Apology against Jerome 1.39–2.7

Do you see how great a difference of nature he makes between souls and angels? As great, he says, as between a sheep and sheep, and between a drachma and drachmas. And a little after he added, saying: "As to his saying, 'that he might create the two in himself into one new man,' which seems rather to fit the earlier sense about the Jews and Gentiles, he will adapt it to his own understanding thus: that man, made after the image and likeness of God, will receive after the reconciliation the same form which the angels now have and which he himself lost. And he says that the new man is he who is renewed day by day and is to dwell in the new world." As sheep differ from a sheep and a drachma from drachmas, so he says souls are with the angels, and that the same form which the angels now have man had before and lost, and he says that man will have it in the future. If they do not differ in nature, in kind, in form, how is it no shame to a learned man to condemn his own views under another's name, especially when you decide that this should be said not according to the common exposition but according to the Apostle's meaning? But let us see what is added to this in the same place. A little later he speaks thus: "And the restoration of the new man will be fully and perfectly accomplished then, when the heavenly and earthly have been joined, and in one spirit and mind and the same judgment we have approached the Father. Something of this kind Paul also hints in another letter (if anyone receives it as canonical) to every prudent reader, saying: 'All these, receiving testimony of faith, did not receive the promise, God providing something better for us, that they might not be made perfect without us.' Therefore the whole creation groans with us, who groan in this tabernacle; and it suffers pain with us, who through the fear of God have conceived in the womb, and suffer pain, and await the revelation of the sons of God, that it may be freed from the vanity of the bondage to which it is now subjected, and there may be one shepherd and one flock, and the prayer of the Lord may be fulfilled, who says: 'Your will be done, as in heaven so also on earth.'" The heavenly and the earthly, that is, angels and men, as they formerly bore one form and had one fold, so you say they are to be restored in the future. Because Christ came to make both one flock; and you say that men will be in the future either what angels are now, or what men themselves, that is, souls, were before. And how, I ask you, did you so amiably, or rather no longer amiably but scurrilously, mock the little women who, slapping belly and thigh, denied that after the resurrection they would again be in a frail body, but would be like the angels, or would be the very thing angels are? And you censure these things, said by women, with such mockery, though they are brought forward as written in those chosen commentaries of yours. Does it not seem to you like a man accusing another of theft, who hides in his own bosom the very theft for which he accuses the other; and after he has pleaded at length and inveighed magnificently against the thief, after he has produced witnesses and taken solemn oaths, after all this the very stolen thing for which he thought he had already convicted the other is drawn out of his own bosom? Then you also censure others because, when asked about such things, they do not answer promptly and at once, but hesitate and act by a nod rather than by words. And you say this yourself of the Apostle, that he "hints something of this kind in his letter to every prudent reader." If Paul does not declare but hints, and not to just anyone but to the prudent, why do you mock us poor wretches, O our penitent, if what the Apostle did not plainly set out we say that we either do not know or doubt, and that we do not so much understand as half-understand, and therefore do not so much declare as hint? If now those things have been revealed to you which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man; if that which is perfect has come to you, and the things that are in part have ceased for you, cry out about them and preach them; and the things which you say the Apostle hinted at, you declare, you who now condemn not only what you write he hinted at but also what you write he confirmed. For all these things which you now bid be anathematized you had built up while expounding the Apostle's words, and had taught that they were inserted in his meaning.

What else is there that he bids others condemn? "That they say this body is the prison and chains of the soul," he says, "and assert that the soul does not go, but returns as it were to those places where it had been before." Let us bring forward testimonies of what he himself thought on this too. From these same commentaries, book two, from the heading where he says, "For this reason I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ," after a little: "Since in many places," he says, "it is written that this body is called the chain of the soul, because it is held in it as though shut up in a prison, we say that Paul is therefore restrained by bodily bonds and does not return and be with Christ, so that the preaching to the Gentiles through him may be fully completed." Again on the same matter, from the same commentaries, book three, at the heading where he says, "For which I am an ambassador in a chain," after some other matter, he speaks thus through that "other" of his again, who is himself: "But another will contend that he said this because of the body of humiliation, and this chain with which we are bound, and because we do not yet know as we ought to know, and see through a mirror in an enigma; and that he could then truly open the mysteries with confidence in the Gospel when he had laid aside the chain and gone out free from prison. Unless perhaps he too is to be counted without bonds even in bonds, who has his citizenship in heaven, and of whom it can be said: 'But you are not in prison, nor in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.'" Again on the same matter, from the commentary on Paul's Letter to Philemon, under the heading where he says, "Epaphras, my fellow-captive, greets you," after some other matter: "Unless perhaps he shows something hidden and sacred, as some think, in the word 'captivity': that they were taken captive and bound together and led down into this vale of tears."

You see how he says that these things are held as mystical and sacred by certain people, of whom we have often shown in many places that he himself is one; but he uses a figure by which he seems to avoid the odium of mystical knowledge. "How these things stand," he says, "you see. Can you report that it was said by me that all things are to be restored into one state, and that not only men but also demons and fugitive angels are to be reintegrated into one body? Let it not be done to me," he says: "if I said something in another's person, let it be the other's; if you read something written as said from my own side, with no person interposed, that may rightly be ascribed to me." And why do we pour out all these contests over which we have sweated above? So much is the hardness of a brow worth. But come, let it be so; let us acquiesce in this too, and let him be convicted not as the matter but as he himself demands. From these commentaries, book two, on the matter I proposed, under the heading where it is written, "Eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called in one hope of your calling," after some other matter: "It is asked," he says, "how there is one hope of calling, when there are different mansions with the Father? To which we say that the one hope of calling is the kingdom of heaven, as it were one house of God the Father, and in the one house there are very many mansions. For one is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars. Or perhaps this is more subtly indicated: that at the end and consummation of things all things are to be restored to their original state, when we shall all be made one body and be re-formed into a perfect man, and the Saviour's prayer will be fulfilled in us: 'Father, grant that as I and you are one, so these too may be one in us.'"

You have received this statement of his on the resurrection of all, without any ambiguity; receive this one too, and then I will close the first book of our Apology. For his sayings on such matters are innumerable. Again from the same book, under the heading where it is written, "From whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each member, makes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love," he began thus: "At the end of things, when we have begun to see God face to face, and have come to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, of whose fullness we have all received, so that Christ is not in part but wholly in us, and leaving behind the beginnings of little children we have grown up into that man of whom the prophet says, 'Behold the man, the East is his name,' and whom John the Baptist mentions, 'After me comes a man who was made before me, because he was before me': then, in the meeting of one faith and one recognition of the Son of God, whom now, according to the variety of minds, we recognize not with one and the same faith and recognition, the whole body which had before been scattered and torn into different parts will be brought back into its frame and joining, so that one supply and the same working, and the completed perfection of one age, may make the whole body grow equally, and all the members receive the increase of age according to their measure. And this whole building up, by which the body of the church grows by parts, is completed in mutual love. Let us understand all rational creatures under the image of one rational living being, and whatever we say of its members and parts, let us know that it is to be referred to each rational creature. Let us suppose this living being so torn apart through its bones, veins and flesh that bone does not cling to bone nor sinew join sinew, the eyes lie apart, the nostrils separately, the hands hold one place, the feet are thrown into another, and the other members are in this way dispersed and divided among themselves. Let us imagine some physician of such skill coming, who, according to the fables of the heathen, seeks to imitate Aesculapius and to raise up the new figure and new man Virbius. He will need to restore each member to its place, and couple joint to joint, and with a kind of glue, the parts being restored, make one body. So far let one comparison have brought us. Now let another example be drawn in the same comparison toward what we wish to be understood. A little child grows, and by unseen time grows up to perfect age: the hands have their increase, the feet feel their growth; the belly is filled without our knowing, the shoulders broaden while the eyes are deceived; and all the members by parts so grow according to their measure that they seem to be increased not for themselves but for the body. So also in the restoration of all things, when Jesus Christ, the true physician, comes to heal the body of the whole church, now scattered and torn, each one according to the measure of faith and the recognition of the Son of God (whom he is said to recognize for this reason, that he knew him before and afterwards ceased to know him) will receive his place and begin to be what he had been; yet not so that, according to another heresy, all are set in one age, that is, all are re-formed into angels; but each member will be perfect according to its own measure and office. For example, the fugitive angel will begin to be what he was created, and man, who had been cast out of paradise, will be restored again to the tilling of paradise. And all these things will happen in such a way that they are joined to one another by love; and while member rejoices with member and is glad at the other's advancement, the body of Christ, the church of the firstborn, will dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem, which in another place the Apostle calls the mother of the saints."

All the Latins read these sayings of yours, which even now you too bid them read, where you say that all rational creatures, understood under the image of one rational living being, are to be restored into one body, as if the torn-apart members of one man were restored again by the art of Aesculapius into the solidity of the same body; in which you define that there will indeed be different offices, as of members, but one body, that is, of one nature; and this one body of all you call the church of the firstborn, and name the body of Christ; and of this body you say that one member, to be redeemed in its office, is the fugitive angel, who is certainly the devil, and that he is to be restored to that for which he was created from the beginning; likewise man, another member, to be called back to the tilling of paradise as its original husbandman. And these things you pursue with no other person interposed, as is usually done when such matters are spoken of step by step and cautiously, so that someone might think you had doubts in things so secret and hidden, as this Origen, whose disciple you do not deny being and whose betrayer you confess yourself to be, is always found to do in such matters; but with an abrupt and definite judgment, as if an angel were speaking in Daniel or Christ in Paul, you announce to mortal ears the secrets of the ages to come. And you say: "Do not believe any of the ancients, you faithful people chosen by Christ. If Origen suspected anything about the more secret things of the divine dispensation, let no one receive it. And if a Clement, whether that disciple of the apostles or that one of the church of Alexandria, the teacher of Origen himself, said anything of the kind; even if that Gregory of Pontus, a man of apostolic powers; even if that other, of Nazianzus, and Didymus the seeing prophet, both my teachers, than whom the world had nothing wiser in the faith of Christ: all these erred like Origen; but let them receive pardon for their error, because I too once erred, and now do penance, and I ought to receive pardon. But Origen, though he said the same things as I, even if he did penance, shall not receive pardon; rather, for what we all said, let him alone be condemned. He is the one who did all the evil. For he betrayed to us the source of everything we say, everything we write, everything thought to be said learnedly; and from good Greek things we make Latin things not good. Let no one, then, listen to any of these, but receive only what you find in my commentaries, and especially in the Letter to the Ephesians, in which I have most vehemently refuted the sayings of Origen. I have searched out that you must believe and hold that the resurrection of the flesh will be such that bodies are turned into souls and wives directed into men; and that before the foundation of the world souls were in the heavens, and thence, for certain causes known to God alone, were led down into this vale of tears, and inserted into the body of death; and that at the end of the ages every rational nature is to be restored into one body as it was from the beginning, so that man is called back to paradise, and the fugitive angel is exalted above Peter and Paul, who, being men, are to be placed after him, in paradise, while he is restored to that for which he was created from the beginning; so that all together become the church of the firstborn in the heavens, and are members of Christ, in their several offices; while the totality of all is the perfect body of Christ. Holding these things, O faithful and prudent disciples, and guarding these undoubted definitions of mine, yet condemning Origen for these very sayings, you will do well. Farewell."

Do you see that you do everything in mockery, and say that you repent only to deceive those to whom you write? For even if you truly repent, as you ought, what will you do about all those souls which this teaching of yours, so poisonous, as you yourself say, has deceived for so many years? In short, who will ever be amended by your repentance, when this very little book, in which you are penitent and accuser and judge, sends your hearers back again to read and hold these very things? Finally, even if this were not so, you yourself have shut every approach to pardon for yourself, even after repentance. For you say that Origen himself repented of these sayings, in a little book of repentance given to Fabian, then bishop of the city of Rome; and yet after his repentance, a hundred and fifty years after his death, you drag him to court and summon him to condemnation. How then will pardon be given to you, repenting of these sayings, if he who repented of them before you does not merit pardon? As you wrote, so he wrote; as you repented, so he repented. Either you must both be absolved alike for your repentance, or, if you deny pardon to a penitent (which I do not wish, but you press for), we must be condemned alike, according to a certain parable of the Gospel. An adulteress was brought to the Lord by the Jews, so that they might see how he would judge her according to the law. That merciful and compassionate Lord said, "Let whoever of you has no sin throw a stone at her." And then, it says, they all went away. And the Jews, impious and unbelieving though they were, yet were ashamed before their consciences, lest, being sinners themselves, they should seem to take vengeance on sinners. And that thief on the cross said to the other thief, who was hanging on a cross with him and blaspheming, "Do you not even fear God, since we are under the same punishment?" We, condemning in others the very things that are in ourselves, neither blush with the Jews nor grow gentle with the thief.

In the former book we turned back upon him, on his own testimony, the doctrinal objections which he undeservedly brings against others. Now that these complaints, which border on the faith, have been set out and put behind us, we will answer the rest of his accusations with more confidence. For there is this heaviest head of his accusation too, which, like his other lies, must be cut back with the sickle of truth. He says that certain people are bound together with Origen in a league to commit perjury, and that this secret of his mystic tradition is hidden in the sixth book of the Stromata, and has been detected by no one else in so many ages but by himself alone. But, so as not to make him laugh if I affirm by the sacrament of an oath that I am a stranger to a league of perjury, I will go to the manifestation of the truth by a plainer road, from this: that I can very easily prove that I never had those books, nor read them when lent by anyone. And as I cannot excuse myself about something whose nature I do not know, so neither can I be accused about something of which, even if it exists, I am wholly ignorant. Yet he charges that it is handed down by Origen, or said by his disciples, that what is written, "He who speaks truth with his neighbour," means that no one is a neighbour except one who is perfect and a fellow-initiate; and again what the Apostle says, "We speak wisdom among the perfect"; and what is written, "Do not give what is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine": so that by this, he says, they assert that the truth is not to be opened to all.

Let us see what he himself says in these very chosen commentaries of his, book two, under the heading where it is written, "Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak truth each one with his neighbour, for we are members of one another." After a little: "Therefore," he says, "Paul himself, being perfect, said in another letter: 'But we speak wisdom among the perfect.' This, then, is what he commands: that each one should speak all mystical and secret things, and things full of the truth of God, with his neighbour, so that day may pour forth speech to day and night show knowledge to night; that is, let him show all clear and shining things to those who deserve to hear: 'You are the light of the world.' But let him relate the dark and involved things, veiled in all the night of mysteries, to others, who are themselves night, darkness, or gloom; of whom it is said, 'And gloom was under his feet,' no doubt God's. For on Mount Sinai too Moses enters into the whirlwind and the gloom where God was. And of God himself it is written: 'He made darkness his hiding place.' Let each one, then, speak truth and mysteries with his neighbour, and not give what is holy to dogs nor cast pearls before swine; but let him bring those who have the oil of truth into the bridegroom's chamber and the king's storeroom." See, I pray you, and look more carefully whether in all that he writes he condemns anyone but himself and his own sayings. If his enemies wished to tear him and censure him for his writings, by what other order, what other judgments would they use against him than those which he uses against himself as though against others? If condemnation is to be brought against him, his own letter is enough, if you only change the name; for the text of the charges fits no one else at all as it fits him alone. What he bids be condemned, he bids again be observed; what he does, he censures; what he detests, he practises. Happy his disciples, who either hear him or imitate him!

Nevertheless, since the doctrine of perjury is put forward as his, it is nothing to me whether he practises or writes it; but since among some of the brothers he has tried to brand this stain on us too, and now to repeat it by letter, I state what I myself think about perjury, according to the rule he has given, so that I may again leave him to judge about himself. For since our Lord and Saviour says in the Gospels, "It was said to those of old, You shall not swear falsely, but you shall render to the Lord your oaths; but I say to you, do not swear at all," I say that whoever teaches that one may swear falsely for any cause whatever is a stranger to the faith of Christ and to the unity of the catholic church.

But now that I have satisfied him with my anathema, as he himself laid down, I should like, if you bear with me patiently, to labour a little and to disclose what worshippers and fellow-initiates this perjury has, which he says is observed through certain orgies and mystic leagues. For that saying of God is certain and true enough which says, "By their fruits you will know them"; and again, "By the fruit," it says, "the tree is known." And so we too, as he says, have received the doctrine of perjury. If we have been taught this, and such a tree has been planted in us, it cannot be that such fruits have not often sprung from some of us, and indeed grown strong by the authority of a mystic doctrine. And as far as my own person is concerned, whom alone of all these he thinks he is tearing in what he writes, I will not bear witness to myself, nor will I say whether one must even swear when perhaps necessity demands; and if I am not careful, at least I wish to be fearful. Finally, if I cannot keep it, I shall know that I have erred. These things, then, I will not say; yet whether I err in them or take care, he meanwhile has no cause of any offence by which to convict me in such matters. But I will prove again from his writings how most sacred with him is the observance, not of this doctrine, but of this most foul and most real vice. For I will bring nothing against him invented from spite and envy, as he does against us; but I will produce himself as witness and his writings against him, so that he may know that he is censured not by his enemies but refuted by himself.

While he was at Rome he wrote a little book on preserving virginity, a book which all the pagans and enemies of God, apostates and persecutors, and all who hold the Christian name in hatred, vied with one another in copying for themselves, because in it he defamed every order of Christians, every rank, every profession, and the whole church alike, with most foul reproaches; and the crimes which the Gentiles were thought to bring against us falsely, he asserted to be true, indeed that far worse things were done by our people than they charged. For first he defames those very virgins about whose virtue he seemed to write, and speaks of them in these words: "Others, changing their dress for a man's garb, blush to be women, which they were born; they cut off their hair, and shamelessly lift up eunuch-like faces. There are some who dress in haircloth, and with hoods cleverly made, so as to return to infancy, imitate night owls and screech owls." And he says a thousand other graver reproaches about them. But he does not spare even widows. For he says of them: "They have no care but for the belly and what is next to the belly." He heaps on many other obscenities as well. And how foully, how basely he tears the whole class of monks would be long to prove by his own words or writings. What disgraceful things he described about deacons and presbyters I am ashamed to repeat. Yet I will set down the beginning of his tearing, from which it may more easily be guessed how much the invective grows in what follows. "There are others," he says (I speak of men of my own order), "who seek the presbyterate and the diaconate so as to see women more freely. All their care is for their clothes, whether they smell sweet, whether the foot is not baggy in a loose skin. Their locks are curled by the trace of the curling iron; their fingers glitter with rings; and so that a damp road may not spatter their soles, they barely press the ground with the tips of their toes. When you see such men, think them bridegrooms rather than clerics." And after he had reproached, one by one, not so much the faults as the crimes of the priests or ministers, he not only discoloured but made execrable even their entering and greeting matrons. Hear how, after he had cut to pieces and defamed the whole Christian race, he does not spare himself either.

For I return, after a sort of digression, to what I had proposed, on account of which the matter required mention of this little book, and I will show that with him perjuries are held so permissible that he does not blush to be caught in them even in his writings. In this very book, then, when he was warning that secular books should not be read, and saying, "What has Horace to do with the Psalter, Virgil with the Gospels, Cicero with the Apostle? Will not a brother be scandalized if he sees you reclining in an idol's temple?" and had said other such things by which he asserted that the reading of secular books is foreign to a Christian, he also inserts a certain revelation made to him from God, filled with quite terrifying commands. For he relates that after he had renounced the world and been converted to God, he was still strongly held by love of secular books and could not easily do without such a desire. "And for this," he says, "I am suddenly caught up in the spirit and dragged before the tribunal of the Judge, where there was so much light, and so much brightness from the radiance of those standing around, that, thrown to the ground, I did not dare look up. Asked my condition, I answered that I was a Christian. And he who presided said: 'You lie; you are a Ciceronian, not a Christian; where your treasure is, there is your heart also.' At once I was struck dumb, and amid the blows (for he had ordered me to be beaten) I was tortured more by the fire of conscience. Yet I began to cry out and to say, wailing, 'Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy on me.' This cry resounded among the lashes. At last those who stood by, falling at the knees of him who presided, begged him to grant pardon to my youth, and to allow room for repentance for my error, being ready to exact the torment afterwards if I ever read the books of Gentile literature. I, who in so great a strait would have been willing to promise even greater things, began to swear, and calling on his name to say: 'Lord, if ever I possess secular books, or if I read them, I have denied you.' Released on these words, I return," he says, "to the upper world."

Have you heard what new, what terrifying kind of oath he has set out? With the Lord Jesus Christ seated as judge on the tribunal, with the angels standing by and interceding for him, amid blows and torments he swears that he will never possess or read secular books. Let what he writes now be read again, I pray: whether there is one page of his work which does not again pronounce him a Ciceronian, where he does not say, "But our Tully," "but our Flaccus," "but our Maro." And as for Chrysippus and Aristides, Empedocles and the other names of Greek authors, he scatters them like smoke and mist before his readers, so as to seem learned and of very wide reading. In fact, among other things he even boasts that he has read the books of Pythagoras, which learned men assert do not even exist. But this man, lest he should pass over his oath about the Gentile authors in any respect, writes that he has read even what was never written. And in almost all his works he sets down many more and longer testimonies from these authors of his than from our prophets or apostles. Even writing to girls and little women, who certainly both desire and ought to be built up only from our Scriptures, he weaves in for them examples from his Flaccus and Tully and Maro.