Apology against Jerome 1.16–1.26

I think that even before the most unjust judges this confession alone could be enough for me, in which I said: we said nothing of our own, but gave back to him his own words, though spoken in other places. Did I make myself liable in any respect? Did I promise to say anything of my own? Where is what they accuse, what they slander, what they invent: that I said I had removed the bad and had translated the good, whatever was good? Let them blush at last, and cease to bring falsehoods, and to take upon themselves the devil's work by accusing their brothers. Let them hear that we said nothing of our own; and let them hear again and often that we said nothing of our own, but gave back to him his own words, though spoken in other places. And lest they think that we put our hand to this work without the Lord's mercy, let them see that we foretold the very things they are doing. For after this we added these words too: "I have given this warning in the preface lest perhaps the slanderers think they have again found matter for accusation." As for my saying "again," the reason is this: they had already accused the letter on the faith which the holy bishop John wrote to the holy Theophilus, pretending that the human body was something or other other than flesh; that is why I wrote "again." "But let perverse and contentious men see to it," I said, "what they are doing. For us meanwhile so great a labour, if God helps through your prayers, has been undertaken not to shut the mouths of slanderers, which cannot be done (though perhaps God might do even this), but to provide material for those who wish to advance in the knowledge of things." And so that you may know that we both foresaw and foretold that they would falsify these things, see what we joined on in what follows: "This, indeed, I adjure and charge everyone who is to copy or to read these books, in the sight of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, by the faith of the kingdom to come, by the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, by that eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels, as he would not possess as his eternal inheritance that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and where their fire is not quenched and their worm does not die: that he add nothing to this writing, take nothing away, insert nothing, change nothing." And yet, after all these so dreadful and fearful oaths of adjuration, those who say they believe in the resurrection of the flesh to come did not fear to falsify and corrupt these things. If they believed even this, that God exists, they would never commit such criminal and abominable acts. Yet where, in what we have prefaced, was Origen raised with praises to the sky, as he charges? Where was he called by us an apostle or a prophet, or anything such as he himself had written about him? Or in what else at all do they find room for accusation? We set our faith first, which I think agrees in everything with the church's confession. We distinguished our method of translating, of which indeed he who now comes forward as accuser had himself given us an example in very many works. I stated what purpose I pursued in translating. Whether I was able to fulfil it fully or less fully, let the readers judge, by whom a man is usually praised or laughed at, but not called to account for a crime, when he turns another's words into another language either aptly or less aptly.

But since we have mentioned those who, whatever these writings are like, could in no way have accused them unless they were falsified, I think it fitting to insert in this Apology of ours the very chapter on which they laid their forging hands, so that they may not think that I am withdrawing from my own work the passage to which they attach false charges by their own addition. For in a certain place in the aforesaid work which we translated, a question was being treated against those who say that God is corporeal and describe him with human members and form (which it is the special habit of the heresy of the Valentinians and the Anthropomorphites to assert, to whom, as I see, these accusers of ours have given their hands far too much); and Origen, defending the church's faith against them and affirming that God is incorporeal in every respect and therefore also invisible, answered the heretics in this place, as the order of the question required, with certain words which we rendered into Latin in this way.

That chapter, which those who were sent from the East to lay snares for me tried to defame not only by perverse understanding but also by corrupting the words. I could not regard it as suspect, as I did some other things of the writer I was translating, nor did I judge that it should be passed over, because nothing was being said in it about a comparison of the Father and the Son, but the question was about the very nature of the Godhead, whether the word "sight" seemed in any way fitting to it. He was replying, as we said above, to those heretics who assert that God is visible because they also say he is corporeal, since sight properly belongs to a body. Hence also those Valentinian heretics of whom we spoke above say that the Father begot, and the Son was begotten, bodily and visibly. Origen, then, shrinking, I think, from the word "sight" as suspect, says that it is better in the nature of the Godhead, that is, between the Father and the Son, to use that word which the Lord himself laid down, saying: "No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son." He thought, then, that every occasion would be removed from the aforesaid heresies if he spoke of "knowing" rather than "seeing" in the nature of the Godhead, since "seeing" seems to offer the heretics some occasion, while the knowing of one nature between the Father and the Son preserves an inseparable truth, especially since the authority of the Gospel is such. At the same time he thought that this would be a very great safeguard, lest the Anthropomorphites should in any way hear of a visible God. This reasoning, since it made no difference within the Trinity, seemed to me not at all to be rejected, even if we avoided some words perhaps rather incautiously placed in the Greek. Let it remain, indeed, for readers to judge whether this seems useful or less useful against the aforesaid heresies. Yet suppose that even those who know letters and can judge of such meanings, who have skill joined with the fear of God, who do nothing through rivalry or vain glory, whose mind is free of envy, malice and hatred, should say that this chapter is of little value for instruction or for overthrowing the aforesaid heresies: may it not be passed over and run through as less effective for repelling adversaries? Suppose it idle: is it also criminal? How will it be counted a crime when it confirms the equality of invisibility between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? I do not think it seems so to anyone. And why do I say to anyone? Not even to these accusers of mine did anything in my writings seem able to give offence. In short, if they had thought so, they would have set down my very words as I had translated them.

But now listen to what they do, and ask whether their crime has any precedent. In the place where it had been written: "But if you ask me what I think also about the Only-begotten himself, if I say that the nature of God, which is naturally invisible, is not visible even to him, let it not at once seem to you either impious or absurd; for we will give the reason in due course," in place of what we wrote, "for we will give the reason in due course," they wrote: "let it not at once seem to you impious or absurd, because just as the Son does not see the Father, so neither does the Holy Spirit see the Son." If this man (Eusebius of Cremona), who was sent from the monastery to Rome as one most skilled in slander, had done this in the forum or in secular business, everyone knows what would follow under the public laws for one guilty of a crime of this kind. But now, because he has left the secular life and has turned from that shuffling of public affairs to a monastery, and has attached himself to a noble master (Jerome), he is taught by him in turn to rage and to be mad instead of being modest; to stir up seditions instead of quiet; to stir up war instead of peace; discord instead of concord; to be faithless instead of faithful; a forger instead of truthful. Believe me, the wickedness of this crime would have been without precedent, had not that Jezebel come to mind: for it was she who contrived this charge against Naboth the Jezreelite for the sake of a vineyard, and commanded the elders of iniquity to press him with false written charges, as one who had blessed, that is, blasphemed, God and the king. But who is the more fortunate in this, she who gives the command, or those who obey the command of iniquity? These things are grave, and I think a crime of this kind is almost unheard of in the church. But something more is added. You ask what? That the guilty become judges, and the plotters pass sentence. For that a writer should err, or slip in a word, is nothing new, and I think worthy of pardon, for Scripture too says: "For in many things we all stumble; but whoever does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man." Is it thought that there is an error in a word? Let it be corrected, amended, and, if usefulness requires, removed. But to insert what is not written into another's writings, and to interweave falsehoods for this sole purpose, to defame a brother's life; to violate another's writings so as to brand the writer; to creep into the ears of the people; to disturb the hearts of the simple; to gain nothing from it but a stain on a man's reputation: see whether this is the work of anyone but him who was a liar from the beginning, and who, by accusing the brothers, received the name devil, that is, accuser. For when (Eusebius) was reciting a false sentence of this kind at Milan, and it was said by those present that what he was reading was false, being asked from whom he had received the copies, he answered that a certain matron (Marcella) had given them to him; about her, whoever she is, I say nothing, but leave her to her own conscience and God's. For me, however, the testimony of God and of yourselves suffices in this, that is, yours and that of the holy man himself for whom I was doing this work, Macarius, who either read my sheets from the beginning or still keep copies, though not yet complete and fully corrected; namely, that "just as the Son does not see the Father, so neither does the Holy Spirit see the Son" is something which I not only never wrote, but on the contrary I declare that he forged. If anyone denies that the Son sees the Father as the Father sees the Son, and that the Holy Spirit sees the Father and the Son as the Father sees the Son and the Holy Spirit, let him be anathema. For he sees, and sees most truly, but as God sees God and light light, and not as flesh sees flesh; but as the Holy Spirit, not by bodily senses but by the powers of the Godhead. If anyone denies this, let him be anathema for ever. But he who troubles you, as the Apostle says, will bear his judgment, whoever he is.

I remember indeed that one of them, when he was charged with having falsified these things, answered me that it stood thus in the Greek, but that I had wished to change it in the Latin. Here I forbear to pursue the point that they do not even tell the truth; but let us suppose that it is so in the Greek, and that I had not written this in the Latin. For I had promised in my short prefaces to do something of this kind. If I had done it, so as to write more suitably in Latin what was offensive there, what had I done without a promise, or without our stated reason? You at any rate, who had not found this in my Latin copies, where did you read it written in your papers? I who translated did not write it. You who accuse me, and do not hold any such writings of mine, from what do you compose a charge against me? Or ought I to be accused on the ground on which you have spoken falsely? I say a very plain thing. There are four books which I translated, in which the Trinity is discussed here and there on almost every page. Let them all be read again: if anywhere in our translation such a sense about the Trinity is found as they slanderously allege in this chapter, then at last let this too be believed to have been put forward in the sense they invent. But if in the whole body of the books there is nowhere that difference within the Trinity, is it not an insane and foolish invention to say that heresy was confirmed in one single chapter by one who has fought against it in a thousand? But the very sequence of events teaches every prudent man enough. If he had found this in my books, and had really taken some scruple from the reading itself, since he had me, as you know, present in Rome, he would certainly have inquired at once and brought the writings themselves to me: for up to that very time he used to see me, greet me, and share in prayer with me; without doubt he would have conferred with me about the things that seemed to offend him; he would have asked how I had rendered it, and how it stood in the Greek.

Surely he would have thought it glory enough for himself if he had been seen to have caused something in our sayings or writings to be corrected through him. Or if the fury of his mind had driven him not so much to correct an error as to publish it, he would without doubt never have chosen to tear one who was absent, whom he could have refuted more severely face to face. But because the consciousness of falsehood deterred him, he did not bring it to me, whose writings they were that he wished to accuse; instead he carries it around through houses, through matrons, through monasteries, to each one of the brothers, where by mere hearing he could disturb them. And this he did at the very time he was about to leave the City, so that he might not be caught and have to give an account of his deed. Thence too, as is given to be understood, according to his master's precept, he goes on accusing me through the whole of Italy, stirring up crowds, disturbing churches, polluting even the ears of bishops, and in all these things abusing our modesty as if it were a guilty conscience. These are the disciple's doings. But the Eastern master himself, who in writing to Vigilantius had said, "Through me the Latins know all Origen's good things, and are ignorant of the bad," has re-translated these very books which I had just translated, and has inserted everything that I had passed over as improbable, so that now, against his own declared view, the Romans may through him know Origen's bad things and be ignorant of the good. From this point he tries to bring under suspicion of heresy not only Origen but me myself. From this point he ceaselessly sends out his dogs to pursue me with the barking of slanders through cities, through villages, even as I pass along the road, and they attempt everything against me, speakable and unspeakable. What crime, I ask you, have we committed, if we did what you did? If indeed it is wicked to use your examples, what do you judge about yourself?

"And what," he says, "is repentance cut off?" No: one errs, and especially in a word; it is indeed permitted to repent of error. But does someone at the same moment do penance, accuse, judge and condemn? As though a harlot, if she has kept herself from fornication for one night or two, ought at once to write laws on chastity, and not only make laws but also break open the tombs of all women already dead, because she suspects that they led a life like her own? You do well to repent of having been a heretic. What has this to do with me, who was never a heretic? You repent of an error: you do rightly, if indeed you carry out that repentance lawfully, not by accusing but by entreating, not by condemning but by weeping. For what truth is there in repentance when the penitent himself dictates to himself the decree of pardon? He who repents of what he has spoken badly does not heal his wound by speaking badly again, but by keeping silent. For so it is written: "You have sinned; be still." But now you set yourself up as guilty, and again absolve yourself from guilt, and from a defendant make yourself judge. This misery is no longer yours, who mock us, but ours, who allow ourselves to be mocked in this way.

But let us come to those two commentaries which alone he has excepted, having condemned and renounced all his other works, and let us see how chastely and continently he has conducted himself in them. For he wishes both his faith and his opposition to Origen in all things to be proved from these alone. Let them be brought forward, then, these which alone of all his writings please him: that is, the three books on Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, and one, I think, on Ecclesiastes. But for now let the first that comes to hand, the commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians, be read again. There too I prove him to be my associate and partner and, as he says, fellow-initiate in the very things he censures. And first of all, about the little women whom he mocks for saying that after the resurrection they will not have a frail body, since they are to be like the angels, let us see what he himself thinks. In the third book of the commentaries on Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, under the heading where it is written, "He who loves his wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh," after some other matter he speaks thus: "Let us therefore cherish, husbands our wives, and our souls our bodies, so that both wives may be turned into men and bodies reduced to souls, and there may be no difference of sex at all; but as among the angels there is neither male nor female, so we too, who are to be like the angels, may begin even now to be what is promised us in heaven."

Knowing that you wrote this in your commentaries, how do you put them forward as a model of your faith and as refuting what you censure? How do you censure women with your own words? Next, what woman ever said that wives are turned into men and bodies reduced to souls, as you write? If bodies are to be reduced to souls, then according to you there will be no resurrection not only of the flesh but even of bodies, which you say these people, whom you have made heretics, confess. Where shall we look any longer for a body, if it is reduced to a soul? For it will then be all soul and nowhere body. And again, if wives are to be changed into men, since you added "so that there may be no difference of sex at all," as if to show that the female sex will perish by being reduced to the male and the male alone will remain: I do not know whether the female sex will allow you to say this about it. Yet even if it were granted by them, by what logic will you be able to show that the male sex is necessary there, where the female is proved not to be necessary? For by a kind of natural bond each sex so needs the other that if one does not exist, the other has no function. For if man is thought to be going to receive at the resurrection only the form of clay which he had in paradise, where is what is written: "Male and female he made them, and blessed them"? But if, as you and the little women you accuse say, there is neither male nor female, how then will either bodies be reduced to souls or women turned into men, when either paradise does not exclude either sex, or the likeness of the angels, as you also confess, admits none at all? And I wonder how you demand from others a judgment on the difference of the sexes, when, wishing to discuss it yourself, you entangle yourself in such knots that you can in no way unravel yourself. How much more rightly you would act if you imitated us, whom you blame, in such matters, and left these things, as the truth is, for God alone to know, and confessed that you are ignorant rather than write what a little later you yourself would condemn! I should like him, with his conscience as witness, to tell me now: if he had found written, I do not say in some work of mine, but even in some letter of mine written rather carelessly to an intimate friend, that bodies are reduced to souls and wives to men, would he not have ordered it to be written in letters of bronze over the gates of cities, and recited in the forum, in the senate-house, even from the rostra? How many heads of accusation, what volumes would he have written from it, how he would press me with all the arms and weapons of his most fertile breast, saying: "If you do not believe me when I say that he deceives when he says the body rises and denies the flesh, or when he confesses the flesh but denies the members and sex: see how he himself wrote in his letter that we are turned from bodies into souls, and wives into men." But we, so far from accusing you of heresy for writing this, give you satisfaction as a master. Yet those women whom you have torn with such unworthy and dishonourable insults will bring before the judgment seat of Christ both what you teach in these commentaries and what, forgetting yourself, you write again with insults; and both will be read out there, where the favour of men will cease and the applause bought with praises will be silent; and they will be judged with you, for these sayings or deeds, before Christ the just judge.

Let us go on to examine what he writes also about the questions, for this belongs to the faith; in these, on the resurrection of the flesh, he varies as with the other questions. Again from the first book of the commentaries on Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, on the heading where the Apostle says, "As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him," he speaks thus: "For 'foundation of the world' the Greek has katabolēs kosmou. But katabolē does not mean the same as 'foundation.' Hence we too, because of the poverty of the language and the novelty of the matter, and because, as someone says, the speech of the Greeks is broader and their tongue happier, will try not so much to translate word for word, which is impossible, as to explain the force of the word by a kind of circumlocution. Katabolē properly is said when something is thrown down and sent from a high place to a lower, or when a thing takes its beginning. Hence those who lay the first foundations of buildings to come are said to have katabeblēkenai, that is, to have laid down the beginnings of the foundations. Paul, then, wishing to show that God fashioned all things out of nothing, ascribed to him not the creation, not the founding, not the making, but the katabolē, that is, the beginning of the foundation; so that, not as the Manichaean and the other heresies hold, which posit a maker and matter, something else, from which creatures were made, preceded created things, but all things came to be out of nothing. And that he testified that we were chosen to be holy and blameless before him, that is, God, before the making of the world, belongs to the foreknowledge of God, to whom all things to come are already done, and all things are known before they happen; as Paul himself is predestined in his mother's womb, and Jeremiah is sanctified in the womb, chosen, strengthened, and sent, as a type of Christ, as a prophet to the nations."

So far he has given one exposition, but he has not stated in whose person this kind of interpretation is to be received. He has only done this: by what follows he rejects what went before. For he says in what follows: "But there is another who tries to show that God is just." By this he plainly shows that by that former exposition the justice of God is not shown, which is certainly impious; but through this man whom he calls "another," whose assertion he undoubtedly wishes to present as undoubted and catholic in the eyes of all, he has given such testimony as to say that by this assertion of his he tries to show that God is just. But let us see what this "other" says, who proclaims that God is just. "But another," he says, "who tries to show that God is just, in that he chooses each one not by the prejudgment of his knowledge but by the merit of the elect, says that before the visible creatures, heaven, earth, the seas and all that is in them, there were other invisible creatures, among them also souls, which for certain causes known to God alone were cast down into this vale of tears, into this place of our affliction and pilgrimage, set in which the saint prayed that he might return to his former seat, saying: 'Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged; I have dwelt with those who dwell in Kedar; my soul has long been a pilgrim.' And in another place: 'Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?' And elsewhere: 'It is better to return and be with Christ.' And elsewhere: 'Before I was humbled, I sinned'; and other things like these." "So, before the souls," they say, "were hurled down into the world." "Master," they say, "you say and do not say who these are who say this, that souls existed before they were hurled down into the world." "Did I not rightly say," he says, "that you are a mole and do not see? I have already said above that it is those who assert that God is just who say these things; and if you had any wit you would understand that I am that man. For I am not so impious as to set myself apart from and opposed to those who defend God's justice, which indeed all do who are of sound mind." "Tell us, then, tell us, master, what these men of yours say?" "So, before the souls were hurled down into the world, and the world made up of souls was itself cast down with its inhabitants into the lowest place, God chose Paul and those like him in his sight, who were holy and blameless. But no one is chosen except from many, and where there are some of lower worth, there the choice is made. And as in the Babylonian captivity, when the people was led by Nebuchadnezzar into Chaldaea, prophets were sent, Ezekiel, Daniel, the three young men, Haggai and Zechariah, not because they had deserved captivity but to be a comfort to the captives: so also in that casting down of the world, those who had been chosen by God before the world was made were sent for the instruction and teaching of sinful souls, so that by their preaching they might return to the place from which they had fallen. And this is what Moses says in the eighty-ninth Psalm: 'Lord, you have become our refuge in generation and generation, before the mountains were set firm, and the earth and the world were made'; that is, before the world was made, and the whole generation of things took its beginning, God was a refuge to his saints."