Reminder concerning the Error of the Priscillianists and Origenists

1. I had already suggested the matter to Your Holiness, but I was planning to offer a memorandum on what I had suggested when I perceived that your mind was free of the other demands of dictation. But since my lords, your sons, the bishops Eutropius and Paul, moved by the same concern for the salvation of all as I, your servant, have already given a memorandum about a number of heresies and yet did not indicate all of them, I was obliged to put this out in haste: to heap together into one place all the trees of perdition with their roots and branches and to offer them to your fiery spirit, so that, having seen the column and examined its wickedness, you may measure what disposition of strength you can bring against it. Only do you, most blessed father, root out and cut down the evil plantings and graftings of others, and scatter the true seed among us, to be watered from your springs. I pledge God as my witness, and I hope also for the increase of your work: for that land which now, through insincere cultivation, shows ungrateful fruits, if you visit it with that hidden manna that is with you, by sending and filling, will one day advance with more generous abundance, poured out even to a hundredfold fruit. Through you may the Lord our God, through you, I say, blessed father, amend by the word those whom he has chastised with the sword. I was sent to you by God; I hope for something from you through him, when I consider how it came about that I came here. I recognize why I came: without wish, without necessity, without consent I left my homeland, driven by some hidden force, until I was carried to the shore of this land; here at last I came to my senses and understood that I was being sent to come to you. Do not judge me shameless if you accept my confession. Make me fit to return to my beloved lady as a merchant who has found the pearl, not as a runaway slave who has squandered his substance. We have been torn apart more grievously by depraved teachers than by the most bloodthirsty enemies. We confess the offence; you see through the wound; what alone remains: with the Lord's help, grant the medicine! Briefly, then, I shall show both what was badly planted before and grew strong, and what was grafted in afterwards, still worse, and prevailed.

2. Priscillian, first of all, was more wretched than the Manichaeans in this, that he confirmed his heresy from the Old Testament as well. He taught that the soul, which is born of God, proceeds from a certain storehouse, promises before God that it will fight, and is instructed by the adoration of the angels; then, descending through certain circles, it is captured by evil principalities and, according to the will of the victorious prince, is thrust into various bodies, and a bond is written against it. Hence he also affirmed that astrology prevails, asserting that Christ cancelled this bond and nailed it to the cross by his passion, as Priscillian himself says in one of his letters: "This is the first wisdom: to understand in the types of souls the natures of the divine powers, and the disposition of the body, in which heaven seems bound and the earth and all the principalities of the world seem fastened; but the dispositions of the saints overcome them. For the patriarchs hold the first circle and the divine bond of the souls to be sent into flesh, made by the consent of the angels and of God and of all souls; those on the other side possess the work of the formal warfare," and so on. He also taught that the names of the patriarchs are members of the soul, in that Reuben is in the head, Judah in the breast, Levi in the heart, Benjamin in the thighs, and the like; but over against these, in the members of the body, the signs of heaven are disposed, that is, the Ram in the head, the Bull in the neck, the Twins in the arms, the Crab in the breast, and so on, wishing it to be understood that there is eternal darkness and that the prince of the world proceeded from it. He confirmed this very thing from a certain book entitled *The Memoir of the Apostles*, in which the Saviour seems to be questioned by the disciples in secret and to show, from the gospel parable that has "A sower went out to sow," that the sower was not a good one, asserting that if he had been good, he would not have been careless, nor would the seed have lain beside the road, or on rocky ground, or on uncultivated ground, wishing it to be understood that the sower is the one who scatters captured souls into whatever different bodies he wishes. In that book also much is said about the prince of moisture and the prince of fire, wishing it to be understood that all good things in this world are done by craft, not by the power of God. For he says that there is a certain virgin light, which God, when he wishes to give rain to men, shows to the prince of moisture; and he, while he longs to seize her, is aroused and sweats and makes rain, and, when he is left by her, stirs up thunder by his bellowing. The Trinity he spoke of in word only: for asserting a union without any existence or property, and removing the "and," he taught that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are this one Christ.

3. Then two of my fellow citizens, Avitus and another Avitus, since truth alone was already exposing such a shameful confusion by itself, went abroad. One set out for Jerusalem, the other for Rome; on their return one brought back Origen, the other Victorinus. Of these two, the one gave way to the other; but both condemned Priscillian. Victorinus we know little of, because the follower of Victorinus gave way to Origen almost before his writings were published. So from Origen a good many splendid things began to be put forward, which truth itself would cut back from a small occasion. For we learned a sufficiently sound doctrine of the Trinity: that all things that were made were made by God, and all very good, and made from nothing; and then sober enough solutions of the Scriptures. All these were at once received by the wise, after a faithful purging of the former errors; only the offence about "from nothing" remained. For they had been persuaded to believe that the soul exists, but they could not be persuaded that it was made from nothing, arguing that the will of God cannot be nothing. This remains almost to the present. But these two Aviti, and with them holy Basil, a Greek, who taught these things, most blessed one, handed on certain things from the books of Origen himself that were not right, as now for the first time. First, that all things, before they appeared as made, had always remained made in the wisdom of God, using this expression: "For whatever God made, he did not begin by making." Next, they said that angels, principalities, powers, souls and demons have one principle and one substance, and that to archangel or soul or demon a place was given according to the quality of their merits, using this expression: "A lesser fault earned a greater place." That the world was made last of all for this reason, that in it the souls which sinned before might be purged. They proclaimed that the eternal fire with which sinners are punished is neither a true fire nor eternal, saying that "fire" is said for the punishment of one's own conscience, and that "eternal," according to the Greek etymology, is not perpetual, adding even a Latin testimony, because it is said "for ever and for an age," and so "age" is put after "ever"; and thus all the souls of sinners, after the purging of conscience, will return into the unity of the body of Christ. They also wished to assert about the devil, but did not prevail, that since the substance made good in him cannot perish, when the devil's malice has been entirely burned away, his substance will one day be saved. Of the body of the Lord they taught thus: that the Son of God, coming down to us, had not been idle for so many thousands of years until then, but, preaching forgiveness to the angels, powers and all the higher beings, took on the quality of the form of those he visited, and so, at the point of assuming flesh, thickened to the palpability of flesh; ending this by his passion and resurrection, he thinned again as he ascended, until he should come to the Father; so that the body was neither laid aside anywhere nor is God, reigning, circumscribed in any body. The creation subjected to corruption not willingly, they said, is to be understood as the sun, moon and stars; and these are not elemental flashes but rational powers, yet render service to corruption because of him who subjected them in hope.

4. This has been set out briefly, as far as I could remember it, so that, having examined all the diseases, you may hasten to apply medicine. The truth of Christ is in me: out of reverence for Your Holiness I would not dare to be so shameless, were I not aware by the evident judgment and ordering of God that you were chosen, and I sent, to bring remedies to so great and such a people, upon whom, as upon one who sinned, a blow has been laid, and so, after the blow, care is owed. Deign to remember me, most blessed father, and the many who with me await your speech, that it may come down upon them like dew.