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| To Pammachius and Marcella.
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Letter XCVII. To Pammachius and Marcella.
With this letter Jerome sends to Pammachius and Marcella
a translation of the paschal letter issued by Theophilus for the year 402 a.d. together with the Greek original. He takes the
precaution of sending this latter because in the preceding year
complaints have been made that his translation was not accurate.
Written in 402 a.d.
1. Once more with the return of spring I enrich you with
the wares of the east and send the treasures of Alexandria to Rome: as
it is written, “God shall come from the south and the Holy One
from Mount Paran, even a thick shadow.”2645
(Hence in the Song of Songs the joyous cry of the bride: “I sat
down under his shadow with great delight and his fruit was sweet to my
taste.”2646
) Now truly is
Isaiah’s prophecy fulfilled: “In that day shall there be an
altar to the Lord in the land of Egypt.”2647
“Where sin hath abounded, grace
doth much more abound.”2648
They who
fostered the infant Christ now with glowing faith defend Him in His
manhood; and they who once saved Him from the hands of Herod are ready
to save Him again from this blasphemer and heretic. Demetrius expelled
Origen from the city of Alexander; but he is now thanks to Theophilus
outlawed from the whole world. Like him to whom Luke has dedicated the
Acts of the Apostles2649
this
bishop derives his name from his love to God. Where now is the
wriggling serpent?2650
| 2650 The allusion is to
Rufinus. | In what plight
does the venomous viper find himself? His is
A human face with wolfish body joined.2651
Where now is that heresy which crawled hissing through
the world and boasted that both the bishop Theophilus and I were
partisans of its errors? Where now is the yelping of those shameless
hounds who, to win over the simple minded, falsely proclaimed our
adherence to their cause? Crushed by the authority and eloquence of
Theophilus they are now like demon-spirits only able to mutter and that
from out of the earth.2652
For they know
nothing of Him who, as He comes from above,2653
speaks only of the things that are
above.
2. Would that this generation of vipers2654
would either honestly accept our
doctrines, or else consistently defend its own; that we might know whom
we are to esteem and whom we are to shun. As it is they have invented a
new kind of penitence, hating us as enemies though they dare not deny
our faith. What, I ask, is this chagrin of theirs which neither time
nor reason seems able to cure? When swords flash in battle and men fall
and blood flows in streams, hostile hands are often clasped in amity
and the fury of war is exchanged for an unexpected peace. The partisans
of this heresy alone can make no terms with churchmen; for they
repudiate mentally the verbal assent that is extorted from them. When
their open blasphemy is made plain to the public ear, and when they
perceive their hearers clamouring against them; then they assume an air
of simplicity, declaring that they hear such doctrines for the first
time and that they have no previous knowledge of them as taught by
their master. And when you hold their writings in your hand, they deny
with their lips what their hands have written. Why, sirs, need you
beset the Propontis,2655
| 2655 Many of the Egyptian
Origenists had fled to Constantinople and thrown themselves on the
kindness of the patriarch John Chrysostom. | shift your abode,
wander through different countries, and rend with foaming mouths a
distinguished prelate of Christ and his followers? If your recantations
are sincere, you should replace your former zeal for error with an
equal zeal for the faith. Why do you patch together from this quarter
and from that these rags of cursing? And why do you rail at the lives
of men whose faith you cannot resist? Do you cease to be heretics
because according to you sundry persons believe us to be sinners? And
does impiety cease to disfigure your lips because you can point to
scars on our ears? So long as you have a leopard’s spots and an
Ethiopian’s skin,2656
how can it help
your perfidy to know that I too am marked by moles? See, Pope
Theophilus is freely allowed to prove Origen a heretic; and the
disciples do not defend the master’s words. They merely pretend
that they have been altered by heretics and tampered with, like the
works of many other writers. Thus they seek to maintain his cause not
by their own belief but by other people’s errors. So much I would
say against heretics who in the fury of their unjust hostility to us
betray the secret feelings of their minds and prove the incurable
nature of the wound that rankles in their breasts.
3. But you are Christians and the lights of the senate:
accept therefore from me the letter which I append.2657
This year I send it both in Greek and
Latin that the heretics may not again lyingly assert that I have made
many changes in and additions to the original. I have laboured hard, I
must confess, to preserve the charm of the diction by a like elegance
in my version: and keeping within fixed lines and never allowing myself
to deviate from these I have done my best to maintain the smooth flow
of the writer’s eloquence and
to render his remarks in the tone in which they are made. Whether I
have succeeded in these two objects or not I must leave to your
judgement to determine. As for the letter itself you are to know that
it is divided into four parts. In the first Theophilus exhorts
believers to celebrate the Lord’s passover; in the second he
slays Apollinarius; in the third he demolishes Origen; while in the
fourth and last he exhorts the heretics to penitence. If the polemic
against Origen should seem to you to be inadequate, you are to remember
that Origenism was fully treated in last year’s letter;2658
and that this which I have just
translated, as it aims at brevity, was not bound to dwell farther upon
the subject. Besides, its terse and clear confession of faith directed
against Apollinarius is not lacking in dialectical subtlety. Theophilus
first wrests the dagger from his opponent’s hand, and then stabs
him to the heart.
4. Entreat the Lord, therefore, that a composition which
has won favour in Greek may not fail to win it also in Latin, and that
what the whole East admires and praises Rome may gladly take to her
heart. And may the chair of the apostle Peter by its preaching confirm
the preaching of the chair of the evangelist Mark. Popular rumour,
indeed, has it that the blessed pope Anastasius is of like zeal and
spirit with Theophilus and that he has pursued the heretics even to the
dens in which they lurk. Moreover his own letters inform us that he
condemns in the West what is already condemned in the East. May he live
for many years2659
| 2659 He was already dead
when these words were written. | so that the
reviving sprouts of heresy may in course of time by his efforts be made
to wither and to die.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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