you who, even against your own conscience and tongue, when another preached differently, either subscribed unwillingly and so are a prevaricator, or willingly and so are a heretic. You dismissed Egypt, you left behind all the provinces in which very many defend their sect with unblushing brow, and you chose me to hound—me who condemn with public voice all things contrary to the Church's dogmas. Origen a heretic: what is that to me, who do not deny that he is a heretic in most points? He erred concerning the resurrection of the body; he erred concerning the state of souls, concerning the devil's penitence, and—what is greater than these—he testified that the Son and the Holy Spirit are seraphim. If I did not say that he erred, and did not daily anathematize these things, I should be a partner in his error.
For we ought not so to receive his good things as to be compelled also to take up the bad. Yet the same man both interpreted the Scriptures well in many places, and expounded the obscurities of the prophets, and unveiled the greatest mysteries of both the New and the Old Testament. If therefore I have translated what is good, and have either cut away or corrected or passed over in silence what is bad, am I to be arraigned—because through me the Latins have his good things and are ignorant of the bad?
If this is a crime, then let the confessor Hilary be arraigned, who translated the interpretation of the Psalms and the homilies on Job out of his books, that is, from the Greek, into Latin; let Eusebius of Vercelli, of the same confession, be in fault, who turned into our tongue the commentaries on all the Psalms of a heretical man, though, passing over the heretical parts, he translated all the very best. I say nothing of Victorinus of Pettau and the rest, who followed and rendered Origen only in the exposition of the Scriptures, lest I seem not so much to defend myself as to seek partners in the crime. I will come to you yourself:
why do you keep copied out his treatises on Job, in which, disputing against the devil and about the stars and the heavens, he said certain things that the Church does not receive? Is it lawful for you alone, O most wise skull, to pass sentence upon all commentators, Greek and Latin alike, and as with a censor's rod to cast some out of the libraries and to receive others, and, when it pleases you, to pronounce me either catholic or heretic—yet is it not lawful for us to spit out perverse things and to condemn what we have often condemned? Read my books on Ephesians, read the rest of my little works, and above all the commentaries on Ecclesiastes, and you will clearly perceive that from my youth up I have never, deterred by anyone's authority, acquiesced in heretical depravity. It is no small thing to know what you do not know:
it is the mark of a prudent man to know his own measure, and not, stirred up by the devil's zeal, to make the whole world a witness of his own ignorance. Doubtless you long to boast, so that in your homeland you may brag that I could not answer your eloquence and dreaded the shrewdness of a Chrysippus in you. I am held back by Christian modesty, and I do not wish, with biting speech, to throw open the hiding-places of my little cell. Otherwise I would set forth all your prowess and your trophy-bearing triumph, sung even by the voices of little children. But these things I leave to others, either to speak of or to laugh at:
I, as a Christian speaking with a Christian, beseech you, brother, do not wish to be wiser than you are, lest you set forth in writing either your innocence or your simplicity, or at any rate those things which I keep silent about—which, while you do not understand them, others do—and lest you offer all men a fit of laughter at your absurdities. You learned something else from an early age, you are habituated to other disciplines. It is not for one and the same man both to assay gold coins and the Scriptures, to taste wines and to understand the prophets or the apostles. You tear me apart, you summon the holy brother Oceanus on a charge of heresy, the judgment of the priests Vincentius and Paulinianus and of brother Eusebius displeases you: you alone are a Cato, the most eloquent of the Roman race, who would have men trust your own testimony and prudence.
Recall, I pray, that day when, as I was preaching on the resurrection and the truth of the body, you at my side leapt up and stamped your foot in applause and shouted aloud that I was orthodox. But after you began to sail, and the rottenness of the bilge reached to the inmost part of your brain, then you remembered that we were heretics. What shall I do with you? I trusted the letters of the holy priest Paulinus, and did not think his judgment concerning your name was in error; and although, the moment I received his letter, I perceived your discourse to be disjointed, still I reckoned it to be rusticity and simplicity in you rather than madness.
Nor do I blame the holy man—for he preferred to dissemble to me what he knew, rather than to accuse in his letters the carrier, his own little client—but I arraign my very self, who acquiesced in another's judgment rather than my own, and, while my eyes discerned one thing, believed of the written sheet something other than what I saw. Wherefore cease to provoke me and to overwhelm me with your volumes. Spare at least your money, with which, hiring shorthand-writers and copyists, you employ the same men both as scribes and as supporters—men who perhaps praise you for this very reason, that they may make a profit by writing. If it pleases you to exercise your wit, hand yourself over to grammarians and rhetoricians, learn dialectic, get schooled in the sects of the philosophers, so that, when you have learned everything, then at least you may begin to hold your tongue;
although I should be playing the fool, to seek masters for the master of all men and to impose a limit on him who neither knows how to speak nor is able to keep silent. That proverb among the Greeks is true: an ass at the lyre. And I think your very name was imposed on you by antiphrasis. For you slumber with your whole mind, and you snore in a most profound state—not so much of sleep as of lethargy. For among the other blasphemies which you have uttered with sacrilegious mouth, you have dared to say that the mountain from which in Daniel the stone was cut without hands is the devil, and that the stone is Christ, who assumed the body of Adam—which had before cleaved to the devil through its vices—and was born of a virgin, so that from the mountain, that is, from the devil, He might separate man. O tongue that ought to be cut off and torn into parts and shreds!
Does any Christian interpret God the Father Almighty in the person of the devil, and stain the ears of the whole world with so great a sacrilege? If anyone—I will not say of the catholics, but of the heretics or even the heathen—had ever accepted your interpretation, let what you have said be reckoned pious; but if the Church of Christ has never heard so great an abomination, and if it is through your mouth first that he himself has interpreted himself as the mountain—he who had said: I will be like the Most High—then do penance, and roll yourself in sackcloth and ashes, and wipe away so great a crime with unceasing tears, if indeed this impiety may be remitted to you and, according to Origen's error, you may then obtain pardon when the devil too shall obtain it—the devil, who is never found to have blasphemed more than through your mouth.
My own injury I bore patiently: impiety against God I could not bear, and hence I have seemed to write more bitingly in the closing part of my letter than I had promised; although, after your former penitence, by which you begged pardon of me, to have again committed something for which you must do penance would be the height of stupidity. May Christ grant you to hear and be silent, to understand and only then to speak. LXII. TO TRANQUILLINUS, HOW WE OUGHT TO READ ORIGEN. That the bonds of the spirit are greater than those of the body—if once you doubted it, now we have proved it, since both your holiness clings to my heart, and I am joined to you by the love of Christ. For truly and simply I speak to your most guileless breast: the very sheet and the mute characters of the letters breathe upon us the affection of your mind.
As to your saying that many have been deceived by Origen's error, and that my holy son Oceanus withstands their madness, I both grieve and rejoice at once—grieving that the simple are being tripped up, rejoicing that the erring are being helped by a learned man. And because you seek the opinion of my littleness—whether he ought to be utterly spat out, according to brother Faustinus, or read, according to certain others (and I am of this latter side)—I judge that Origen, on account of his erudition, is at times to be read in the way we read Tertullian and Novatus, Arnobius and Apollinaris, and not a few ecclesiastical writers, Greek and Latin alike: so that we may choose their good things and shun the contrary, according to the apostle Paul who says: prove all things; hold fast what is good.
But those who are led, by the perversity of their own stomach, either into excessive love of him or into hatred, seem to me to lie under that prophetic curse: woe to those who call good evil and evil good, who make bitter sweet and sweet bitter. For neither, on account of his learning, are his depraved dogmas to be received, nor, on account of the depravity of his dogmas, if he has published any useful commentaries on the holy Scriptures, are these to be utterly spat out. But if his lovers and his detractors pull the rope contentiously against each other, so that they aim at nothing in the middle and keep no measure, but either approve or condemn the whole, I will more gladly choose pious rusticity than learned blasphemy. The holy brother Tatianus greets you back most warmly. LXIII. TO THEOPHILUS.
TO THE MOST BLESSED BISHOP THEOPHILUS, JEROME. Your Beatitude knows that even at the time when you kept silent, my discourse never ceased in its dutiful offices, nor did I consider what you, out of prudent management, had left undone, but rather what it befitted me to do. And now, having received the letters of your excellency, I see that I have gained some fruit of the Gospel reading. For if the persistent plea of the woman bent the sentence of the harsh judge, how much more are a father's bowels of mercy softened by assiduous entreaty! For your admonition concerning the ecclesiastical canons we give thanks; for whom the Lord loves, He rebukes; and He chastises every son whom He receives.
But nonetheless know that we hold nothing more precious than to preserve the rights of a Christian and not to remove the boundaries of the fathers, and always to remember the Roman faith praised by the apostolic mouth, of which the Alexandrian church glories to be a partaker. As to the fact that you show much patience toward the nefarious heresy, and think that those who brood upon the very bowels of the Church can be corrected by your leniency, this displeases many holy men—lest, while you await the penitence of a few, the audacity of the lost be nourished and the faction grow stronger. LXIV. TO FABIOLA. To this very day, in the reading of the Old Testament, a veil is laid over the face of Moses. He speaks with glorified countenance, and the people cannot endure to bear the glory of the speaker.
But when we shall have been turned to the Lord, the veil will be taken away: the killing letter dies, the life-giving Spirit is raised up. For the Lord is a Spirit, and the law is spiritual. Whence David also prayed in the psalm: unveil my eyes, and I shall consider the wondrous things of thy law. Is it for oxen that God has care? Surely not. Much more is it for the liver of the ox, the ram, the goats, and the shoulder of the right leg, and the belly by which the dung is voided—of which the priests receive two for food, while Phinehas earns the third as a reward. Of the peace-offerings, the fat with which the breast is enfolded, and the little lobe of the liver, are offered upon the altar; but the breast itself and the right arm are given to Aaron and his sons as a perpetual due from the children of Israel.
The understanding is in the heart, and the dwelling-place of the heart is in the breast. It is asked where the ruling part of the soul is. Plato places it in the brain; Christ shows it in the heart: blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God; and: out of the heart proceed evil thoughts; and: why do you think evil in your hearts? Pleasure and concupiscence, according to those who dispute of natural things, reside in the liver. Its little lobe, flitting in diverse directions and bursting outward through the windows of the eyes, the priests offer to God, so that, after they have said in deed: let thy holocaust be made fat, and have burned up with the fire of the Spirit that concupiscence which is the seed-bed of lust, they may deserve to receive as their reward the breast and the arm:
in the breast, pure thoughts, knowledge of the law, the truth of dogmas; in the arm, good works and the fight against the devil and an armed hand—so that what they have conceived in the mind they may prove by example. For Jesus began to do and to teach. The little breast itself is also called epithema, that is, of the addition, or the chief and excellent thing—for thenufa rather signifies this—according to that saying of Malachi: the lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth; from which we understand that knowledge of the law and of doctrine ought to be the chief thing in priests, and that such a man is established by the addition of spiritual grace.
such a one who can resist those who contradict, and have in himself no work of the left hand that leads down to Tartarus, but a right arm, and a separated one—so that the works of the priest, by comparison with his virtues, may be set apart from all other men. These things, from the victims and from what is offered on the altar, are given to the priests by the Lord. Furthermore, three other members, apart from the first-fruits of the sacrifices, are assigned to the priests from private provision and from the public meat-market, where there is no religious rite but the mere necessity of sustenance: the arm, the jaw, and the belly. Of the arm we have already spoken; the jaw signifies one eloquent and learned, so that what we have conceived in the breast we may bring forth by the mouth;
the belly, the receptacle of foods, pierced through in the Midianite harlot by the priestly poniard, condemns all the labors of men and the momentary blandishments of the gullet with the end of dung, and shows to minds consecrated to God that all that we dainty and all that we devour is cast out into the privy. Whence the apostle also says: meat for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy both this and these; and, on the contrary, of the luxurious: whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame. The dust of the calf which Israel had adored, the people receives in their drink, in contempt of superstition, that it may learn to despise what it had seen cast out into the privy.
It is commanded to the priests that, when about to minister in the temple, they drink neither wine nor strong drink, lest their hearts be weighed down by drunkenness and surfeiting and the cares of this life; that they have no portion in the land except God alone; that they be marked by no infirmity—not by mutilated ears, an injured eye, flat nostrils, a lame foot, or a changed color of skin—all of which are referred to the vices of the soul. For it is the will in man, not the nature, that is condemned. If any of the priests has had an issue of seed, he is forbidden to approach the priestly table; and on the contrary the widow, in whom, as in Sarah, the ways of women have ceased, on account of her continence and chastity is both received into her father's house and nourished from the treasury of the temple.
But if she has had sons, she is given back to her offspring, so that, according to the apostle, those may be ministered to who are widows indeed, and so that she who is sustained by priestly foods may be held by the love of no other. The neighbor and the hireling are excluded from the banquet of the priests; to them are granted the leftovers of half the food; already then Phygelus and Hermogenes were being cast out and Onesimus received. The first-fruits of foods and of all crops and fruits are offered to the prelate, so that, having food and clothing, he may without any hindrance serve the Lord, secure and free. The firstborn of clean animals the priests receive; of the unclean, the prices.
The firstborn of men also are redeemed, and, because the condition of birth is one and the same, all offer a price equally, so moderate and light that neither does the rich man swell with pride nor is the poor man overburdened. The temple-keepers and doorkeepers receive tithes, and in turn offer tithes of the tithes to the priests, being as much less than them as they themselves are greater than the people. Forty-eight cities are set apart for the Levites and priests to dwell in, six cities of refuge for fugitives are chosen beyond Jordan and within Jordan, and the end of the exile is the death of the high priest. All the things which my hurried speech has touched upon, and whose mysteries I have merely knocked at without opening, pertain to all priests; but with how great privileges the high priest is endowed, I will say briefly.
He shall not uncover his head, it says. He has the mitre and bears the name of God upon his forehead, he is adorned with the royal diadem, he has come to the perfect age of Christ, he must always be protected by his glory, and he shall not rend his garments, because they are white, because unpolluted, because they follow the Lamb and are made from the fleeces of a shorn sheep. Thamar, having lost her chastity, rent her tunic; Caiaphas, having lost the priesthood, publicly tore his garments. Over any soul that is dead he shall not go in. Wherever there is sin, and in sin, death, thither the high priest shall not approach. The soul that has sinned, it shall itself die. Though that man be rich, though powerful and though he offer a multitude of victims, if he is dead, he is not touched by the high priest, he is not looked upon.
But if he comes back to life and, at the voice of the Savior, goes forth from his tomb, and, loosed from the bands of his sins, walks abroad, then the high priest will go in to him and there make his abode and will dine with him who rises again. Over his father and over his mother he shall not be defiled. Affection compels us to do many things, and, while we regard the kinships of the body, we offend the Creator both of body and of soul. He who loves father and mother above Christ is not worthy of Him. The disciple, desiring to go to his father's burial, is forbidden by the Savior's command. How many of the monks, while they take pity on father and mother, have lost their own souls! Over father and mother we are not permitted to be defiled—how much more over brother, sisters, cousins, household, and servants!
We are a royal and priestly race. Let us give heed to that Father who never dies, or who dies for us, and who therefore, living, died, that He might make alive us who were dead. If we have anything from Egypt which the prince of this world can recognize as his own, let us leave it, together with the cloak, to the Egyptian woman who holds it. The young man, covered with a linen cloth, was following the bound Lord: he would have run into the snares, had he not, unencumbered and naked, evaded the onset of his pursuers. Let us render to our parents the things that are our parents'—if, that is, they live, if, serving God, they glory that their sons are preferred before themselves. And he shall not go out from the sanctuary, and he shall not pollute the sanctification of his God.
For even an idle word we shall render an account, and everything that does not edify the hearers turns to the peril of the speakers. If I do or say anything worthy of reproof, I go out from the sanctuary and pollute the name of Christ, in which I take my comfort: how much more the high priest and bishop, who ought to be without crime and of such great virtues that he may always tarry among the holy things and be ready to offer victims for the people—a mediator between men and God, confecting the flesh of the Lamb with his sacred mouth, because the holy oil of Christ his God is upon him! He does not go out from the sanctuary, lest he pollute the garment he has put on; for as many of us as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Let us keep the tunic we have received; let us guard as holy what is holy. That dweller in the mountains who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho was not wounded until he had first been stripped. Oil is poured over him, a gentle remedy tempered with mercy; and because through his negligence he had to feel the sting, he is bitten by the sharpness of wine, so that by the oil he may be called to repentance, and by the wine may feel the severity of the one who judges. 'He shall take a virgin to wife; but a widow, or one cast off, or a harlot he shall not take, but a virgin of his own people, and he shall not defile his seed among his people: I am the Lord who sanctify him.' I know that this high priest, to whom the precepts are now given, is understood by very many to mean Christ, and that the words which are spoken:
'For father or mother he shall not be defiled' — they expound of the birth of the Virgin Mary. And the interpretation concerning the Lord is far easier, for He hears in the Psalm: 'Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek,' and in Zechariah: 'Hear, O Jesus, great priest,' and from whom the filthy garments of our sins are taken away, that He may receive the glory which He had with the Father before the world was.
But lest anyone think that I do violence to Scripture, and love Christ in such a way as to take away the truth of the history, I shall interpret in the members what refers to the body, and shall understand of the servants what is fulfilled in the Lord — though the glory of the Lord is the glory of His servants — and wherever the opportunity of the passage offers itself, I shall so discourse of the true Light that it may be derived to those to whom Christ has granted that they should be light. This high priest whom the Mosaic discourse describes shall not take to wife a widow, one cast off, or a harlot — a widow is she whose husband is dead; one cast off, who is put away while her husband lives;
a harlot, who lies open to the lust of many —, but 'he shall take,' it says, 'a virgin to wife, of his own people,' not a foreigner, lest in an evil soil the corn of noble seed degenerate; not a harlot, who has been exposed to many lovers; not one cast off, who was unworthy even of her former marriage; not a widow, lest she should remember her past pleasures; but that soul which has neither spot nor wrinkle, which, reborn with Christ, is renewed from day to day, of whom the Apostle speaks: 'For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ.' I would not have the disciple and consort of the high priest retain anything of the old man. If we have risen with Christ, let us relish the things that are above, forgetful of the past, eager for the things to come.
Unhappy Simon, who after baptism was thinking of his old marriage and had not come to virginal purity, was unworthy of the fellowship of Peter. You have compelled me, Fabiola, by your letters, to write to you about the vestments of Aaron. I offered more, that I should also frame a little preface about the food and rewards of the priests and about the observance of the high priest. Having come forth from Sodom and hastening to the mountains, you do not wish to dwell in the little city of Zoar. Passing beyond the proselytes, going past the Israelites, leaving behind the Levitical rank, flying over the priests on swift wing, you come to the high priest; and while you diligently inquire into his garments and the breastplate upon his chest, our fellowship has displeased you.
And you indeed enjoy your longed-for leisure and perhaps, near Babylon, you sigh for the Bethlehem countryside; while we, in Ephrata, peace being at last restored, have heard the infant wailing from the manger, and we long that His complaints and little voice should reach your ears. We read in Exodus of the tabernacle, the table, the candlestick, the altar, the pillars, the curtains, scarlet, fine linen, blue, purple, and various vessels of gold, silver, and bronze; the tabernacle divided into three; twelve loaves set upon the table each week; seven lamps upon the candlestick; the altar set out with victims and holocausts; bowls, cups, censers, vials, little mortars, pegs, red skins, goats' hair, and imperishable wood.
So many things are offered in the tabernacle of God, that no one should despair of salvation: one presents the gold of understanding, another the silver of eloquence, another shows forth the sound of bronze. The whole world is described in the mystery of the tabernacle. The first and second court lie open to all — for water and earth are given to all mortals —; but into the Holy of Holies, as it were toward the ether and into heaven, the entrance and flight belong to few. The twelve loaves signify the circle of the twelve months; the seven lamps show forth the seven wandering stars.
And not to be tedious — for it is not my purpose now to write about the tabernacle —, I shall come to the priestly vestments; and before I search out the mystical meaning, I shall, after the Jewish manner, simply set forth what is written, so that, after you have seen the priest clothed and all his adornment has lain open to your eyes, we may then together inquire into the reasons of each item. Let us first learn the vestments common to priests and high priests.
By the linen breeches, which reach to the knee and the hams, the private parts are covered, and the upper part below the navel is drawn very tight, so that if ever, working unencumbered, they slay the victims, drag the bulls and rams, carry burdens, and are engaged in the office of ministering, even if they should slip and fall and their thighs be uncovered, what is hidden may not be exposed — hence steps to the altar are forbidden to be made, lest the people below should behold the private parts of those going up —, and this kind of garment is called in the Hebrew tongue 'machnase,' in Greek periskele, by us breeches or drawers reaching to the knees.
Josephus relates — for in his age the temple was still standing, and Vespasian and Titus had not yet overthrown Jerusalem, and he himself was of priestly lineage, and much more is understood from what is seen with the eyes than from what is perceived by the ear — that these breeches are wont to be woven of twisted fine linen for strength, and, after they have been cut, sewn together with a needle; for they cannot be made in this fashion on the loom. The second garment of linen is the 'poderes,' that is, the ankle-length robe, of double linen, which Josephus too calls byssine, and it is called 'cotonat,' that is chiton, which in Hebrew speech is rendered 'linen.' This clings to the body and is so tight, with close sleeves, that there is no wrinkle at all in the garment, and it descends down to the legs.
I wish, for the reader's ease, to make use of common speech: soldiers are wont to have linen garments, which they call shirts, so fitted to the limbs and drawn tight to the body that they are unencumbered whether for running or for battle, in hurling the javelin, holding the shield, wielding the sword, and wherever necessity should draw them. Therefore the priests too, ready for the ministry of God, use this tunic, so that, having the beauty of those clothed, they may run about with the swiftness of the naked. The third kind is 'the garment which they call cabaneth,' which we may call a girdle or belt and sash; the Babylonians call it by a new word 'hemian.' We put down the various words lest anyone should err in the name.
This girdle, in the likeness of the skin of a serpent by which it sheds its old age, is so woven in the round that you would think it a rather long purse. It is woven, moreover, with a weft of scarlet, purple, and blue, and with a warp of fine linen, for beauty and strength, and so distinguished by damask art that you would suppose the various flowers and gems to be not woven but added by a craftsman's hand. The linen tunic, of which we spoke above, they gird with this belt between the navel and the chest; and the belt, having a breadth of four fingers and for the most part hanging down to the legs, when there is need of running and dispatch for the sacrifices, is twisted back over the left shoulder.