22 (a). But, "Surely," he says, "this judgment is done away with since I have repented." Not so fast! We all err, it is true, and especially in word; and we all may repent of our errors. But can a man do penance, and accuse others, and judge and condemn them, all in the same moment? That would be as if a harlot who had abstained from her harlotry for a night or two, should feel called upon to begin writing laws in favour of chastity, and not only to enact these laws, but to proceed to throw down the monuments of all the women who have died, because she suspected that they had led lives like her own. You do penance for having formerly been a heretic, and you do right. But what has that to do with me who never was a heretic at all? You are right in doing penance for your error: but the true way of doing penance is, not by accusing others but by crying for mercy, not by condemning but by weeping. For what sincerity can there be in penitence when the penitent makes a decree of indulgence for himself? He who repents of what he has spoken ill does not cure his wound by speaking ill again, but by keeping silence. For thus it is written: [2861] "Thou hast sinned, be at peace." But now you first bring yourself in a criminal, then you absolve yourself from your crime, and forthwith change yourself from a criminal into a judge. This may be no trouble to you who thus mock at us, but it is a trouble to us if we suffer ourselves to be mocked by you.
[2858] The words are not quoted literally from Jerome's letter to Pammachius and Oceanus (Ep. lxxxiv. c. 2) the passage referred to; but they give the sense fairly well. See also the letter to Vigilantius (lxi. c. 2).
[2859] Proefati unculam. That is, the Preface to Origen's Song of Songs, in which he says that Origen has not only surpassed every one else, but also in this work has surpassed himself.
[2860] Perhaps from 1 Cor. xi. 29, or Rom. xiv. 23
[2861] Possibly a kind of paraphrase of our Lord's words to the woman taken in adultery. John viii. 11
23. But let us come to these two Commentaries which he alone excepts from the general condemnation and renunciation which he pronounces upon all the rest of his works; we shall see with what modesty and self-restraint he conducts himself in these: Remember that it is by these alone that he has chosen to prove that he is sound in the faith, and that he is altogether opposed to Origen. Let us examine then as witnesses these two books which alone of all his writings are satisfactory to him, namely, the three books of his commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, and the single book (I think) on Ecclesiastes. Let us for a moment look into the one which comes forward first, the Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians. Even here recognize in his arguments the influence of him who is as his fellow, his partner and his brother mystic, to use his own expression. [2862] And first of all, as to these poor weak women about whom he makes himself merry, because they say that after the resurrection they will not have their frail bodies since they will be like the angels. Let us hear what he has to say about them. In the third book of his Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, on the passage in which it is said, [2863] "He who loveth his own wife loveth himself, for no man ever hated his own flesh;" after a few other remarks, he says:
"Let us men then cherish our wives and let our souls cherish our bodies in such a way as that the wives may be turned into men and the bodies into spirits, and that there maybe no difference of sex but that, as among the angels there is neither male nor female, so we who are to be like the angels may begin here to be what it is promised that we shall be in heaven."
[2862] summusten, that is one who partakes with us in the mysteries; hence, initiated into the same secret, or special opinions.
[2863] Ephes. v. 28
24. How, I ask, can you, seeing that your Commentaries contain such doctrines, put them forward to prove your soundness in the faith, and to confute those ideas which you reprove? How do your words tend to reprove those women whom we have spoken of? Besides, has any woman gone so far as to say what you write, namely, that women are to be turned into men and bodies into souls? If bodies are to be turned into spirits, then, according to you, there will be no resurrection not only of the flesh but even of the body, which you admit to be the doctrine even of those whom you have set down as heretics. Where are we to look any more for the body, if it is reduced to a spirit? In that case everything will be spirit, the body will be nowhere. And again, if the wives are to be turned into men, according to this suggestion of yours, that there is to be no difference of sex whatever, by which I suppose you mean that the female sex will entirely cease, being converted into the male, and the male sex will alone remain; I am not sure that you would have the permission of the women to speak here on behalf of their sex. But, even suppose that they grant you this, then with what consistency can you argue that the male sex is any longer necessary, when the female is shown not to be necessary? for there is a natural bond which unites the sexes in mutual dependence, so that, if one does not exist, there is no need of the other. And further, if it is man alone who is to receive at the resurrection the form of clay which was originally given in paradise, what becomes of that which is written, [2864] "He made them male and female, and blessed them"? And then, if, as both you yourself say, and also these poor women whom you arraign, there is neither man nor woman, how can bodies be turned into souls, or women into men, since Paradise does not allow the existence of either sex, nor does the likeness of angels, as you say, admit it? And I marvel how you can demand from others a strict opinion upon the continuance of the diversity of sex when you yourself, as soon as you begin to discuss it, find yourself involved in so many knotty questions that to evolve yourself out of them becomes impossible. How much more right would your action be if you were to imitate us whom you blame in such matters as these and allow God to be the only judge of them, as is indeed the truth. It would be far better for you to confess your ignorance of them than to write things which in a little while you have to condemn. I should like to ask my accuser whether he can conscientiously say that he would ever have found, I do not say in any, even the least, work of mine, but even in any familiar letter which I might have written carelessly to a friend, such things as that bodies were to be turned into spirits and wives into men, were it not that he had put them forward as if he wished them to be inserted in brazen letters on the gates of cities, and recited in the forum, in the Senate house and in front of the rostra. If he had found any such thing in my writings, imagine how many heads of accusation he would have set down, how many volumes he would have compiled, how he would be assailing me with all the arms and shafts of that teeming breast of his; how he would have said: "I tell you that he is deceiving you by speaking of the resurrection of the body, for he denies the resurrection of the flesh; or even if he confesses the resurrection of the flesh he denies that of the members and the sex: but, if you do not believe me, behold and see the very words of his letter, in which he says that bodies are to be turned into souls and wives into men." Yet, when you write this, we are not to call you a heretic, but are to give satisfaction to you as though you were our master. And as for those women whom you have attacked with your indecent reproaches, they will, when they stand before the judgment seat of Christ, bring forward what you have taught them in these Commentaries as well as the things which you have since written, with insults which show that you had forgotten yourself; and both the one and the other will be read out there, where the favour of men will have ceased, and the applause for which you pay by flattery will be silent, and they will be judged together with their author for these words and deeds of yours before Christ the righteous judge.
[2864] Gen. i. 27
25. But now let us go on to discuss what he writes further as to God's judgment, [2865] for this too is a matter of the faith. We shall find that as he alters the faith about the resurrection of the flesh in other points, so he does in reference to God's judgment. In the first book of the Commentaries on the Ep. of Paul to the Ephesians, he deals with that passage in which the Apostle says: "Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish before him." On this he says:
"For the foundation of the world the Greek has kataboles kosmou. The word katabole does not mean the same which we understand by foundation. We, therefore, shall not attempt to render a word for a word, which is here impossible on account of the poverty of our language and also the novelty of the sense, and because, as some one has said, the Greeks have a larger discourse and a happier tongue than ours. We must explain the force of the word by some sort of periphrasis. katabole is properly used when something is thrown down and is cast from a higher into a lower place, or else when anything is taking its beginning. Hence those who lay the first foundations of future houses are said katabeblekenai, that is to have thrown down the first foundations. Paul thus used the word to show that God framed all things out of nothing: he assigned to Him not a creation nor a building up, nor a making but a katabole, that is, a beginning of a foundation. He wishes to show that there was not some other thing antecedent to creatures, and out of which creatures were formed, as is held by the Manichæans and other heretics, who begin with a maker and a material, but that all things were made out of nothing. But, as to our election to be holy and without blemish before him, that is, before God, previously to the making of the world, of which the Apostle speaks, this belongs to the foreknowledge of God, to whom all future things are as if they were already done, and all things are known before they come into being: as Paul is predestinated in the womb of his mother, and Jeremiah before his birth is sanctified, chosen, and confirmed, and, as it type of Christ, is sent to be a prophet of the nations."
[2865] Quæstiones. Examinations or inquisitions. It seems here to mean the method which God follows in distinguishing between individuals.
26. So far he has set forth a single exposition of the passage; but on whose authority he wishes us to receive this interpretation he has not made clear. What he has done is to make void this first interpretation by what comes after: for he goes on: "But there is another, who tries to show that God is just." He therefore points out that by that first exposition the justice of God is not vindicated, which of course is contrary to the faith: and he goes on through the mouth of this other,' whose assertions he evidently wishes to exhibit as being what is everywhere held for catholic and indubitable, to give a testimony by which he will, as he asserts, seek to show that God is just. Let us see then what this other man' says, who proclaims the justice of God.
"Another man," he says, "who seeks to vindicate the justice of God, argues that it is not according to his own pre-judgment and knowledge, but according to the merit of the elect that God's choice of men is determined; and he says that, before the creation of the visible world, of sky and earth and seas and all that they contain, there existed other invisible creatures, among which also were souls; and that these souls, for reasons known to God alone, were cast down [2866] into this vale of tears, this place of our mournful pilgrimage, and that this is shewn by the prayer uttered by a holy man of old who, having his habitation fixed here, yet longed to return to his original abode: "Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged, that I have my habitation among the inhabitants of Kedar," [2867] "my soul has long been a pilgrim," and again "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?" [2868] and in another place "It is better to return and be with Christ," [2869] and elsewhere, "Before I was brought low, I sinned;" [2870] and other words of a like character."