arians, always claimed to be orthodox. However, as
Newman says, “his acts are his confession.” |
“Woe,” says Isaiah, “unto them that call evil good
and good evil; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”2555
We must not detract from the virtues of our
opponents—if they have any praiseworthy qualities—but
neither must we praise the defects of our friends. Each several case
must be judged on its own merits and not by a reference to the persons
concerned. While Lucilius is rightly assailed by Horace2556
for the unevenness of his verses, he is
equally rightly praised for his wit and his charming style.
3. In my younger days I was carried away with a great
passion for learning, yet I was not like some presumptuous enough to
teach myself. At Antioch I frequently listened to Apollinaris of
Laodicea, and attended his lectures; yet, although he instructed me in
the holy scriptures, I never embraced his disputable doctrine as to
their meaning. At length my head became sprinkled with gray hairs so
that I looked more like a master than a disciple. Yet I went on to
Alexandria and heard Didymus.2557
And I have much
to thank him for: for what I did not know I learned from him, and what
I knew already I did not forget. So excellent was his teaching. Men
fancied that I had now made an end of learning. Yet once more I came to
Jerusalem and to Bethlehem. What trouble and expense it cost me to get
Baraninas2558
| 2558 From this Jew
Jerome took lessons in Hebrew during the earlier years of his life at
Bethlehem. From time to time he also consulted other Jewish
scholars. | to teach me under cover of night.
For by his fear of the Jews he presented to me in his own person a
second edition of Nicodemus.2559
Of all of these I
have frequently made mention in my works. The doctrines of Apollinaris
and of Didymus are mutually contradictory. The squadrons of the two
leaders must drag me in different directions, for I acknowledge both as
my masters. If it is expedient to hate any men and to loath any race, I
have a strange dislike to those of the circumcision. For up to the
present day they persecute our Lord Jesus Christ in the synagogues of
Satan.2560
Yet can anyone find fault with me for
having had a Jew as a teacher? Does a certain person dare to bring
forward against me the letter I wrote to Didymus calling him my master?
It is a great crime, it would seem, for me a disciple to give to one
both old and learned the name of master. And yet when I ask leave to
look at the letter which has been held over so long to discredit me at
last, there is nothing in it but courteous language and a few words of
greeting. Such charges are both foolish and frivolous. It would be more
to the point to exhibit a passage in which I have defended heresy or
praised some wicked doctrine of Origen. In the portion of Isaiah which
describes the crying of the two seraphim2561
he explains these to be the Son and the Holy Ghost; but have not I
altered this hateful explanation into a reference to the two
testaments?2562
| 2562 Cf. Letter XVIII.
§ 14. | I have the book in my hand as it was published
twenty years ago. In numbers of my works and especially in my
commentaries I have, as occasion has offered, mangled this heathen
school. And if my opponents allege that I have done more than anyone
else to form a collection of Origen’s books, I answer that I only
wish I could have the works of all theological writers that by diligent
study of them, I might make up for the slowness of my own wits. I have
made a collection of his books, I admit; but because I know everything
that he has written I do not follow his errors. I speak as a Christian
to Christians: believe one who has tried him. His doctrines are
poisonous, they are unknown to the Holy Scriptures, nay more, they do
them violence. I have read Origen, I repeat, I have read him; and if it
is a crime to read him, I admit my guilt: indeed, these Alexandrian
writings have emptied my purse. If you will believe me, I have never
been an Origenist: if you will not believe me, I have now ceased to be
one. But if even this fails to convince you, you will compel me in
self-defence to write against your favourite, so that, if you will not
believe me when I disclaim him, you will have to believe me when I
attack him. But I find readier credence when I go wrong than when I
shew amendment. And this is not surprising, for my would-be friends
suppose me a fellow-disciple with them in the arcana of their system. I
am loath, they fancy, to profess esoteric doctrines before persons who
according to them are brute-like and made of clay. For it is an axiom
with them that pearls ought not to be lightly cast before swine, nor
that which is holy given to the dogs.2563
They agree with David when he says:
“Thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against
thee;”2564
and when in another place he
describes the righteous man as one “who speaketh truth with his
neighbour,”2565
that is with
those who “are of the household of faith.”2566
From these passages they conclude that
those of us who as yet are uninitiated ought to be told falsehoods,
lest, being still unweaned babes, we should be choked by too solid
food. Now that perjury and lying enter into their mysteries and form a
bond between them appears most clearly from the sixth book of
Origen’s Miscellanies,2567
| 2567 στρωματεις
, lit. = ‘tapestries.’ See note on Letter LXX. §
4. | in which he
harmonizes the Christian doctrine2568
with the
conceptions of Plato.
4. What must I do then? deny that I am of Origen’s
opinion? They will not believe me. Swear that I am not? They will laugh
and say that I deal in lies. I will do the one thing which they dread.
I will bring forward their sacred rites and mysteries, and will expose
the cunning whereby they delude simple folk like myself. Perhaps,
although they refuse credence to my voice when I deny, they may believe
my pen when I accuse. Of one thing they are particularly apprehensive,
and that is that their writings may some day be taken as evidence
against their master. They are ready to make statements on oath and to
disclaim them afterwards with an oath as false as the first. When asked
for their signatures they use shifts and seek excuses. One says:
“I cannot condemn what no one else has condemned.” Another
says: “No decision was arrived at on the point by the
Fathers.”2569
| 2569 i.e. the
Bishops present at Nicæa. | It is thus that
they appeal to the judgment of the world to put off the necessity of
assenting to a condemnation. Another says with yet more assurance:
“how am I to condemn men whom the council of Nicæa has left
untouched? For the council which condemned Arius would surely have
condemned Origen too, had it disapproved of his doctrines.” They
were bound in other words to cure all the diseases of the church at
once and with one remedy; and by parity of reasoning we must deny the
majesty of the Holy Ghost because nothing was said of his nature in
that council. But the question was of Arius, not of Origen; of the Son,
not of the Holy Ghost. The bishops at the council proclaimed their
adherence to a dogma which was at the time denied; they said nothing
about a difficulty which no one had raised. And yet they covertly
struck at Origen as the source of the Arian heresy: for, in condemning
those who deny the Son to be of the substance of the Father, they have
condemned Origen as much as Arius. On the ground taken by these persons
we have no right to condemn Valentine,2570
| 2570 The founder of a
Gnostic sect in the second century. He taught first in Egypt and
afterwards in Rome. |
Marcion,2571
| 2571 See note on Letter
XLVIII. § 2. | or the Cataphrygians,2572
| 2572 The Montanists
were so called because the headquarters of their sect were at Pepuza a
small village in Phrygia. | or Manichæus, none of whom are
named by the council of Nicæa, and yet there is no doubt that in
time they were prior to it. But when they find themselves pressed
either to subscribe or to leave the Church, you may see some strange
twisting. They qualify their words, they arrange them anew, they use
vague expressions; so as, if possible, to hold both our confession and
that of our opponents, to be called indifferently heretics and
Catholics. As if it were not in the same spirit that the Delphian
Apollo (or, as he is sometimes called, Loxias) gave his oracles to Crœsus and to Pyrrhus; cheating
with a similar device two men widely separated in time.2573
| 2573 Crœsus when
he asked whether he should resist Cyrus was told that, if he did so, he
would overthrow a mighty kingdom, a prophecy fulfilled in his own
destruction; while Pyrrhus long afterwards received an equally evasive
answer in the words, “Pyrrhus the Sons of Rome may well
defeat.” | To make my meaning clear I will give a
few examples.
5. We believe, say they, in the resurrection of the
body. This confession, if only it be sincere, is free from objection.
But as there are bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial2574
and as thin air and the æther are
both according to their natures called bodies, they use the word body
instead of the word flesh in order that an orthodox person hearing them
say body may take them to mean flesh while a heretic will understand
that they mean spirit. This is their first piece of craft, and if this
is found out, they devise fresh wiles, and, pretending innocence
themselves, accuse us of malice. As though they were frank believers
they say, “We believe in the resurrection of the flesh.”
Now when they have said this, the ignorant crowd thinks it ought to be
satisfied, particularly because these exact words are found in the
creed.2575
| 2575 Article XI. of the
Apostles’ Creed speaks in the original forms of the resurrection
not of “the body” but of “the flesh:” and it is
still found in this shape in the Anglican office for the visitation of
the sick. | If you go on to question them
farther, a buzz of disapproval is heard in the ring and their backers
cry out: “You have heard them say that they believe in the
resurrection of the flesh; what more do you want?” the popular
favour is transferred from our side to theirs, and while they are
called honest, we are looked on as false accusers. But if you set your
face steadily and keeping a firm hold of their admission about the
flesh, proceed to press them as to whether they assert the resurrection
of that flesh which is visible and tangible, which walks and speaks,
they first laugh and then signify their assent. And when we inquire
whether the resurrection will exhibit anew the hair and the teeth, the
chest and the stomach, the hands and the feet, and all the other
members of the body, then no longer able to contain their mirth they
burst out laughing and tell us that in that case we shall need barbers,
and cakes, and doctors, and cobblers. Do we, they ask us in turn,
believe that after the resurrection men’s cheeks will still be
rough and those of women smooth, and that sex will differentiate their
bodies as it does at present? Then if we admit this, they at once
deduce from our admission conclusions involving the grossest
materialism. Thus, while they maintain the resurrection of the body as
a whole, they deny the resurrection of its separate members.
6. The present is not a time to speak rhetorically
against a perverse doctrine. Neither the rich vocabulary of Cicero nor
the fervid eloquence of Demosthenes could adequately convey the warmth
of my feeling, were I to attempt to expose the quibbles by which these
heretics, while verbally professing a belief in the resurrection, in
their hearts deny it. For their women finger their breasts, slap their
chests, pinch their legs and arms, and say, “What will a
resurrection profit us if these frail bodies are to rise again? No, if
we are to be like angels,2576
we shall have
the bodies of angels.” That is to say they scorn to rise again
with the flesh and bones wherewith even Christ rose.2577
Now suppose for a moment that in my
youth I went astray and that, trained as I was in the schools of
heathen philosophy, I was ignorant, in the beginning of my faith, of
the dogmas of Christianity, and fancied that what I had read in
Pythagoras and Plato and Empedocles was also contained in the writings
of the apostle: Supposing, I say, that I believed all this, why do you
yet follow the error of a mere babe and sucking child in Christ? Why do
you learn irreligion of one who as yet knew not religion? After
shipwreck one has still a plank to cling to;2578
| 2578 A favourite
metaphor with Jerome to describe the nature of Christian penitence. | and one may atone for sin by a frank
confession. You have followed me when I have gone astray; follow me
also now that I have been brought back. In youth we have wandered; now
that we are old let us mend our ways. Let us unite our tears and our
groans; let us weep together, and return to the Lord our Maker.2579
Let us not wait for the repentance of
the devil; for this is a vain anticipation and one that will drag us
into the deep of hell. Life must be sought or lost here. If I have
never followed Origen, it is in vain that you seek to discredit me: if
I have been his disciple, imitate my penitence. You have believed my
confession; credit also my denial.
7. But it will be said, “If you knew these things,
why did you praise him in your works?” I should praise him today
but that you and men like you praise his errors. I should still find
his talent attractive, but that some people have been attracted by his
impiety. “Read2580
all
things,” says the apostle, “hold fast that which is
good.”2581
Lactantius in his books and
particularly in his letters to Demetrian altogether denies the
subsistence of the Holy Spirit, and following the error of the Jews
says that the passages in which he is spoken of refer to the Father or
to the Son and that the words ‘holy spirit’ merely prove
the holiness of these two persons
in the Godhead. But who can forbid me to read his
Institutes—in which he has written against the Gentiles
with much ability—simply because this opinion of his is to be
abhorred? Apollinaris2582
| 2582 See note on
§ 2 above. | has written
excellent treatises against Porphyry, and I approve of his labours,
although I despise his doctrine in many points because of its
foolishness. If you too for your parts will but admit that Origen errs
in certain things I will not say another syllable. Acknowledge that he
thought amiss concerning the Son, and still more amiss concerning the
Holy Spirit, point out the impiety of which he has been guilty in
speaking of men’s souls as having fallen from heaven, and shew
that, while in word he asserts the resurrection of the flesh, he
destroys the force of this language by other assertions. As, for
instance, that, after many ages and one “restitution of all
things,”2583
it will be
the same for Gabriel as for the devil, for Paul as for Caiaphas, for
virgins as for prostitutes. When once you have rejected these
misstatements and have parted them with your censor’s wand from
the faith of the Church, I may read what is left with safety, and
having first taken the antidote need no longer dread the poison. For
instance it will do me no harm to say as I have said, “Whereas in
his other books Origen has surpassed all other writers, in commenting
on the Song of Songs he has surpassed himself”; nor will I fear
to face the words with which formerly in my younger days I spoke of him
as a doctor of the churches.2584
| 2584 See
Jerome’s preface to his version of Origen’s Homilies on
Ezekiel: and his preface to his own Treatise on Hebrew Names. See also
Letter XXXIII. | Will it be
pretended, that I was bound to accuse a man whose works I was
translating by special request? that I was bound to say in my preface,
“This writer whose books I translate is a heretic: beware of him,
reader, read him not, flee from the viper: or, if you are bent on
reading him, know that the treatises which I have translated have been
garbled by heretics and wicked men; yet you need not fear, for I have
corrected all the places which they have corrupted,” that in
other words I ought to have said: “the writer that I translate is
a heretic, but I, his translator, am a Catholic.” The fact is
that you and your party in your anxiety to be straightforward,
ingenuous, and honest, have paid too little regard to the precepts of
rhetoric and to the devices of oratory. For in admitting that his books
On First Principles are heretical and in trying to lay the blame
of this upon others, you raise difficulties for your readers; you
induce them to examine the whole life of the author and to form a
judgment on the question from the remainder of his writings. I on the
other hand have been wise enough to emend silently what I wished to
emend: thus by ignoring the crime I have averted prejudice from the
criminal. Doctors tell us that serious maladies ought not to be
subjected to treatment, but should be left to nature, lest the remedies
applied should intensify the disease. It is now almost one hundred and
fifty years since Origen died at Tyre.2585
| 2585 Origen died at
Tyre about the year 255 a.d. | Yet what Latin writer has ever ventured
to translate his books On the Resurrection and On First
Principles, his Miscellanies2586
| 2586 See note on
Letter LXX. § 4. | and his Commentaries or as he
himself calls them his Tomes?2587
Who has
ever cared by so infamous a work to cover himself with infamy? I am not
more eloquent than Hilary or truer to the faith than Victorinus who
both have rendered his Homilies2588
not in exact versions but in
independent paraphrases. Recently also Ambrose appropriated his Six
Days’ Work,2589
| 2589 Hexaëmeron:
an account of the creation is meant. | but in such a
way that it expressed the views of Hippolytus and Basil rather than of
Origen. You profess to take me for your model, and blind as moles in
relation to others you scan me with the eyes of gazelles. Well, had I
been ill-disposed towards Origen, I might have translated these very
books so as to make his worst writings known to Latin readers; but this
I have never done; and, though many have asked me, I have always
refused. For it has never been my habit to crow over the mistakes of
men whose talents I admire. Origen himself, were he still alive, would
soon fall out with you his would-be patrons and would say with Jacob:
“Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of
the land.”2590
8. Does any one wish to praise Origen? Let him praise
him as I do. From his childhood he was a great man, and truly a
martyr’s son.2591
| 2591 His father Leonides
suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Severus. | At Alexandria he
presided over the school of the church, succeeding a man of great
learning the presbyter Clement. So greatly did he abhor sensuality
that, out of a zeal for God but yet one not according to knowledge,2592
he castrated himself with a knife.
Covetousness he trampled under foot. He knew the scriptures by heart
and laboured hard day and night to explain their meaning. He delivered
in church more than a thousand sermons, and published innumerable
commentaries which he called tomes. These I now pass over, for it is
not my purpose to catalogue his writings. Which of us can read all that
he has written? and who can fail to admire his enthusiasm for the scriptures? If some
one in the spirit of Judas the Zealot2593
brings up to me his mistakes, he shall
have his answer in the words of Horace:
’Tis true that sometimes Homer sleeps, but
then
He’s not without excuse:
The fault is venial, for his work is long.2594
| 2594 Hor. A. P. 359,
360. |
Let us not imitate the faults of one whose virtues we cannot equal.
Other men have erred concerning the faith, both Greeks and Latins, but
I must not mention their names lest I should be supposed to defend
Origen not by his own merits but by the errors of others. This, you
will say, is to accuse them and not to excuse him. You would be right,
if I had declared him not to have erred, or if I had professed a belief
that the apostle Paul or an angel from heaven2595
ought to be listened to in a depravation of the faith. But as it is
seeing I frankly admit him to be wrong, I may read him on the same
terms as I read others, because if he is wrong so also are they. But
you may say, If error is common to many, why do you assail him alone? I
answer, because he alone is praised by you as an apostle. Take away
your exaggerated love for him, and I am ready to take away the
greatness of my dislike. While you gather other men’s faulty
statements out of their books merely to defend Origen in his error, you
extol this latter to the sky and will not allow that he has erred at
all. Whosoever you are who are thus preaching new doctrines, I beseech
you, spare the ears of the Romans, spare the faith of a church which an
apostle has praised.2596
Why after four
hundred years do you try to teach us Romans doctrines of which until
now we have known nothing? Why do you publicly proclaim opinions which
Peter and Paul2597
refused to
profess? Until now no such teaching has been heard of, and yet the
world has become christian. For my part I will hold fast in my old age
the faith wherein I was born again in my boyhood.2598
They speak of us as claytowners,2599
| 2599 Pelusiotæ, men
of Pelusium, supposed to be derived from πηλός, “clay.” See
Jerome’s Comm. on Jer. xxix. 14–20. | made out of dirt, brutish and carnal,
because, say they, we refuse to receive the things of the spirit; but
of course they themselves are citizens of Jerusalem and their mother is
in heaven.2600
I do not despise the flesh in which
Christ was born and rose again, or scorn the mud which, baked into a
clean vessel, reigns in heaven. And yet I wonder why they who detract
from the flesh live after the flesh,2601
| 2601 See the description
of Rufinus in Letter CXXV. 18. | and cherish
and delicately nurture that which is their enemy. Perhaps indeed they
wish to fulfil the words of scripture: “love your enemies and
bless them that persecute you.”2602
I love the flesh, but I love it only when it is chaste, when it is
virginal, when it is mortified by fasting: I love not its works but
itself, that flesh which knows that it must be judged, and therefore
dies as a martyr for Christ, which is scourged and torn asunder and
burned with fire.
9. The folly also of their contention that certain
heretics and ill-disposed persons have tampered with Origen’s
writings may be shewn thus. Could any person be more wise, more
learned, or more eloquent than were Eusebius and Didymus,
Origen’s supporters? Of these the former in the six volumes of
his Apology2603
| 2603 This treatise the
joint work of Eusebius and his friend Pamphilus has perished. Part of
the Latin version of Rufinus still remains. Jerome at this time
erroneously supposed that the two friends had written separate works in
defence of Origen. (See De VV. Ill. c. 75, 81, in vol. iii. of this
series.) | asserts that
Origen is of the same mind with himself; while the latter, though he
tries to excuse his errors, admits that he has made them. Not being
able to deny what he finds written, he endeavours to explain it away.
It is one thing to say that additions have been made by heretics, but
another to maintain that heretical statements are commendable.
Origen’s case would be unique if his writings were falsified all
over the world and if in one day by an edict like that of Mithridates2604
| 2604 In accordance with
this edict (promulgated in 88 b.c.) all the
Romans in Pontus were massacred in one day. | all the truth were shorn from his volumes.
Even supposing that some one treatise of his has been tampered with,
can it be possible that all his works, published as they were at
different times and places, have been corrupted? Origen himself in a
letter written to Fabian, bishop of Rome,2605
| 2605 This letter is no
longer extant. |
expresses penitence for having made erroneous statements, and charges
Ambrose2606
| 2606 A wealthy
Alexandrian, who employed shorthand writers to take down Origen’s
lectures. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. B. vi. c. 23. | with over haste in making public
what was meant only for private circulation. And yet to this day his
disciples search for shifts to prove that all that excites
disapprobation in his writings is due not to him but to others.
10. Moreover, when they speak of Pamphilus as one who
praised Origen, I am personally much obliged to them for accounting me
worthy to be calumniated with that martyr. For if, sirs, you tell me
that Origen’s books have been tampered with by his enemies to
bring them into discredit; why may not I in my turn allege that his
friends and followers have attributed to Pamphilus a volume composed by
themselves to vindicate their master from disrepute by the testimony of
a martyr? Lo and behold, you yourselves correct in Origen’s books passages which
(according to you) he never wrote: and yet you are surprised if a man
is said to have published a book which as a matter of fact he did not
publish. But while your statements can easily be brought to the test by
an appeal to Origen’s published works; as Pamphilus has published
nothing else, it is easier for calumny to fix a book upon him. For shew
me any other work of Pamphilus; you will nowhere find any, this is his
only one. How then can I know that it is by Pamphilus? You will tell
me, that the style and tone ought to inform me. Well, I shall never
believe that a man so learned has dedicated the first fruits of his
talent to defend doubtful and discredited positions. The very name of
an apology which the treatise bears implies a previous charge made; for
nothing is defended that is not first attacked. I will now bring
forward but a single argument, one, however, the force of which only
folly and effrontery can deny. The treatise attributed to Pamphilus
contains nearly the first thousand lines of Eusebius’s sixth book
in defence of Origen.2607
| 2607 If the text is
sound here Jerome is again misled by supposing that Eusebius and
Pamphilus had written separate books in defence of Origen. | Yet in the
remaining parts of his work the writer brings forward passages by which
he seeks to prove that Origen was a Catholic. Now Eusebius and
Pamphilus were in such thorough harmony with each other that they
seemed to have but one soul between them, and one even went so far as
to adopt the other’s name.2608
| 2608 Eusebius calls
himself Eusebius Pamphili, that is, ‘the friend of
Pamphilus.’ | How then
could they have disagreed so fundamentally on this point, Eusebius in
all his works proving Origen to be an Arian, and Pamphilus describing
him as a supporter of the Nicene council, which had not yet been held?
It is evident from this consideration that the book belongs not to
Pamphilus but to Didymus or somebody else, who having cut off the head
of Eusebius’s sixth book supplied the other members himself. But
I am willing to be generous and to allow that the book is written by
Pamphilus, only by Pamphilus not yet a martyr. For he must have written
the book before he underwent martyrdom. And why, you will say, was he
accounted worthy of martyrdom? Surely that he might efface his error by
a martyr’s death, and wash away his one fault by shedding his
blood. How many martyrs there have been all the world over who before
their deaths have been the slaves of sins! Are we then to palliate the
sins because those who committed them have afterwards become
martyrs?
11. This reply to your letter, my most loving brothers,
I have dictated in all haste; and, overcoming my scruples, I have taken
up my pen against a man whose ability I once eulogized. I would sooner,
indeed, risk my reputation than my faith. My friends have placed me in
the awkward dilemma that if I say nothing I shall be held guilty, and
if I offer a defence I shall be accounted an enemy. Both alternatives
are hard; but of the two I will choose that which is the least so. A
quarrel can be made up, but blasphemy can find no forgiveness. I leave
to your judgment to discover how much labour I have expended in
translating the books On First Principles; for on the one hand
if one alters anything from the Greek the work becomes less a version
than a perversion; and on the other hand a literal adherence to the
original by no means tends to preserve the charm of its eloquence. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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