Letters & Lives of Saints 4

1. If, according to Paul the Apostle, we cannot pray for what we feel, and speech does not unfold the thought of one's own mind, how much more perilous is it to judge concerning another's soul, and to investigate and set forth the reason of each man's sayings and words? The nature of man is prone to clemency, and in another's sin each man pities himself. If, therefore, you reprove the accused in his speech, he will call it simplicity; if you charge him with craftiness, he will confess to inexperience, that he may escape the suspicion of malice. And so it will come about that you who accuse will be judged a slanderer, while he who is reproved will be judged not a heretic but a rustic. You know, Pammachius, you know that I come down to this work not from enmity, not from desire of glory;

but provoked by your letters, out of the ardour of faith; and wishing, if it could be done, that all should be of the same mind, and that I, who speak only after three years, could not be reproached for impatience or rashness. Indeed, unless you said that the minds of many were disturbed by the Apology of which I have now resolved to write, and that opinion wavered on both sides, I had determined to remain in the silence I had begun. 2. Let Novatus therefore depart, who stretches out no hand to the erring; let Montanus be cast down with his mad women, hurling headlong into the pit those who lie there, that they may not be raised up. Daily we all sin and slip in some respect. We therefore who are clement toward ourselves do not maintain rigour against others:

nay rather we pray, we beg, we entreat that he either simply confess his own views, or openly defend those of another. I do not want ambiguities of words; I do not want it said to me that which could also be understood otherwise. With unveiled face let us contemplate the glory of the Lord. The people of Israel too once limped on both feet. But Elijah—whose name is interpreted 'strong is the Lord'—said: How long do you limp on both feet? If the Lord is God, walk after Him; but if Baal, follow him. And the Lord Himself says of the Jews: The alien children have lied to me; the alien children have grown old and have limped from their paths. Surely, if there is no suspicion of heresy—as I wish and believe—why does he not speak his own meaning in my words?

What he calls simplicity, I interpret as malice. He wishes to persuade me that he believes purely; let him then also speak purely. And indeed if a single word, or a single meaning, were ambiguous, if two, if three, I would grant pardon to ignorance; nor would I estimate those things which are either obscure or doubtful from things certain and clear. But now, what sort of simplicity is this, to advance with poised step as though over eggs and ears of grain, amid theatrical conjuring tricks—everywhere doubtful, everywhere suspect? You would think that he writes not an exposition of the faith, but a figured controversy. What this man now strives after, we long ago learned in the schools. Our own armour fights against us.

Even if he believes rightly, and speaks circumspectly and timidly, his excessive carefulness rouses suspicion in me. He who walks in simplicity walks confidently. It is foolish to bear infamy in vain. A charge is laid against him of which he has no guilty conscience. Therefore let him confidently deny the charge which hangs entirely on a word, and freely cast the odium upon his adversary. With the same boldness with which the other accuses, let this man defend himself. And when he has said all that he wished, all that he proposed, all that is free from suspicions—if the slander persists, let him grapple hand to hand and drag it into court. I do not want anyone to be patient under suspicion of heresy, lest, among those who do not know his innocence, his dissembling be judged a guilty conscience, if he keep silence;

although it be superfluous to seek his presence and to extort silence from one whose very letters you hold. 3. We all know what he wrote to you, what he charged you with, in what—as you would have it—he slandered you. Answer point by point, tread along the footsteps of this letter, do not pass over even a dot or tittle of the slander. For if you act negligently and—as I believe you when you swear it—by chance pass over anything, at once he will cry out and say: Here, here I hold you bound; here turns the hinge of the whole business. Enemies and friends do not listen alike. He who is an enemy seeks a knot even in a bulrush; a friend judges even crooked things to be straight. The writings of the world declare that the judgements of lovers are blind;

which you, perhaps occupied with the sacred Volumes, have altogether neglected. Never boast of the judgement of friends. That testimony is true which is brought forth by a hostile voice. Otherwise, if a friend speaks on your behalf, he will be thought not a witness, nor a judge, but a partisan. These and such things will your enemies say, who perhaps wish to stir up your bile. But I, whom you have never willingly injured, whose name you are compelled ever to bandy about in your letters, give this counsel: that you either openly proclaim the faith of the Church, or speak as you believe. For this prudent dispensing and balancing of words can deceive the unlearned. The cautious hearer and reader will quickly detect the snares;

and the mines by which truth is undermined he will openly demonstrate in the light. The Arians too, whom you know very well, for a long time, on account of the scandal of the name, pretended to condemn the 'consubstantial,' and smeared the poisons of error with the honey of words. But at length the tortuous serpent revealed itself, and its noxious head, which was covered by the coils of the whole body, was pierced through with the spiritual sword. The Church receives, as you know, the penitent; and, overcome by the number of sinners, while it takes counsel for the deceived flocks, it pardons the wounds of the shepherds. The same custom is now kept in the old and the new heresy, that the people hear one thing, and the priests preach another. 4.

And first, before I insert into this volume your letter—which you wrote to the bishop Theophilus—translated, and show you that I understand your too-cautious prudence, so great as it is, I should like to expostulate with you. What is this so great arrogance, not to answer those who question you about the faith? To regard so great a multitude of brethren, and the choirs of monks who do not commune with you in Palestine, as though they were public enemies? The Son of God, for the sake of one sick sheep, leaving the ninety-nine on the mountains, endured the buffets, the cross, the scourges, and bore it upon His own shoulders, carrying it to heaven and bearing patiently the delicate sinful woman.

You, most blessed pope and fastidious bishop, alone rich, alone wise, alone noble and eloquent, do you look down with wrinkled brow and sidelong eyes upon your fellow-servants, redeemed by the blood of your Lord? Is this what, at the Apostle's bidding, you have learned: Be always ready to give satisfaction to everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that is in you? Suppose that we seek an occasion, and under the pretext of faith sow strife, contrive schism, stir up quarrels. Take away the occasion from those who want an occasion; so that, after you have given satisfaction concerning the faith and loosed all the knots that are tied against you, then you may clearly prove to all that the contest is not one of doctrines, but of ordination.

Unless perhaps by prudent counsel you keep silent when questioned about the faith, lest you should seem to be a heretic once you have given satisfaction. Therefore men ought not to refute all the crimes of which they are accused, lest after they have denied them they be held guilty. But you despise laymen, deacons, and presbyters. For you can, as you boast and brag, make a thousand clergy in a single hour. You have pope Epiphanius, who in a letter openly sent calls you a heretic. Surely you are not greater than he in age, nor in knowledge, nor in merit of life, nor in the testimony of the whole world. If you seek age, you, a young man, write to an old man. If knowledge, you, not so learned, write to a learned man:

although your supporters contend that you are more eloquent than Demosthenes, more acute than Chrysippus, wiser than Plato, and perhaps have even persuaded you of it yourself. Of his life and faith, however, I shall say nothing further, lest I seem to injure you. At that time when the heresy of the Arians and Eunomians possessed the whole East, except for pope Athanasius and Paulinus—when you held no communion with the Westerners and with the confessors in the midst of exile—he, whether as presbyter of the monastery, was heard by Eutychius, or afterwards as bishop of Cyprus, was not touched by Valens. For he was always of such great veneration that the reigning heretics counted it their own disgrace if they persecuted such a man. Write therefore to him. Answer his letter:

let the rest perceive your power of perfecting things, your eloquence, your prudence, lest you should seem to yourself to be the only eloquent one. Why, when provoked by one man, do you turn your arms elsewhere? You are questioned by Palestine, and you answer to Egypt. While others have bleary eyes, you anoint the eyes of those who feel no pain. If you speak to please us things addressed to another, it is proud enough; if something other than what we ask, it is superfluous enough. 5. But you say, the bishop of Alexandria approved my letter. What did he approve? That it spoke well against Arius, against Photinus, against Manichaeus. For who accuses you in this present time of being an Arian? Who now fastens upon you the crime of Photinus or Manichaeus? Those things were long ago amended and shaken off. You were not so foolish as to defend openly a heresy which you knew to be displeasing to the Church.

You knew that if you did this, you would at once have to be removed from your place, and you sighed after the delights of your throne. So you tempered your sentence in such a way that you neither displeased the simple nor offended your own party. You wrote well, but nothing pertaining to the case. Whence did the pontiff of the Alexandrian Church know on what points you were accused? Of what things confession was demanded from you? You ought to have set forth the objections laid against you, and so answered each one. An old story relates: A certain man, when he spoke eloquently and was carried along by the impetus and fluency of his words, yet did not touch the case at all, a prudent hearer and judge said: 'Well, well, but to what end is all this so well?' Unskilled physicians use one salve for all pains of the eyes.

He who is accused on many counts, and in the dilution of the charges passes over some, whatever he keeps silent about, he confesses. Did you not answer the letter of Epiphanius, and yourself set forth the things you would dissolve? No doubt you answered with this confidence: No one is strongly struck down by himself. Choose one of the two, whichever you wish. The option will be given you: either you answered the letter of Epiphanius, or you did not. If you answered, why did you leave out the greatest and most numerous of the things objected to you? If you did not answer, where is that Apology of yours, in which you boast among the simple, and which, as though to those who do not know the case, you scatter abroad here and there? 6. Eight heads of questions concerning the hope of the Christian faith have been objected to you, as I shall presently prove.

You touch only three, and pass over the rest. As for the others, there is a great silence. If you had answered the seven most completely, I would have stuck fast on only one charge: and what you had kept silent about, that I would have held. But now, as though you had caught a wolf by the ears, you can neither hold it nor dare to let it go. Those very three also, as though careless and unconcerned, and as though doing something else: even in matters where there is either no question or a small one, you fly over and graze past them. And so covered and concealed do you advance, that you confess more by your silence than you deny by your disputing. Who cannot say to you at once: If the light that is in you is darkness, how great will that darkness itself be?

If the three little questions, about which you seemed to say something, are not free from suspicion and blame, and are shown to have been written fraudulently and slipperily, what shall we make of the five remaining ones? Concerning these, because no opportunity for ambiguous speech was given, and you could not delude your hearers, you chose to keep entirely silent rather than openly to confess what had been concealed. 7. And first, concerning the book in which he says: 'For just as it is incongruous to say that the Son can see the Father, so it is unfitting to suppose that the Holy Spirit can see the Son.' Second, that souls are bound in this body as in a prison; and that before man came to be in paradise, they dwelt among rational creatures in the heavens.

Whence afterwards, for its own consolation, the soul speaks in the Psalms: 'Before I was humbled, I went astray.' And: 'Return, O my soul, into your rest.' And: 'Bring my soul out of prison,' and other things like these. Third, that he says both the devil and the demons will one day do penance, and will reign with the saints at the last time. Fourth, that he interprets the garments of skins as human bodies, with which Adam and Eve were clothed after their transgression and expulsion from paradise — there being no doubt that before, in paradise, they were without flesh, sinews, and bones. Fifth, that he most openly denies the resurrection of the flesh and the framework of the members, and the sex by which we men are distinguished from women:

both in his exposition of the first Psalm and in many other treatises. Sixth, that he so allegorizes paradise that he takes away the truth of the history; understanding angels in place of the trees, heavenly powers in place of the rivers — and by his tropological interpretation he overturns the whole content of paradise. Seventh, that he supposes the waters which the Scriptures say are above the heavens to be holy and supernal powers, while those above the earth and beneath the earth he reckons to be hostile and demonic. Eighth, which he hurls as his last point, he says that the image and likeness of God, in which man had been created, was lost by him, and that it was not in man after paradise. 8. These are the arrows by which you are pierced through; these the darts by which you are wounded throughout the whole Epistle:

except for this — that, falling at your knees and for a little while laying aside the honor of his priesthood, he prostrates his holy white hair beneath you, and pleads for your salvation, and speaks in these words: 'Grant to me and to yourself that you may be saved, as it is written, From a perverse generation: and withdraw from the heresy of Origen, and from all heresies, most beloved.' And below: 'In defense of heresy you stir up hatreds against me and break the charity which I had toward you — to such a degree that you have made us even repent that we ever communicated with you, who thus defend the errors and dogmas of Origen.' Tell me, distinguished disputant, about the eight chapters to which you should have replied. For a little while I keep silent about the rest.

That first blasphemy — that neither can the Son see the Father, nor can the Holy Spirit see the Son — by what darts of yours has it been pierced through? 'We believe,' he says, 'in the holy and adorable Trinity, of one and the same substance, and coeternal; of the same glory and divinity: anathematizing those who speak of anything great or small, or unequal, or visible in the deity of the Trinity. But just as we call the Father incorporeal, invisible, and eternal: so we call the Son and the Holy Spirit incorporeal, invisible, and eternal.' Unless you said this, you would not hold to the Church: and yet I do not ask whether you said it before; I will not winnow it out, if you have loved those who preached such things;

with whom you were when those who spoke such things were enduring exile: who was that man who, when the presbyter Theon was preaching in the Church that the Holy Spirit is God, stopped up his ears, and, roused, fled outside with his followers, lest he should hear so great a profanity. 'At once,' he says, 'I want him faithful, even by a late conversion.' Wretched Praetextatus, who died while consul-elect. A sacrilegious man, a worshipper of idols, used to say in jest to the blessed Pope Damasus: 'Make me bishop of the city of Rome, and I will at once become a Christian.' Why do you, with long discourse and rambling periods, prove to me that you are not an Arian? Either deny that the man who is accused said this: or if he spoke such things, condemn him for having said it. Do you want to know how great is the ardor of those who believe rightly?

Hear the Apostle: 'Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you otherwise than we have announced, let him be anathema.' But you, that you may extenuate the crime for me, and concealing the name of the criminal, as though all were secure, and no one were being accused of blasphemies, weave together an idle faith with artful speech. Say at once, and let your Epistle have this opening: 'Anathema to him who dared to write such things.' Pure faith brooks no delay. As soon as a scorpion appears, it must straightway be crushed. David, found according to the heart of the Lord, says: 'Did I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and pine away over your enemies? With perfect hatred I hated them.'

For my part, if I had heard my father, my mother, or my brother saying these things against my Christ, I would have torn their blaspheming mouths as those of a rabid dog, and my hand would have been the first upon them. Those who said to father and mother, 'We do not know you,' these fulfilled the will of the Lord. 'He who loves father or mother above Christ is not worthy of him.' 9. It is objected against you that your master, whom you call catholic, whom you defend stubbornly, said: 'The Son does not see the Father; and the Holy Spirit does not see the Son.' And you say to me: 'The Father is invisible, the Son is invisible, the Holy Spirit is invisible': as though the angels also, and the cherubim and seraphim, were not, according to their own nature, invisible to our eyes?

Surely David too, doubting even about the sight of the heavens, says: 'I shall see the heavens, the works of your fingers.' 'I shall see,' not 'I see.' 'I shall see,' when, with face unveiled, I shall have contemplated the glory of the Lord: but now we see in part, and we know in part. The question is whether the Son sees the Father: and you say: 'The Father is invisible.' It is being deliberated whether the Holy Spirit sees the Son: and you reply, 'The Son is invisible.' The matter under discussion is whether the Trinity sees itself in turn — human ears cannot bear so great a blasphemy — and you say, 'The Trinity is invisible.' You wander off into other praises: you discourse at length on those things which no one is inquiring about. You drag the hearer elsewhere, so that you may not speak of what we are asking.

But let these things be said as superfluous. We grant you that you are not an Arian: nay more, that you never were one. We concede that in your exposition of the first chapter there is no suspicion against you, and that you spoke the whole thing purely and simply; with the same simplicity we too speak with you. Did Pope Epiphanius accuse you of being an Arian? Did he charge you with the heresy of Eunomius or of Aerius? This is what is sought throughout the whole Epistle: that you follow the errors of Origen's dogmas, and that you have certain associates of this heresy. Why, being questioned about one thing, do you answer about another, and, as though you were speaking with fools, dissembling the charges contained in the letters, do you repeat what you said in the Church in the presence of Epiphanius?

You are required to give a confession of faith, and you thrust your most eloquent treatises upon those who do not want them? I beg you, reader, mindful of the tribunal of the Lord, and understanding that you yourself will be judged according to your own judgment, that you favor neither me nor my adversary, and that you consider not the persons of the speakers, but the cause. Let us therefore say what we began. 10. You write in your Epistle that, before Paulinianus became a presbyter, Pope Epiphanius never confronted you over the error of Origen. First, the matter is doubtful, and I am disputing about persons. He says he made the charge, you deny it: he produces witnesses, you do not wish to hear those brought forward. He also recalls that there was another meeting, you dissemble about both: he sends you a letter by his cleric, demands a reply:

you keep silent, you dare not so much as mutter, and, being challenged in Palestine, you make your speech at Alexandria. Between him and you, to whom credence is to be accommodated, it is not for me to say. I suppose that not even you yourself would dare, against so great and so eminent a man, to assign truth to yourself and falsehood to him. But it may be that each one speaks for himself. I will call you yourself as a witness against yourself. For if no question concerning the dogmas was being raised: if you had not stirred the old man's stomach: if he had made you no reply, what need was there that, in a single discourse in the Church, you — a man not very eloquent — should dispute about all the dogmas: about the Trinity, about the assumption of the Lord's body, about the cross, about the underworld, about the nature of the angels, about the state of souls, about the resurrection of the Savior and our own:

and on earth — which perhaps you forgot to write — in the presence of the people and of so great and eminent a man, you fearlessly held forth, and ran through everything with one breath? Where are the ancient expositors of the Church, who could scarcely unfold single questions in many volumes? Where is the chosen vessel, the trumpet of the Gospel, the roar of our lion, the thunder of the nations, the river of Christian eloquence, who marvels at, rather than discourses upon, the mystery hidden from generations past, and the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God? Where is Isaiah, the proclaimer of the Virgin, who, succumbing in a single question, says: 'Who shall declare his generation?'

In our age there has been found a not-so-great little manling, who, on all the questions of the Church, with one turn of the tongue flashes more clearly than the sun. If no one was demanding it of you, and all was tranquil, you foolishly chose to undergo such hazards of disputing. If even then you were speaking in satisfaction of the faith, then the ordination of the presbyter is not the cause of the discord — which is agreed to have been established a long time afterward. You have deceived the absent, and your letters flatter foreign ears. 11. We were here, we know everything, when Pope Epiphanius was speaking against Origen in your Church: when, under that man's name, javelins were being hurled against you.

You and your chorus, with dog-like grimace and wrinkled nostrils, scratching your heads, were calling the old man delirious by your nods. Did you not, having sent the archdeacon before the Lord's sepulchre, command that, while disputing such things, he should fall silent? What bishop ever gave such an order to his own presbyter in the presence of the people? When you were going from the Anastasis to the Cross, and a crowd of every age and sex was flocking to him, offering their little ones, kissing his feet, plucking at his fringes; and when he could not move forward a step, but in one spot could scarcely withstand the surge of the flooding people — did you not, tormented with envy against the glorious old man, cry out, and were not ashamed to say to his face, that he was lingering on purpose and by design?

Recall, I beg you, that day when the people, invited at the seventh hour and held back by hope alone — as though they were afterward going to hear Epiphanius — were being detained: what you preached then. Surely against the Anthropomorphites, who in rustic simplicity suppose that God has members, such as are written in the divine books, you spoke raging and indignant: you directed at the old man references to eyes and hands and the trunk of the whole body, wishing to make him suspect of that most foolish heresy. After, weary, with parched mouth, head thrown back and trembling lips, you fell silent, and at last the desire of the whole people was fulfilled — what did the delirious and foolish old man do to you?

He rose, to indicate that he would say but a few words, and, having greeted the Church both with voice and hand, he said: 'All that the brother — in his office a colleague, in age my son — has spoken against the heresy of the Anthropomorphites, he has spoken well and faithfully, and it is condemned by my voice also. But it is fair that, just as we condemn this heresy, we should also condemn the perverse dogmas of Origen.' What laughter, what acclamation of all followed, I think you remember. This is that which you say in your Epistle: that he spoke to the people what he wished, and such things as he wished. Evidently he was raving, who in your kingdom spoke against your opinion. 'What he wished,' you say, 'and such things as he wished.' Either praise it, or condemn it. Why do you here too walk doubtfully?

If the things he spoke were good, why do you not openly proclaim them? If they were bad, why do you not steadfastly rebuke them? And yet, O pillar of truth and faith, who dare to say of so great a man, 'while he spoke to the people what he wished' — let us consider how prudently and modestly, how humbly, he reports about himself. 'When,' he says, 'we too had spoken one day before him, and the present lesson had given occasion, with him listening and the whole Church, we spoke these things concerning the faith and all ecclesiastical dogmas — the very things which always, by the grace of God, we teach unceasingly in the Church and in the catechisms.' 12. I ask, what is this confidence, what is so great a swelling of mind?

All philosophers and orators tear apart Gorgias of Leontini, because he dared, with his chair set up publicly, to promise that he would answer about whatever matter anyone might wish to ask. Were I not restrained by the honor of the priesthood and the reverence of his name, and did I not know that saying of the Apostle, 'I did not know, brethren, that he is a high priest: for it is written, You shall not curse the prince of your people' — with what outcry and indignation of words would I complain about your narrative! Although you yourself extenuate the dignity of your name, when you despise, both in deed and in speech, the father of nearly all the bishops, and the relics of ancient sanctity.

You say that one day, when the present lesson had given occasion, with him listening and the whole Church, you disputed about the faith and all ecclesiastical dogmas. Now is the time to marvel at Demosthenes, who is said to have labored over his most beautiful oration against Aeschines for a long time. In vain do we admire Tully; for Cornelius Nepos relates that in his presence, in almost the same words as it was published, he delivered that defense on behalf of Cornelius, the seditious tribune. Behold our Lysias, behold our Gracchus, and — to bring in something of the more recent men — Quintus Haterius, who had his genius on ready cash, so that he could not even keep silent without a prompter: of whom Caesar Augustus excellently said, 'Our Quintus needs a brake applied.' 13.

Would any prudent man of sound head assert that, in a single discourse in the Church, he had disputed about the End and about all ecclesiastical dogmas? I beg you to show me which is that lesson, seasoned with the whole savor of the Scriptures, whose occasion provoked you, so that you suddenly descended to the peril of displaying your genius. And had not the river of your eloquence overflowed for you, you could have been accused of being unable to speak extempore about all the dogmas. But what is this? You promise one thing, and exhibit another. Now the custom among us is of this sort: that to those who are to be baptized, for forty days, we publicly hand down the holy and adorable Trinity.

If the present lesson provoked you to speak about all the dogmas in a single hour, what need was there to repeat the doctrine of forty days? But if you were reporting those things which you had spoken throughout all of Lent, how did a single lesson provoke you, on a certain day, to speak about all the dogmas? But here too he speaks ambiguously: for it can be that the things which he was accustomed for forty days to hand down in the Church to those to be baptized, these he touched upon under the occasion of a single lesson. For it belongs to the same eloquence both to be able to say few things in many words, and many things in few. This too is given to be understood, that, after a single lesson provoked him, inflamed with the ardor of speaking, for forty days he never kept silent.

But even the idle old man, hanging on his lips, while he desired to learn unheard-of things, almost fell asleep. However that may be, these things are to be tolerated: perhaps these too he spoke simply, after his manner. 14. Let us set down the rest, in which, after the labyrinths of his rambling disputation, he puts not at all a doubtful, but an open opinion, and concludes his marvelous treatises with this ending: 'When we had spoken these things in his presence, and he himself, after us, because of the honor which we showed him beyond all measure, was provoked to speak: he praised our preaching, and marveled at it, and declared it to all to be the catholic faith.' How much honor beyond all measure you showed him, the contumelies displayed beyond measure declare:

when you ordered him through the archdeacon to be silent; and when he lingered among the people, you thundered at him as one greedy for praise. Present things teach about past ones. He, throughout the whole three years thereafter, swallows his own injuries, and, scorning private grudge, asks only for the correction of the faith. You, who abound in resources, and for whom the religion of the whole world is your gain, send those most weighty legates of yours hither and thither, and rouse the sleeping old man to reply. And indeed, to one to whom you had shown so much honor, it was just that he should praise especially your extemporaneous sayings. But because men are sometimes accustomed to praise what they do not approve, and to nourish another's folly with empty acclamations, he not only praised your sayings, but praised and marveled at them:

and, that the marvel too might be no small thing, he declared to all the people that it was of the catholic faith. How truly he said these things, we too are witnesses who heard him, to whom he came breathless, perturbed by your shouts, saying that he had communicated rashly: And being asked by the whole Monastery to return to you from Bethlehem, not bearing the entreaties of so many, he so returned in the evening that in the middle of the night he fled away — and the letters to Pope Siricius prove it: which, if you read them, you will perceive how he marveled at your sayings, and declared them catholic. But we are wearing away trifles, and refuting old-womanish and superfluous ditties with long discourse. 15.

Let us pass on to the second question, in which, as though nothing had been set before him, secure and belching, he pretends to fall asleep, so that he may make his readers drowsy. 'But concerning the rest which pertain to the faith, our discourse was — namely, that of all things visible and invisible, of the heavenly hosts and of earthly creatures, there is one and the same Creator, God, that is, the holy Trinity, according to the blessed David who says: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the spirit of his mouth all their power: which the creation of man also simply shows. For it is he who, having taken slime from the earth, formed man, and by the grace of his own inbreathing gave him a rational soul [Al.

a rational soul], and of free will — not some part of his own nature, according to certain men who impiously preach this, but a proper creation. And concerning the holy angels they likewise believe, according to divine Scripture which says of God: Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire: concerning whom Scripture does not concede to us to believe that they are of an immutable nature, saying: The angels too who did not keep their principality, but forsook their own dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains, in darkness, unto the judgment of the great day: because they were changed, and from their own dignity and glory we have come to know that they passed rather into the order of demons.'

'But that the souls of men come into being from the ruin of the angels, or from their conversion: we have neither ever believed nor taught (for far be it!), and we confess this to be alien to ecclesiastical preaching.' 16. We inquire whether souls, before man came to be in paradise and Adam was formed from the earth, existed among rational creatures; whether they had a proper state, lived, abode, and subsisted; and whether the doctrine of Origen is true, who said that all rational creatures, incorporeal and invisible, if they should become more negligent, gradually slip down to lower things, and, according to the qualities of the places to which they sink, take to themselves bodies. For example, first ethereal, then aerial.

And when they have arrived in the vicinity of the earth, they are surrounded with grosser bodies, and last of all are bound to human flesh; and the demons themselves, who by their own choice withdrew with their prince the devil from the ministry of God, if they should begin a little to come to their senses, are clothed with human flesh, so that, penance being thereafter done, after the resurrection they may return by the same cycle by which they came into flesh, back to the vicinity of God, freed even from their aerial and ethereal bodies; and then all knees bend to God, of those in heaven, on earth, and in the underworld, and God is all in all. Since therefore these things are being inquired about, why do you, leaving aside those things about which the fight is, departing from the arena and the place of the contest, linger in foreign and far-alien disputations? 17.

You believe that one God made all visible and invisible creatures: this even Arius would confess, who says that all things were created through the Son. If you were being charged with the heresy of Marcion — which, introducing one good God and another just God, asserts the former to be the Creator of invisible things, the latter of visible — you would rightly have satisfied me on a question of this kind. You believe that the Trinity is the Creator of the universe. This the Arians and Semi-Arians deny, blasphemously calling the Holy Spirit not Creator, but created. But who at this time accuses you of being an Arian? You say that the souls of men are not a part of God's nature; as though you were now being called a Manichaean by Epiphanius.

You detest those who assert that souls come into being from angels, and who say that their ruin is our substance. Do not dissemble what you know, nor by simplicity feign what you do not have: Neither did Origen ever say that souls come into being from angels, since he teaches that 'angel' is the name of an office, not of a nature. For in his books he says that both the angels, and the thrones, and the dominations, powers, and rulers of the world and of darkness, and every name that is named, not only in the present age but in the age to come, are the souls of those bodies which they have received either by desire or by ministry. He says that the sun itself too, and the moon, and the whole chorus of all the stars, are the souls of rational and once-incorporeal creatures:

which now, made subject to vanity — namely, in fiery bodies, which we, ignorant and untaught, call the luminaries of the world — shall be freed from the slavery of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. Whence also every creature groans together and is in travail. And the Apostle laments, saying: 'Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' It is not for this present time to write against the dogma of the pagans, and the partly Platonic doctrine. Nearly ten years ago, in my Commentaries on Ecclesiastes, and in my exposition of the Epistle to the Ephesians, I think the meaning of my mind was explained to the prudent. 18.

This now I ask — you who speak such great things, who from a single discourse set forth the truth concerning all matters — that you answer those who inquire with a brief and absolute opinion. When God formed man from slime, and by the grace of his own inbreathing bestowed on him a soul: whether that soul existed before and subsisted, and where it had its being — the soul which was afterward given by God's inbreathing; or whether on the sixth day, when the body was formed from slime, it received both being and life by the power of God. About this you are silent, and, dissembling that you know what is being asked, you busy yourself with superfluous questions. You leave Origen untouched, and rage like a bacchant against Marcion, Apollinaris, Eunomius, Mani, Arius, and the inanities of the other heretics.

You are asked for your hand, and you stretch out your foot; and yet the dogma which you hold, you secretly insinuate. Thus you appease us rustics, so that you may not at all displease your own. 19. You say that demons rather than souls come into being from angels, as though the demons themselves too, according to Origen, were not the souls of an aerial body, and as though human souls were not to come hereafter from the demons, if they should come to their senses. You write that angels are mutable, and under what is pious you introduce what is impious; so that, through many sentences, souls come into being not from angels, but from these appellations into which the angels were first changed. I want what I say to be made clearer:

imagine someone of tribunician rank, by his own fault demoted, through each office of the equestrian service, brought down to the rank of a recruit: does he straightway become a recruit from a tribune? No; but first a primicerius, then a senator, a ducenarius, a centenarius, a biarchus, a circitor, an eques, and then a recruit; and although a tribune was once a common soldier, yet from a tribune he is made not a recruit, but a primicerius. Origen teaches that, by Jacob's ladder, rational creatures descend gradually to the lowest step, that is, to flesh and blood: nor can it happen that anyone is suddenly hurled from the number of a hundred to the number one, unless, through each number, as through the steps of a ladder, he reaches all the way to the last;

and that they change as many bodies as they have changed dwelling-places from heaven to earth. These are your tricks and sleights of hand, by which you call us Pelusiotes both beasts of burden and animal men, because we do not receive those things which are spiritual. You Jerusalemites deride even the angels. Your mysteries are dragged into the open, and a dogma woven together from the fables of the pagans is published to Christian ears. That which you marvel at, we long ago despised in Plato. And we despised it, because we have received the foolishness of Christ. We have received the foolishness of Christ, because the foolish thing of God is wiser than men.

It is not unbecoming that Christians and priests of God, as though the matter were one of jest, cling to doubtful words, and weigh out ambiguous opinions, by which the speaker rather than the hearer is deceived? 20. One of your chorus, when he was being held fast by me, that he might say what he thought about the soul — whether it existed before the flesh, or did not exist — answered that the body and soul existed together. I knew the man to be a heretic, seeking snares in his speech. At length I caught him out: from the moment he gave the body its soul, from that time, he said, it was called 'soul' — that which before was called either a demon, or an angel of Satan, or a spirit of fornication, or, on the opposing side, a domination, a power, an administering spirit, or a messenger.

If the soul existed before Adam was formed in paradise, in whatever state and order, and lived, and did something [Al. was] (for we cannot conceive of an incorporeal and eternal thing as motionless and torpid after the manner of dormice), it is necessary that some cause preceded, why that which before was without a body was afterward surrounded by a body. And if it is natural for the soul to be without a body, then it is against nature to be in a body. If it is against nature to be in a body, then the resurrection of the body will be against nature. But the resurrection will not happen against nature; therefore, according to your opinion, the body which rises against nature will not have a soul. 21. You say that the soul is not of the substance of God. Beautifully.

For you condemn the most impious Manichaeus, whom even to name is a pollution. You say that souls do not come into being from angels. I acquiesce for a little, although I know in what sense you said it. Since, therefore, we have learned what you deny, we wish to know what you believe. 'Having taken,' you say, 'slime from the earth, God formed man, and by the grace of his own inbreathing bestowed on him a rational soul; and of free will — not some part of his own nature, according to certain men who impiously preach this, but a proper creation.' See with what a circuit you utter what we are not asking. We know that God formed man from the earth, we know that he breathed into his face, and he became a living soul:

we are not ignorant that the soul is rational, and of its own will, and we know that it is a creation of God. No one doubts that the Manichaean errs, who says that it is the substance of God. This now I ask: This soul — a creation of God, of free will, rational, and not of the substance of the Creator — when was it made? Whether at that time when man was made from slime, and the breath of life was breathed into his face: or whether, having existed before [Al. having been made before], and being and living among rational and incorporeal creatures, it was afterward bestowed by the inbreathing of God? Here you are silent, here you feign yourself simple and rustic; and under the words of Scripture you hide those things which Scripture does not mean.

In that passage where you say that no one inquires whether it is not some part of its own [Al. of the divine] nature—according to certain men who impiously preach this—you ought rather to have said what we all inquire: not the soul that existed beforehand, not the one He had created previously, the one that for a long while had already moved among rational, incorporeal, and invisible creatures. You say none of these things; you parade Manichaeus before us and hide Origen; and just as nurses, when little children beg for food, offer them certain toys in order to distract their minds, so you distract us simple folk toward other matters, so that while we are held by the novelty of another character, we may not seek what we wish to find. 22.

Granted, suppose you do not say this, and that your simplicity contains nothing which you cunningly keep silent. Why then, when you had once begun to speak of the soul, and to trace so great a matter back to the very beginning of the human condition—why, while the discussion still hangs in suspense, do you suddenly leap over to the Angels and to the dispensation of the Lord's body, and, leaving so great a rough patch in the middle, allow us to stick fast, in doubt, in the mire? If God's in-breathing—which you do not wish, and which you now leave ambiguous—is the constitution of the human soul, then whence did Eve obtain a soul, into whose face God did not breathe? I say nothing of Eve, who, built from the man's rib as a type of the Church, ought not after so many ages to endure the slanders of her descendants.

Cain and Abel, the first sprung from the first human beings—whence did they obtain souls? And all the human race thereafter, from what origins of souls is it reckoned? Is it by traduction, as with the brute beasts, so that as the body is generated from a body, the soul too is generated from a soul? Or are rational creatures, sinking little by little to the earth through desire for bodies, at the last bound also to human bodies? Or is it rather (which is the teaching of the Church, according to the words of the Savior) that 'My Father works until now, and I work'? And that saying of Isaiah: 'He who forms the spirit of man within him.' And in the Psalms: 'He who fashions the hearts of each one of them'—daily God manufactures souls; for Him to will is to have done it, and He does not cease to be Creator.

I know what you are accustomed to say against these things, and to set adulteries and incests before us—which is a longer struggle and does not suffer the constraints of this present occasion. The same controversy can be turned back upon you also: and whatever seems unworthy of the Creator of the present time is also, by His granting it, not unworthy. To be born of adultery is not the fault of the one who is born, but of the one who begets. Just as in seeds the earth that nurtures does not sin, nor the seed cast into the furrows, nor the moisture and heat by which the grains, duly tempered, sprout into a shoot, but rather (so to speak) the thief and robber who by fraud and force snatches the seeds, so in the generation of men [Al. of the human race] the earth—that is, the womb—receives what is its own;

and it cherishes what it has received, gives a body to what it has cherished, and articulates into limbs what it has embodied. And amid those secret narrow places of the belly, God's hand always works; and one and the same is the Creator of the body and of the soul. Do not despise the kindness of your Potter, who shaped you and made you as He willed. He is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, who built Himself a house in the womb of the Virgin. Jephthah, numbered among holy men by the Apostle's voice, is the son of a harlot. But hear: from Rebekah and Isaac was Esau begotten, hairy in mind as well as in body, who like good wheat degenerated into tares and wild oats; for the cause of vices and virtues lies not in the seed, but in the will of the one being born.

If it is an offense to be born in human bodies, how is it that Isaac, Samson, and John the Baptist are born of promise? Do you understand what it is to profess one's faith boldly and freely? Suppose I am in error—I openly say what I think. You therefore likewise: either freely profess our view, or steadfastly speak your own. Do not station yourself in my battle line, so that, with feigned rusticity, you may keep yourself safe and, whenever you wish, stab the combatant in the back. This is not the time to write against Origen's doctrines; we will, if Christ grants life, dedicate that to another work. Now the question is whether the one who is accused has answered the questions put to him, and whether his answer is simple and open. 23.

Let us pass on from here to the most famous question concerning the resurrection of the flesh and of the body, in which once again, reader, I wish you to be admonished, that you may know I speak with fear and with the judgment of God, and that you ought so to hear me. For I am not so foolish that, if in his exposition the faith is pure and there is no suspicion of perfidy, I would seek an occasion for accusing, and, while wishing to brand another with fault, would myself be branded with calumny. Read, therefore, what is set down concerning the resurrection of the flesh; and when you have read it, and it has pleased you (for I know it will please the ignorant), suspend your judgment, wait a little, restrain your verdict until the end of our reply; and if afterward it still pleases you, then you may mark us down for calumny.

「His Passion also upon the cross, and His death and burial—all of which He observed in their entirety—and His resurrection in truth, and not in mere semblance, we confess: who, being the firstborn from the dead, the firstfruits of the mass of our bodies—which, laid in the tomb, He raised—carried them up to heaven, granting us the hope of resurrection in the resurrection of His own body: whence we all hope so to rise from the dead, even as He rose. Not in certain other foreign and alien bodies, which are assumed in phantasm, but just as He Himself rose in that body which, among us, was buried in the holy sepulchre:」

「so we too, in these very bodies with which we are now surrounded, and in which we are now buried, by the same principle and condition hope to rise. For the things which, according to the Apostle, are sown in corruption shall rise in incorruption; the things sown in dishonor shall rise in glory. It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body: concerning which the Savior also spoke in His teaching: 'For those who shall be counted worthy of that age and of the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage; for neither can they die any more, but they are like the Angels of God, since they are sons of the resurrection.'」 24.

Again in another part of the Epistle—that is, at the end of his treatises—in order to delude the ears of the unknowing, he weighed out the clamor and pomp of resurrection with this ambiguity of words: 「But neither did we pass over the second, glorious coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is to come in His glory to judge the living and the dead: for He Himself shall raise up all the dead and cause them to stand before His tribunal; and He shall repay each one according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil—namely, either to be crowned in the body, in that it acted chastely and justly, or to be condemned, in that it served alike pleasures and iniquities.」 This is what we read in the Gospel:

'In the consummation of the world, if it were possible, even the elect would be led astray'—which we prove in this very chapter. The untaught crowd hears 'the dead and the buried'; it hears 'the resurrection of the dead, in truth and not in mere semblance'; it hears that 'the firstfruits of the mass of our bodies have, in the Lord's body, reached the heavens'; it hears that 'we shall rise, not in foreign and alien bodies which are assumed in phantasm, but just as the Lord rose in the body which, among us, lay buried in the holy sepulchre: so we too, in these very bodies in which we are now surrounded and buried, shall rise on the day of judgment.' And lest anyone should think this too little, he adds at the end of the chapter:

「And He shall repay each one according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil—namely, either to be crowned in the body, in that it acted chastely and justly, or to be condemned, in that it served pleasures and iniquities.」 Hearing these things, the untaught crowd, amid so loud a sound of the dead, of the buried body, of resurrection, suspects no trick, no ambush. It believes that to be the case which is said. For the ears of the people are holier than the heart of the priest. 25. Again and again, reader, I admonish you to hold fast to patience, and to learn what I too have learned through patience;

and yet, before I unroll the face of the dragon and briefly set forth Origen's dogma concerning the resurrection (for you cannot know the power of the antidote unless you have examined the poisons), observe this carefully and, re-reading cautiously, count it up: that, naming the resurrection of the body nine times, he did not so much as once insert 'of the flesh'; and let it be suspect to you that he deliberately omitted it. Origen says, then, in several places—and especially in his fourth book On the Resurrection, and in his Exposition of the first Psalm, and in the Stromata—that a twofold error is current in the Church, that of our own people and that of the heretics:

「That we, the simple and the flesh-lovers, say that the very same bones and blood and flesh—that is, the countenance and the limbs and the whole framework of the body—shall rise on the last day: namely, that we shall walk with feet, work with hands, see with eyes, hear with ears, and carry around an insatiable belly and a stomach digesting food. And it is a consequence, he says, that we who believe these things should say that we must also eat and drink, must void excrement, must discharge fluid, must take wives, must beget children. For to what purpose the genital members, if there are to be no marriages? To what purpose the teeth, if foods are not to be ground? To what purpose the belly and foods, if, according to the Apostle, both this and these shall be destroyed?—he again crying out:」

'Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God, neither shall corruption possess incorruption.'」 These things he asserts that we innocent and rustic folk say. 「But the heretics—on whose side are Marcion, Apelles, Valentinus, and Manes (a name of madness)—utterly deny the resurrection both of the flesh and of the body, and grant salvation to the soul alone; and they say we vainly assert that we shall rise after the example of the Lord, since the Lord Himself rose only in phantasm, and not only His resurrection but His very nativity—that is, He was seen in semblance rather than truly existed. But to him both opinions are displeasing; he flees both the flesh of Our people and the phantasms of the Heretics, because each party is excessive toward the contrary extreme;」

「some wishing that they shall be the same as they were [Al. shall not be]; others denying the resurrection of bodies altogether. There are, he says, four elements—known also to the philosophers and the physicians—of which all things and human bodies are compacted: earth, water, air, and fire. Earth is to be understood in the flesh, air in the breath, water in the moisture, fire in the heat. When, therefore, the soul, at God's command, has let go this perishable and cold little body, all things little by little return to their parent substances: the flesh slips back into earth, the breath is mingled into air, the moisture returns to the depths, the heat flies up to the upper air. And just as, if you should pour a pint of milk and of wine into the sea and wish again to separate what has been mixed:」

「the wine indeed and the milk which you had poured in do not perish, yet what has been poured out cannot be separated: so the substance of flesh and blood does not indeed perish in its original materials, yet it does not return into its former framework, nor can it be wholly the same as it was.」 But when these things are said, the solidity of the flesh, the fluid of the blood, the thickness of the sinews, the interweaving of the veins, and the hardness of the bones are denied. 26. By another reasoning we confess the resurrection of bodies—of those which have been laid in tombs and dissolved into ashes: of Paul, Paul's; of Peter, Peter's; and to each one his own; for it is not right that souls should have sinned in some bodies and be tormented in others;

nor is it right, before the just Judge, that some bodies should shed their blood for Christ and others be crowned. Who, hearing these things, would suppose that he denies the resurrection of the flesh? And, he says, in each seed there is implanted by God the Craftsman a certain ratio which holds the future materials in the first principles of the pith. And just as so great a magnitude of a tree—trunk, branches, fruits, leaves—is not seen in the seed, yet they are present in the ratio of the seed (which the Greeks call logos); and in a grain of wheat there is within either a pith or a little vein which, when it has been dissolved in the earth, draws to itself the neighboring materials and rises up into stalk, leaves, and ears; and one thing dies, and another rises. For in a grain of wheat the roots, the stem, the leaves, the ears, the chaff are not dissolved:

so also in the ratio of human bodies there remain certain ancient principles of rising, and, as it were, a seedbed of the dead is cherished in the bosom of the earth. But when the day of judgment shall have come, and at the voice of the Archangel and at the last trumpet the earth shall have trembled, the seeds shall at once be set in motion, and in the point of an hour shall make the dead germinate—yet they shall not restore the same flesh, nor in those forms which were before. Do you wish to know that what we say is true? Hear the Apostle: 'But someone will say: How shall the dead rise? and with what body shall they come? Foolish man, what you sow is not the body that shall be, but you sow a bare grain—of wheat, for instance, or of the vine, or of a tree.'

And since we have already spoken in part of the grain of wheat and the seed of trees, let us now discourse on the berry of the grape. The seed is small, so that it can scarcely be held with two little fingers. Where are the roots? Where the twisting interlacement of roots and trunk and shoots? Where the shady arbors of the tendrils, and the beauty of the clusters, bringing forth the wines to come? What is held is dry, and barely even discernible; but in that dry grain, by the power of God and by the hidden ratio of the seed, foaming new wines shall be poured out. Will you grant this to wood, and not grant it to man? What is destined to perish is so adorned; will what is destined to abide not recover its former cheapness?

And do you again want flesh, bones, blood, limbs—so that you would need a barber for your growing hair, so that the nose would discharge mucus, so that the growth of nails would have to be cut back, so that through the lower parts either excrement or lusts would flow out? If you bring forward these absurdities of rustics, and, as though the flesh were an enemy in which we cannot please God, you forget it, then forget too the resurrection of the dead: 'It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory; it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power; it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.' Now we see with eyes, hear with ears, act with hands, walk with feet.

But in that spiritual body we shall, with our whole being, see; with our whole being, hear; with our whole being, work; with our whole being, walk: and the Lord 'shall transfigure the body of our lowliness, to be conformed to the body of His glory.' When He said 'shall transfigure,' that is, the diversity of the members which we now use is denied. Something spiritual and ethereal is promised to us—which neither lies open to the touch, nor is discerned by the eyes, nor is weighed down by heaviness; and it shall be changed according to the variety of the places in which it is to exist. Otherwise, if the flesh and the bodies which were before shall be the same, then again males and females, again marriages; for the men a shaggy brow, a long beard;

for the women smooth cheeks and narrow chests, and the belly and thighs must be enlarged for conceiving and bearing offspring. Infants too shall rise, and old men shall rise: the former needing to be nursed, the latter to be propped up by staffs. Nor let the Lord's resurrection deceive you, O simple ones—the fact that He showed His side and His hands, stood on the shore, walked on the road with Cleopas, and said that He had flesh and bones. That body is endowed with other privileges, since it was not born from a man's seed and the pleasure of the flesh. After His resurrection He ate and drank, and appeared clothed, and offered Himself to be touched, in order that, to the doubting Apostles, He might give assurance of the resurrection. Yet for all that, He does not disguise the nature of the airy and spiritual body.

For He enters through closed doors, and in the breaking of bread vanishes from their eyes. Shall we then also, after the resurrection, have to drink and eat, and after eating have to void excrement? And where will that promise be: 'This mortal must put on immortality'? 27. This is the whole reason why, in the exposition of your faith, in order to deceive the ears of the ignorant, you name the body nine times and not so much as once the flesh—while men think you are confessing flesh in bodies, and that flesh is the same as body. If it is the same, it does not signify something different. For I know you will say this: 'I thought the body was the same as the flesh; I spoke simply.'

Why then do you not rather name the flesh, so as to signify the body, and indifferently sometimes say flesh, sometimes body, so that the body may be shown in the flesh and the flesh in the body? But believe me, your silence is not simple. For the definition of flesh is one thing, that of body another: all flesh is body, not all body is flesh. Flesh, properly speaking, is that which is bound together by blood, veins, bones, and sinews. The body, though it too may be called flesh, is yet sometimes named ethereal or airy, which does not lie open to touch and sight, though for the most part it is visible and tangible. A wall is a body, but not flesh; a stone is a body, but is not called flesh. Hence the Apostle speaks of 'heavenly bodies' and 'earthly bodies.'

The heavenly body is that of the sun, the moon, the stars. The earthly is that of fire, air, water, earth, and the rest, which without a soul are reckoned among these elements. Do you see that we understand your subtleties and the secrets which you speak in inner chambers and among the perfect, and which the common people, standing outside, do not even deserve to hear—do you see that we bring them out into the open? This is that which, with your hand drawn back to your ear and your fingers snapping, you laughingly say: 'All the glory of the king's daughter is within.' And 'The king has brought me into his chamber.' It is plain why you said the resurrection of the body and not of the flesh: namely, so that we untrained folk might think you were saying flesh in the body, while those who are perfect would understand that flesh in the body is being denied.

Finally, the Apostle in his Epistle to the Colossians, wishing to show the body of Christ to be fleshly, and not spiritual, airy, and thin, spoke pointedly, saying: 'And you, when you were once alienated from Christ and enemies in mind by your evil works, He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death.' And again in the same Epistle: 'In whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made by hand, in the putting off of the body of the flesh.' If 'body' signifies only flesh, and is not an ambiguous word, nor can be drawn to different meanings, then it is quite superfluous that he says 'bodily' and 'fleshly,' as though flesh were not understood in the body. 28.