Behold, you correct in Origen's books what he did not write, and you marvel if someone should publish a book which he did not publish? You in a published work can be convicted; he, who published nothing else, more easily lies open to calumny. Bring forward any other work of Pamphilus — nowhere will you find one; this is the only one. Whence, then, shall I know that it is Pamphilus's? Evidently the style and the savour will be able to teach me. I shall never believe that a learned man dedicated the first fruits of his talent to controversies and to infamy. And the very name 'Apologetic' shows an accusation; for nothing is defended except what is under a charge. I will bring forward one thing, to contradict which belongs either to the foolish or to the impudent.
That book which is said to be Pamphilus's contains the beginning of Eusebius's six books on the defence of Origen, up to nearly a thousand lines, and in the rest the writer of the same work brings forward testimonies by which he strives to prove that Origen was a catholic. Eusebius and Pamphilus had so great a concord between them that you would think them men of one soul, and the one took his name from the other. How, then, could they disagree between themselves, so that Eusebius throughout his whole work proves Origen to be of the Arian dogma, and Pamphilus a defender of the Council of Nicaea, which was afterwards? From which it is shown that the little work is either Didymus's, or someone else's, who, having cut off the head of the six books, joined the rest of the members to it.
But let us concede, superfluously, that it is Pamphilus's — Pamphilus's, but not yet a martyr's — for he wrote it before he accomplished his martyrdom. 'And how,' you will say, 'was he worthy of martyrdom?' Evidently, that by martyrdom he might blot out his error; that by the shedding of his blood he might purge his one fault. How many martyrs in the whole world, before they were slain, lay subject to various sins! Shall we therefore defend sins, because those who were afterwards martyrs were first sinners? These things, most beloved brethren, I have dictated to your letter in hasty speech, overcoming my resolve, so as to write against him whose talent I had before praised, preferring to be imperilled in reputation rather than in faith.
My friends have brought this upon me, that if I keep silent I am judged guilty, if I answer I am judged an enemy. Both conditions are hard, but of the two I will choose the one that is lighter: an enmity can be renewed, but blasphemy does not merit pardon. But what labour I have sustained in translating the books 'On First Principles,' I leave to your judgment; since both to change anything from the Greek belongs not to a translator but to a subverter, and to express the same things word for word is by no means the mark of one who wishes to preserve the elegance of the discourse. LXXXV. TO PAULINUS THE PRESBYTER. You provoke me by your voice to write, you terrify me by your eloquence, and in your epistolary style you almost present a Tully.
As to your complaint that I send small and unpolished little letters, this comes not from carelessness but from fear of you, lest, speaking to you too wordily, I should transmit more things deserving of censure. And, to confess simply to your holy mind, at one and the same season for sailing to the West, so many letters are demanded of me at once, that, if I wished to write back to each individual, I could not keep up. Whence it comes that, setting aside the composition of words and the anxiety of writers, I dictate whatever comes to my mouth, and consider you only a friend, not a judge, of my sayings. Your letter set forth two little questions: one, why the heart of Pharaoh was hardened by God, and the Apostle said:
'It is not of him that wills nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy,' and the rest, which seem to take away free will; the other, how they are holy who are born of the faithful, that is, of the baptized, since without the gift of grace afterwards received and kept they cannot be saved. To the first, in the books 'On First Principles,' which at the bidding of our Pammachius I lately translated, Origen answered most powerfully; and, detained by that work, I could not fulfil what I had promised you, and I have once more put off our Daniel to another day.
And indeed, although he is a man most loving to me and distinguished, yet I would have deferred to another time the wish of one man, had not almost the whole brotherhood from that same city demanded it, asserting that many are in peril and are acquiescing in perverse doctrines. Whence I was compelled by necessity to translate books in which there is more of evil than of good, and to keep this measure, that I should neither add anything nor take away, and preserve the Greek faith with Latin integrity. Copies of these you will be able to borrow from the aforesaid brother, although the Greek suffices for you, and you ought not to seek the turbid streams of my little talent, you who drink from the very fountains.
Moreover, since I speak to a learned man, trained both in the divine Scriptures and in secular letters, this I wish your worthiness to be admonished of: do not think that, in the manner of a boorish buffoon, I reprove everything of Origen's that he wrote — which is what his ill-timed zealots charge against me, and, as though I were the philosopher Dionysius, accuse me of having suddenly changed my opinion — but that I repudiate only the depraved dogmas. For I know that by an equal malediction both those are liable who call good things evil, and those who judge evil things good; who make bitter sweet and sweet bitter. Or what is such obstinacy, so to praise anyone's teaching that I should follow also his blasphemy?
Concerning your second question, Tertullian discussed it in his books on monogamy, asserting that the children of the faithful are called holy because they are, as it were, candidates of the faith and are defiled by no filth of idolatry. Consider at the same time that we read of holy vessels in the tabernacle and of the other things that pertain to the rite of the ceremonies, though these certainly could not be holy, since only those things can be holy which perceive and venerate God. It is therefore an idiom of the Scriptures that they sometimes call 'holy' those things which are clean and purified and expiated, just as Bathsheba is written to have been sanctified from her uncleanness, and the temple itself is named a sanctuary. I beseech you, do not by the silent judgment of your mind charge me either with vanity or with falsehood.
For the Lord is witness to my conscience, that from the very outset and beginning of the interpretation the aforesaid necessity drew me back; and you yourself know that what is done with a preoccupied mind is not done well. The little cloak, short in its weaving but most ample in love, I gladly received to warm an old man's head, rejoicing both in the gift and in the giver of the gift. LXXXVI. TO THEOPHILUS. To the most blessed pope Theophilus, Jerome. Recently I received the writings of your beatitude, both amending my long silence and provoking me to my accustomed duty.
Wherefore, although through the holy brothers Priscus and Eubulus your word to us has ceased, yet, because we see that they, stirred by zeal for the faith, have swiftly traversed the regions of Palestine and pursued the scattered petty princes even to their hiding places, we write briefly, that the whole world exults and glories in your victories, and the rejoicing throng of the peoples beholds the standard raised at Alexandria against the heresy and the trophies rising up. Well done for your valor, well done for your zeal for the faith! You have shown that until now your silence was a dispensation, not a consent. For I speak freely to your reverence: we grieved that you were too patient, and, ignorant of the master's steering, we chafed at the ruin of those being lost.
But for this very reason you long lifted up your hand and held back the blow, that you might strike the more forcefully. Concerning the reception of a certain person, you ought not to grieve against the bishop of this city, because you enjoined nothing in your letters, and it would have been rash to pass sentence about that which he did not know; yet I think that he neither dares nor wishes to injure you in any respect. LXXXVII. LETTER OF THEOPHILUS TO JEROME. To the most beloved and most loving brother Jerome, Theophilus the bishop. The holy bishop Agatho, with the most beloved deacon Athanasius, has been sent on an ecclesiastical cause, and when you have learned it, I do not doubt that you will approve our zeal and glory in the victories of the Church.
For certain wicked and frenzied men, desiring to sow and establish the heresy of Origen in the monasteries of Nitria, have been cut down by the prophetic sickle, because we remembered the apostle who admonishes: 'Rebuke them sharply.' Hasten therefore, you also being about to receive a part of this reward, to amend by your discourses whoever have been deceived. And we desire, if it can be done, in our days to preserve the catholic faith and the rules of the Church together with the peoples subject to us, and to lull to sleep all new doctrines. LXXXVIII. TO THEOPHILUS. To the most blessed pope Theophilus, Jerome.
The letters of your beatitude have bestowed on me a twofold grace, in that they had as their bearers the holy and venerable bishop Agatho and the deacon Athanasius, and that they demonstrated zeal for the faith against a most wicked heresy. The voice of your beatitude has resounded throughout the whole world, and, all the churches of Christ rejoicing, the poisons of the devil have fallen silent. No longer does the ancient serpent hiss, but, coiled and disemboweled, lurking in the darkness of its caverns, it cannot endure the bright sun. Indeed, concerning this matter, even before you wrote, I had sent letters to the West, disclosing to men of my own tongue the tricks of the heretics.
And I think it was done by the dispensation of God that at that very time you too were writing to pope Anastasius and, while unaware, were strengthening our judgment. But now, admonished by you, we shall apply the more zeal, that both here and afar we may recall the simple from error, and may not fear to incur the hatred of certain men — for we ought not to please men, but God — although the heresy is defended by them more ardently than it is assailed by us. And at the same time I beseech that, if you have any synodal decrees, you send them to me, that, strengthened by the authority of so great a pontiff, I may more freely and confidently open my mouth for Christ.
The presbyter Vincentius, two days before I dispatched this letter, came from the city and humbly greets you, and with frequent discourse celebrates Rome and all Italy, freed — after Christ — by your letters. Strive therefore, most blessed pope, and on every occasion write to the western bishops, that they may not cease to cut down with the sickle the sharp evil sprouts, as you yourself indicate. LXXXIX. LETTER OF THEOPHILUS TO JEROME. To the most beloved and most loving lord and brother Jerome the presbyter, Theophilus the bishop.
I have learned — as your holiness also knows — of the monk Theodore, and I have approved his zeal, because, when he was setting out from us to sail to Rome, he was unwilling to depart before he had embraced and visited you and the holy brothers who are with you in the monastery, as though they were his own vitals. When you receive him, rejoice for the tranquility of the Church. For he has seen all the monasteries of Nitria, and can report the continence and gentleness of the monks — how, the followers of Origen having been extinguished and put to flight, the peace of the Church has been restored and the discipline of the Lord is preserved. And would that among you too they might lay aside that hypocrisy, they who are said secretly to undermine the truth! It is because the brothers in these regions think ill of them that they have provoked me to write these things.
Wherefore beware and flee such men, and, according to what is written, 'if anyone does not bring to you the ecclesiastical faith, do not even say hail to him.' Although I do this superfluously in writing these things to you, who are able even to recall others from error, yet it does no harm that even prudent and learned men be admonished out of solicitude for the faith. I wish all the brothers who are with you to be greeted in my name. XC. LETTER OF THEOPHILUS TO EPIPHANIUS. To the most beloved lord, brother and fellow-bishop Epiphanius, Theophilus, greeting in the Lord Christ. The Lord, who spoke to the prophet:
'Behold, I have set you this day over the nations and the kingdoms, to root up and to dig under and to scatter, and again to build and to plant,' bestows the same grace upon his Church at each several season, that the whole body may be preserved through patience, and that in nothing may the poisons of the heretics' dogmas prevail. And this indeed we now see fulfilled. For the Church of Christ, which has no spot nor wrinkle nor any such thing, has cut down with the evangelical sword the vipers of Origen as they came forth from their caverns, and has freed the holy band of the monks of Nitria from the pestilent contagion. A few things, therefore, of what has been done I have set down in the general letter which I have addressed to all in common, as far as the straitness of the time allowed.
It belongs to your worthiness, which has often fought before us in contests of this kind, both to console those set in the battle and to gather the bishops of the whole island, and to send synodal letters both to us and to the holy bishop of the city of Constantinople and, if you judge any others [fit], that by the consent of all both Origen himself by name and the wicked heresy may be condemned. For I have learned that the slanderers of the true faith — Ammonius, Eusebius, and Euthymius — raving with a new frenzy for the heresy, have sailed to Constantinople, that they may both deceive new men, if they can prevail over any, and join themselves to the old associates of their impiety.
Let it therefore be your care to lay open the order of the matter to all the bishops throughout Isauria and Pamphylia and of the other provinces which are near at hand, and, if you judge it worthy, to append our letter, that all, gathered together in spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, may deliver them over to Satan for the destruction of the impiety which possesses them. And that your writings may reach Constantinople the more swiftly, send a diligent man and someone of the clergy, just as we too have sent, from the very monasteries of Nitria, fathers of the monks together with other holy and most continent men, who can instruct all in person as to what has been done.
And above all we beseech that you pour out earnest prayers to the Lord, whereby we may obtain the victory even in this contest. For no small joy has pervaded the hearts of the peoples, both in Alexandria and throughout all Egypt, from the time that a few men were cast out, that the body of the Church might remain pure. I greet the brothers who are with you; the people who are with us greet you in the Lord. XCI. LETTER OF EPIPHANIUS TO JEROME. To the most loving lord, son and brother Jerome the presbyter, and to all the brothers who dwell with you in the monastery, Epiphanius, greeting in the Lord.
The general letter which was written to all catholics pertains especially to you, who, having zeal for the faith against all heresies, particularly turn away from the disciples of Origen and of Apollinaris; whose poisoned roots and deep-fixed impiety almighty God has dragged forth into the open, so that, betrayed at Alexandria, they might wither throughout the whole world. For know, dearest son, that Amalek has been destroyed to the very root, and on the mount of Rephidim the trophy of the cross has been raised. And, as Israel conquered while the hands of Moses were stretched on high, so the Lord strengthened his servant Theophilus, that above the altar of the Alexandrian Church he might set up the standard against Origen, and that there might be fulfilled in him what is said:
'Write this sign, for I will utterly blot out the heresy of Origen from the face of the earth, together with Amalek himself.' Lest I seem to repeat the same things again and to weave a more prolix letter, I have transmitted to you the very writings, that you may be able to know what he has written to us, and how great a good the Lord has granted to my latter age, that what I always proclaimed might be proved by the testimony of so great a pontiff. Now, moreover, I think that you too have published some work, and, according to my earlier letter by which I had exhorted you concerning this matter, have polished books which the men of your tongue may read.
For I hear that even to the West the shipwrecks of certain men have reached, who, not content with their own perdition, wish to have more partners of death, as though the multitude of sinners diminished the crime, and the flame of Gehenna did not grow the greater by the number of the logs. The holy brothers who serve the Lord with you in the monastery we greet most abundantly, both with you and through you. XCII. (SYNODAL LETTER OF THEOPHILUS SENT TO THE PALESTINIAN AND CYPRIAN BISHOPS.) This letter, uniform in wording, was sent to the Palestinian and to the Cyprian bishops. We have taken the opening of each. To the Palestinians:
To the most beloved lords, brothers and fellow-bishops Eulogius, John, Zebinnus, Auxentius, Dionysius, Gennadius, Zeno, Theodosius, Dictenius, Porphyrius, Saturninus, Alanus, Paul, Ammonius, Helianus, another Paul, Eusebius, and to all who are gathered at the dedication festival of Aelia [Jerusalem], catholic bishops, Theophilus says greeting in the Lord. To the Cyprians:
To the most beloved lords and brothers and fellow-bishops Epiphanius, Marcianus, Agapetus, Boethius, Helpidius, Eutasius, Norbanus, Macedonius, Aristo, Zeno, Asiaticus, Heraclides, another Zeno, Cyriacus, Aphroditus, Theophilus, greeting in the Lord. I judge that, before our letter, swift rumor has brought to you that certain men in the monasteries of Nitria attempted to sow the heresy of Origen and to offer to the most pure company of the monks a turbid draught to drink. For which reason we were compelled, fearing for the very places, by the prayers of the saints and especially of the fathers and presbyters who preside over the monasteries, lest, while we delay to go, those who flatter itching ears should pervert the hearts of the simple.
Their nobility lies in crime, and their frenzy is so rabid toward every deed which inexperience and pride may suggest, that they rush headlong and do not understand their own measure, but, wise in their own eyes — which is the fount of error — they think themselves the greatest, which they are not; and at length breaking out into such madness that they turned their hands against themselves and cut off their own limbs with the sword, thinking, by the verdict of foolish thought, that they were thereby proved religious and humble, if they went about with mutilated forehead and severed ears. Of whom one even bit off part of his tongue, that he might show even to the ignorant how timidly he kept the laws of God, and might display, by that very impediment of hindered speech, with how great a frenzy of heart he seethed.
Since I found that these men, with certain foreigners who dwell for a short while in Egypt, had migrated to your province — men poor in grace and enticed with money, who ought to have sought their food by hand and labor —, that there might be fulfilled in them what is written: 'the impious walk round about,' and that they wish, in the likeness of the Jews, rather to be first consumed by fire than to see the writings of Origen condemned, in a manner proclaiming:
'We have made a lie our hope, and by a lie let us be protected' — lest perchance even in those parts they should disturb the minds of the people and of the monks, and those who ought to have been rebuked for their crime and to have done penance should turn against us and by the burrows of lies withdraw the truth, I judged it most just to write to your holiness and briefly to announce that, the neighboring bishops having been gathered — those who properly filled the number of a synod — they proceeded to Nitria. And in the presence of many fathers of monks, who had flocked together from almost all Egypt, the books of Origen were read, in which he toiled with impious labor, and by the consent of all were condemned.
For when the volume Peri Archon — which we may call 'On First Principles' — was being read, in which it is written that the Son, compared with us, is truth, but, set beside the Father, is a lie; and again: 'by as much as Paul and Peter differ from the Savior, by so much is the Savior less than the Father'; and again: 'the kingdom of Christ shall at some time come to an end, and the devil, freed from all the filth of sins, shall be adorned with equal honor and shall be made subject together with Christ'; and, in another book which is entitled 'On Prayer': 'we ought not to pray to the Son, but to the Father alone, nor to the Father together with the Son' — we stopped our ears and with one accord condemned both Origen and his disciples, lest a little leaven should corrupt the whole lump.
Why should I speak of the resurrection of the dead, in which he plainly blasphemes and says that, after many returns of the ages, our bodies shall little by little be reduced to nothing and dissolved into thin air; and, lest we should think this a small matter, he added: 'the rising body will be not only corruptible but mortal' — so that, forsooth, the Lord and Savior in vain destroyed the devil, who held the dominion of death, if indeed even after the resurrection corruption and mortality lord it over human bodies dissolved into nothing?
Concerning the angels also he has fabricated certain rash things: that all the ministries of the service of God in heaven were not created in heaven, but by diverse falls and downfalls obtained various names of offices, and that ancient causes went before, by which they increased or diminished. And amid these things, as though impatient of grief, while the people cried out 'the Jerusalem which is above is free,' he contended that in it there is nothing pure, nothing free from vices and secure by perpetual virtue. Nor did the profane disputation about the angels stop here; but, advancing in crime:
'Just as the demons,' he says, 'sitting beside the altars of the gentiles were fed by the reek of the sacrifices, so also the angels, delighted by the blood of the victims which Israel — the type of spiritual things — offers, and by the smoke of the incense, kept dwelling near the altars and were nourished by food of this kind.' Who would not suppose that he could find nothing further into which his crazed mind might plunge? He also attributes the foreknowledge of things to come, which is known to the Lord alone, to the motions of the stars, so that from their course and the variety of their configurations the demons might know the future and either perform certain things or assign them to be performed by these. From which it is manifest that he approves idolatry and astrology and the various deceptions of the heathens' fraudulent divination.
These things and things of this kind certain men held and taught under the name of monks, dwelling in the monasteries; and when they took it ill that the author of so great an evil was condemned along with his error, they joined to their company certain destitute men and slaves solicited by the hope of the belly, and, forming a wedge, attempted to do violence to me as I sat at Alexandria, wishing to bring into the open the cause of Isidore, which we, out of modesty and for the discipline of the Church, were reserving to the judgment of the bishops, and to thrust into the ears of the heathen things shameful to tell, that sedition and tumults might be stirred up against the Church; whose counsels God brought to nothing, as he did those of Ahithophel.
But their whole effort was this: that under the name of Isidore they might defend the heresy — Isidore, who had been separated from the communion of the saints by many bishops for various causes. Meanwhile a woman and her son, a youth, are brought forward by them into the midst, and are placed in a most frequented spot of the city which, unless I am mistaken, they call the Genium. They cry out whatever they believed to be to our discredit, haranguing the gentile populace against us with such things as the ears of the unbelievers would gladly hear. Among which, concerning the destruction of the Serapeum and of the other idols, urging them as it were to flight, they vociferate: 'The rites of the temples exist no longer, because of the monasteries of Nitria.'
But all these things they did, thinking that the throngs of the unbelievers would be joined to them and that Isidore would be snatched away from the judgment of the bishops, lest he be heard together with the mother and the boy, and that they might stir up hatred against us — us who wished him to be patiently heard in the church, with the clergy present and the faithful people, and that in his person the ecclesiastical rule be preserved with all fear of God and gentleness. For we are not his enemies, nor in any matter have we injured either him or the few slaves and fugitives who are associates in his affairs; but we have preferred the fear of God and the standard of evangelical strictness to former familiarity and intimacy.
Who, when he had been summoned to the inquiry before the bishops, that he might state his case to all the clergy, and when he was rather frequently called to the cause, began to slip away and to defer the day from one day to another, in that hope, forsooth — as the talk of many recounted — that he might little by little buy off the woman's silence. And by doing this he wounded the minds of the holy brothers. For who doubts that confidence is a mark of a good conscience, but that flight and dissimulation — to speak more sparingly and to bring forth openly what I feel — is judged by very many to be a kind of confession? Especially since the woman, having presented petitions, was pressing a grave charge upon him, and this was bandied about among the peoples — that he was greatly striving that the matter should reach its end by any means whatever rather than by the judgment of the bishops.
Which woman, without my knowledge, by the zeal of his friends was even entered upon the roll of widows, that she might solace the grief of her wound with the refreshments of alms. And after I had learned this from a certain deacon, who fearlessly announced that the woman had been enrolled in the number of widows so that she might keep silent about what she had charged, I at once, through many persons, exposed the informer to Isidore and admonished him to prepare himself for the judgment of the bishops, the woman at least being separated from the fellowship of the rest, until we should see the outcome of the case. For it was not lawful that she should be sustained by the resources of the Church, who had either rashly spoken or else kept silent so great a crime. This is the standard-bearer of the heretical faction;
as their leader — or rather as their paymaster — those men whom we described at the beginning of the letter make use of him, who is able to provide food and to sustain the discomforts of their wandering. Where frenzy and slaughter are needed, they require the help of no other; where expenses and various outlays are needed, nothing is more serviceable than this bestower. They grieve against me and rage, because I did not permit the solitudes and dwellings of the monks, in which there is holy conversation, to be polluted by the impious dogmas of Origen. Of whom, to pass over the rest, in the books of the Resurrection which he wrote to Ambrose — imitating the manner of the dialectician in disputing, in which there was questioning and answer — the preacher of the magic art [speaks] in these words:
'The magic art does not seem to me to be the name of any subsisting thing, but even if it does exist, it is by no means of evil operation, nor such as could be held in contempt.' In saying which, he plainly contradicts the Lord, who speaks through the prophet: 'Stand now in your enchantments, in the multitude of your sorceries, which you have learned from your youth, if perchance they may profit you. You have labored in your counsels; let the astrologers of heaven stand and save you, who gaze upon the stars; let them announce to you what shall come upon you.'