In the main Jerome's defence was valid. But it demanded considerateness in his judges; and this quality was absent in himself. He judged Origen's opinions harshly, and spoke of his views as poisonous (Letter lxxxiv, 3); and, when we contrast the lenity of his former judgments on the same points with his present violence, it becomes evident that he was more concerned for his own reputation than for truth. Rufinus charges him (Apol. i. c. 23 to 44) with maintaining, in his Commentaries on the Ephesians (written twelve years earlier in 388) to which Jerome had appealed (Ep. lxxxiv, 2) the views which he now denounced; and the charge, though urged too far, is substantially made out. The opinions of Origen which he introduced into this Commentary about the fall of souls out of a previous state of bliss into human bodies are set down with hardly a word of objection (comm. on ch. i, v. 4), and his speculations on the Powers and Principalities of the world to come (ib. v. 21) and on the rise of Lucifer and his angels to be subjects of Christ's Kingdom (id. ii, 7) and their part in the final restoration of all things (id. iv, 16) are adopted as his own, thus giving some justification for Rufinus' attack (Apol. i, 34-36. &c.). His defence of himself therefore is hardly candid. And his allusions to his opponent are exasperating, e.g. when he speaks (Letter lxxxiv, 1) of some persons "who love me so well that they cannot be heretics without me." "I wonder that, while they speak in detraction of the flesh, they live carnally and thus cherish and nourish delicately their enemy" (Id. 8). He hardly argues fairly as to Rufinus' assertion that Origen's works had suffered from falsification: and he is carried so far by his animosity that he denies the Apology of Pamphilus for Origen to be by Pamphilus, though he had himself attributed it to him (De Vir. Ill. c. 7. 5) and no one can doubt that it is his. (See Dict. of Christ. Biog. Art. Pamphilus.)
But though writing thus for his friends generally, Jerome wrote at the same time a friendly letter to Rufinus himself in answer, it would seem, to one from him, (Letter lxxxi.) in which he speaks of their common friends, and of the death of Rufinus' mother, and says that he has charged a friend whom he is sending to Italy to visit Rufinus and assure him of his high esteem; and, while remonstrating with him for his Preface to the Peri 'Archon, merely says "I have begged my other friends to avoid a quarrel. I count on your sense of equity not to give occasion to impatient persons; for you will not find every one, like me, able to take pleasure in praises framed to suit a purpose." [2816]
Had this letter reached Rufinus, the ensuing controversy would have been avoided. But it never reached him. It was sent through Pammachius, and he and Jerome's other friends kept it back, while they published the letter sent them with Jerome's translation of the Peri 'Archon. Rufinus who was now at Aquileia, having left Rome probably early in 399 wrote the Apology, addressing it to his friend and convert Apronianus at Rome.
[2814] Ep. 84.
[2815] See the Translation of Rufinus' Prefaces given above, and the notes prefixed to them.
[2816] Or Feigned praises--figuratis laudibus.
Book I.
The following is an epitome of the argument:
1. I must submit to the taunts of my adversary as Christ did to those of the Jews.
2. Yet the substantial charges must be answered.
3. I praised him but he has wounded me.
4. I am no heretic, but declare my faith, that of my baptism.
5. I give a further proof of my faith in the resurrection of the flesh.
6-9. The resurrection body is a spiritual body.
10. Origen's doctrines in the Peri 'Archon
11. What led to the translation.
12, 13. Pamphilus Apology for Origen.
14. Preface to the Translation of the Peri 'Archon
15. Treatise on the Adulteration of the works of Origen.
16. The difficulties of translation.
17. Explanation of Origen's words "The Son does not see the Father."
18. Difference between seeing and knowing.
19. The Translation interpolated by Eusebius of Cremona.
20. Eusebius, if acting honestly, should have shown me what he thought dangerous.
21. Jerome's method of translation was the same as mine.
22. Jerome's reference to his Commentary on the Ephesians.
23. Jerome has not really changed his mind about Origen.
24. Women turned into men and bodies into souls.
25. The foundation (katabole) of the world explained by Jerome as a casting down.
26. Jerome, under the name of "another," gives his own views.
27. The fall of souls into human bodies is taught by Jerome.
28. Predestination.
29. "Another," who gives strange views, is Jerome himself.
30. "Hopers" and "fore-hopers."
31. and 30 (a). Jerome has confessed these views to be his own.
31 (a) and 32. Further identification of Jerome's views with Origen's.
33. The commentary on the Ephesians, selected by Jerome, is his condemnation.
34, 35. Principalities and Powers.
36. Jerome's complaint of new doctrines may be retorted on himself.
38, 39. Origin of men, angels, and heavenly bodies.
40, 41. The body as a prison.
42. All creatures, including the fallen angel, partaking in the final restoration.
43. Arrogance of Jerome's teaching.
44. If Origen is not to be pardoned, neither is Jerome.
I have read the document sent from the East by our friend and good brother to a distinguished member of the Senate, Pammachius, which you have copied and forwarded to me. It brought to my mind the words of the Prophet: [2817] "The sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword." But for these wounds which men inflict on one another with the tongue we can hardly find a physician; so I have betaken myself to Jesus, the heavenly physician, and he has brought out for me from the medicine chest of the Gospel an antidote of sovereign power; he has assuaged the violence of my grief with the assurance of the righteous judgment which I shall have at his hands. The potion which our Lord dispensed to me was nothing else than these words: [2818] "Blessed are ye when men persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely. Rejoice and leap for joy, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the Prophets which were before you." With this medicine I was content, and, as far as the matter concerned me, I had determined for the future to keep silence; for I said within myself, [2819] "If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household?" (that is, you and me, unworthy though we are). And, if it was said of him, [2820] "He is a deceiver, he deceiveth the people," I must not be indignant if I hear that I am called a heretic, and that the name of mole is applied to me because of the slowness of my mind, or indeed my blindness. Christ who is my Lord, aye, and who is God over all, was called [2821] "a gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." How can I, then, be angry when I am called a carnal man [2822] who lives in luxury?
[2817] Ps. lvii. 4
[2818] Matt. v. 11, 12
[2819] Matt. x. 25
[2820] John vii. 12
[2821] Matt. xi. 19
[2822] Jerome Ep. lxxxiv, 8.
2. Nevertheless, a necessity, as it were, is laid upon me to reply, as a simple matter of justice: I mean, because many, as I hear, are likely to be upset by what he has written unless the true state of the case is laid before them. I am compelled, against my resolution and even my vows, to make reply, lest by keeping silence I should seem to acknowledge the accusation to be true. It is, indeed, in most cases, a Christian's glory to follow our Lord's example of silence, and thereby to repel the accusation; but to follow this course in matters of faith causes stumbling blocks to spring up in vast numbers. It is true that, in the beginning of his invective he promises that he will avoid personalities, and reply only about the things in question and the charges made against him; but his profession in both cases is false; for how can he answer a charge when no charge has been made? and how can a man be said to avoid personalities when he never ceases to attack and tear to pieces the translator of the books in question from the first line to the last of his invective? I shall avoid all pretence of saying less than I mean, and similar subterfuges of hypocrisy which are hateful in God's sight; and, though my words may be uncouth and my style unadorned, I will make my reply. I trust, and I shall not trust in vain, that my readers will pardon my lack of skill, since my object is not to amuse others but to endeavour to clear myself from the reproaches directed against me. My wish is that what may shine forth in me may not be style but truth.
3. But, before I begin to clear up these points, there is one in which I confess that he has spoken the truth in an eminent degree; namely, when he says that he is not rendering evil speaking for evil speaking. This, I say, is quite true; for it is not for evil speaking but for speaking well of him and praising him that he has rendered reproach and evil speaking. But it is not true, as he says, that he turns the left cheek to one who smites him on the right. It is on one who is stroking him and caressing him on the cheek that he suddenly turns and bites him. I praised his eloquence and his industry in the work of translating from the Greek. I said nothing in derogation of his faith; but he condemns me on both these points. He must therefore pardon me if I say some things rather roughly and rudely; for he has challenged to a reply a man who has no great rhetorical skill, and who has not, as he knows, the power to make one whom he wishes to injure and to wound appear to have received neither wounds nor injuries. Those who love this kind of eloquence must seek it in a man whom every light report stirs up to fault-finding and vituperation, and who thinks himself bound, as if he were the censor, to be always coming up to set things to rights. A man who desires to clear himself from the stains which have been cast upon him, does not trouble himself, in the answer which he is compelled to make, about the elegance and neat turns of his reply, but only about its truth.
4. At the very beginning of his work he says, "As if they could not be heretics by themselves, without me." I must first show that, whether with him or without him, we are no heretics: then, when our status is made clear, we shall be safe from having the infamous imputation hurled at us from other men's reports. I was already living in a monastery, where, as both he and all others know, about 30 years ago, I was made regenerate by Baptism, and received the seal of the faith at the hands of those saintly men, Chromatius, [2823] Jovinus [2824] and Eusebius, [2825] all of them now bishops, well-tried and highly esteemed in the church of God, one of whom was then a presbyter of the church under Valerian of blessed memory, the second was archdeacon, the third Deacon, and to me a spiritual father, my teacher in the creed and the articles of belief. These men so taught me, and so I believe, namely, that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one Godhead, of one Substance: a Trinity coeternal, inseparable, incorporeal, invisible, incomprehensible, known to itself alone as it truly is in its perfection: For "No man [2826] knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father but the Son": and the Holy Spirit is he who "searcheth [2827] the deep things of God": that this Trinity, therefore, is without all bodily visibility, but that it is with the eye of the understanding that the Son and the Holy Spirit see the Father even as the Father sees the Son and the Holy Spirit; and further, that in this Trinity there is no diversity except that one is Father, another Son and a third Holy Spirit. There is a Trinity as touching the distinction of persons, a unity in the reality of the Substance. We received, further, that the only begotten Son of God, through whom in the beginning all existing things were made, whether visible or invisible, in these last days took upon him a human body and Soul, and was made man, and suffered for our salvation; and the third day he rose again from the dead in that very flesh which had been laid in the sepulchre; and in that very same flesh made glorious he ascended into the heavens, whence we look for his coming to judge the quick and the dead. But further we confess that he gave us hope that we too should rise in a similar manner, so that we believe that our resurrection will be in the same manner and process, and in the same form, as the resurrection of our Lord himself from the dead: that the bodies which we shall receive will not be phantoms or thin vapours, as some slanderously affirm that we say, but these very bodies of ours in which we live and in which we die. For how can we truly believe in the resurrection of the flesh, unless the very nature of flesh remains in it truly and substantially? It is then without any equivocation, that we confess the resurrection of this real and substantial flesh of ours in which we live.