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Book III.
Book III.
The two first books formed a complete whole, but it was intimated that there might be more to come when Jerome should have received Rufinus' work in full. The two first books were brought to Rufinus by the captain of a merchant-ship trading with Aquileia, together with a copy of Jerome's friendly letter which had been suppressed by Pammachius. The bearer had (as stated by Rufinus, though Jerome mocks at this as impossible) only two days to wait. Chromatius the Bishop of Aquileia urged that the strife should now cease, and prevailed so far as that Rufinus made no public reply. He wrote a private letter, however, to Jerome, which has not come down to us, and which does not seem, from the extracts given in c. 4, 6, etc., to have been of a pacific tenor. Its details may be gathered from Jerome's reply. Jerome intimates that it sought to involve him in heresy, that it renewed and aggravated the former accusations, speaking of him in language fit only for the lowest characters on the stage; and that it declared that, if its writer had been so minded, he could have produced facts which would have been the destruction of his adversary. Jerome, though receiving some expressions of the desire of Chromatius that he should not reply (perhaps also the regretful expostulation of Augustin,-Jer. Letter cx, 6, Aug. Letter 73) declared that it was impossible for him to yield. He could not refrain from defending himself from a capital charge, nor could he spare the heretics. Peace could only come by unity in the faith.
1. Your letter is full of falsehood and violence. I will try not to take the same tone.
2. Why cannot we differ as friends? Why do you, by threats of death, compel me to answer?
3, 4. Your shameful taunt that I wished to get copies of your Apology by bribing your Secretary is an imputation to me of practices which are your own.
5. Eusebius should not have accused you; but your charges against him will not stand.
6. You taunt me with boasting of my eloquence. Will you boast of your illiteracy?
7, 8. You wish first to praise, then to amend me, but both with fisticuffs; and make it impossible for me to keep silence.
9. Why cannot you join with me in condemning Origen, and so put an end to our quarrel?
10. The assertion that you had only two days for your answer is a fiction.
11. Your translation, contrariwise to my Commentaries, vouches for the soundness of Origen.
12. You try to shield Origen by falsely attributing the Apology for him to Pamphilus.
13. In my Commentaries my quotation of opposite opinions shows that neither is mine.
14. Had you translated honestly, you would not have had Origen's heresies imputed to you.
15. You say the Bishops of Italy accept your views on the Resurrection. I doubt it.
16. You rashly say that you will agree to whatever Theophilus lays down. You have to consider your friendship for Isidore now his enemy.
17, 18. You speak of the Egyptian Bishop Paul. We received him, though an Origenist, as a stranger; and he has united himself to the orthodox faith. Not only Theophilus but the Emperors condemn Origen.
19. Against Vigilantius I wrote only what was right. I knew who had stirred him up against me.
20. As to the letter of Pope Anastasius condemning you, you will find that it is genuine.
21. Siricius who is dead may have written in your favour; Anastasius who is living writes to the East against you.
22. My departure from Rome for the East had nothing blameable in it as you insinuate.
23. Epiphanius, it is true, gave you the kiss of peace; but he showed afterwards that he had come to distrust you.
24. When we parted as friends I believed you a true believer; no one was sent to Rome to injure you.
25. You swear that you dad not write my pretended retractation. Your style betrays you, and I have given a full answer about my translations already.
26. You bid me beware of falsification and treachery. You warn me against yourself.
27. There is nothing inconsistent in praising a man for some things and blaming him in others. You have done it in my case.
28-31. My ignorance of many natural phenomena is no excuse for your ignorance as to the origin of souls. You ought, according to your boasting dream to know everything. The thing of most importance was forgotten in your cargo of Eastern wares.
32. Your dream was a boast: mine of which you accuse me humbled me.
33. It was not I who first disclosed your heresies, but Epiphanius long ago and Aterbius before him.
34-36. As to our translations of the eri rxwn, yours was doing harm, and mine was necessary in self-defence. You should be glad that heresy is exposed.
37. Your Apology for Origen did not save him but involved you in heresy.
38. My friendly letter was to prevent discord: the other to crush false opinions.
39, 40. Pythagoras was rightly quoted by me. I produce some of his sayings.
41, 42. You threaten me with destruction. I will not reply in the same way. Personalities should be excluded from controversies of faith.
43, 44. The way of peace is through the wisdom taught in the Book of Proverbs, and through unity in the faith.
I have read the letter(1) which you in your wisdom have written me. You inveigh against me, and, though you once praised me and called me true partner and brother, you now write books to summon me to reply to the charges with which you terrify me. I see that in you are fulfilled the words of Solomon:(2) "In the mouth of the foolish is the rod of(3) contumely," and(4) "A fool receives not the words of prudence, unless you say what is passing in his heart;" and the words of Isaiah:(5) "The fool will speak folly, and his heart will understand vain things, to practise iniquity and speak falsehood against the Lord." For what need was there for you to send me whole volumes full of accusation and malediction, and to bring them before the public, when in the end of your letter you threaten me with death if I dare to reply to your slanders-I beg pardon-to your praises? For your praises and your accusations amount to the same thing; from the same fountain proceed both sweet and bitter. I beg you to set me the example of the modesty and shamefacedness which you recommend to me; you accuse another of lying: cease to be a liar yourself. I wish to give no one an occasion of stumbling, and I will not become your accuser; for I have not to consider merely what you deserve but what is becoming in me. I tremble at our Savior's words.(6) "Whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe in me to stumble, it were better for him that a great mill stone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea;" and(7) "Woe unto the world because of occasions of stumbling: for it must needs be that occasions arise; but woe to the man through whom the occasion cometh." It would have been possible for me too to pile up falsehoods against you and to say that I had heard or seen what no one had observed, so that among the ignorant my effrontery might be taken for veracity, and my violence for resolution. But far be it from me to be an imitator of you, and to do thyself what I denounce in you. He who is capable of doing filthy things may use filthy words.(8) "The evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil; for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." You may count it as good fortune that one whom you once called friend but now accuse has no mind to make vile imputations against you. I say this not from any dread of the sword of your accusation, but because I prefer to be accused than to be the accuser, to suffer an injury than to do one. I know the precept of the Apostle:(9) "Dearly beloved avenge not yourselves but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written Vengeance is mine, I will repay saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger feed him, if he thirst give him drink; for in so doing thou shall heap coals of fire upon his head." For he that avenges himself cannot claim the vindication of the Lord.
2. But, before I make my answer to your letter, I must expostulate with you; you who are first in age among the thanks, good presbyter, follower of Christ; is it possible for you to wish to kill your brother, when even to hate him is to be a homicide? Have you learned from your Saviour the lesson that if one strike you on the one cheek you should turn to him the other also? Did not he make answer to the man who struck him,(10) "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil, but if well, why smitest thou me?" You threaten me with death, which can be inflicted on us even by serpents. To die is the lot of all, to commit homicide only of the weak man. What then? If you do not kill me shall I never die? Perhaps I ought to be grateful to you that you turn this necessity into a virtue We read of Apostles quarrelling, namely Paul and Barnabas who were angry with each other on account of John whose surname was Mark; those who were united by the bonds of Christ's gospel were separated for a voyage; but they still remained friends. Did not the same Paul resist Peter to the face because he did not walk uprightly in the Gospel? Yet he speaks of him as his predecessor in the Gospel, and as a pillar of the church; and he lays before him his mode of preaching,(11) `lest he should be running, or had run in vain.' Do not children differ from parents and wives from husbands in religions matters, while yet domestic affections remain unimpaired. If you are as I am, why should you hate me? Even if you believe differently, why should you wish to kill me? Is it so, that whoever differs from you is to be slain? I call upon Jesus who will judge what I am now writing and your letter also, as a witness upon my conscience, that when the reverend bishop Chromatius begged the to keep silence, my wish was to do so, and thus to make an end of our dissensions, and to overcome evil with good. But, now that yon threaten me with destruction, I am compelled to reply; otherwise, my silence will be taken as an acknowledgment of the crime, and you will interpret my moderation as the sign of an evil conscience.
3. The dilemma in which I am placed is of your making: it is brought out, not from the resources of dialectics, of which you are ignorant, but from among the tools of the murderer and with an intention like his. If I keep silence, I am held guilty: if I speak, I become an evil speaker. You at once forbid me to answer and compel me. Well, then; I must shun excess on both sides. I will say nothing that is injurious; but I must dissipate the charges made against me, for it is impossible not to be afraid of a man who is prepared to kill you. And I will do this in the order of what you have now set before me, leaving the rest as they are in those most learned books of yours which I confuted before I had read them.
You say that `you sent your accusation against me not to the many but only to those who had been offended by what I had said; for one ought to speak to Christians not for display but for edification.' Whence then, I beg you to consider, did the report of your having written these books reach me? Who was it t that sowed them broadcast through Rome and Italy and the islands of the coast of Dalmatia? How did these charges against me ever come to my ears, if they were only lurking in your desk, and those of your friends? How can you dare to say that you are speaking as a Christian not for display but for edification when you set yourself in mature age to say things against your equal which a murderer could hardly say of a thief, or a harlot against one of her class, or a buffoon against a farce-player? You have for ever so long been labouring to bring forth these mountains of accusations against me and sharpening these swords to pierce my throat. Your cries have been as loud as Ceres' complaints(12) or a driver's shouts to his horses. Was this to make all the provinces through which they resounded read the praise you wrote of me? and recite your panegyrics upon me in every street, every corner, even in the weaving-shops of the women? This is the religious restraint and Christian edification of which you speak. Your reserve, your reticence is such that men come to me from the West, crowd upon crowd, and tell me of your abuse of me; and this, though only from memory, yet with such exact agreement that I was obliged(13) to make my answer, not to your writings which I bad not then read, but to what was said to be contained in them, and to intercept with the shield of truth the missiles of mendacity which were flying about through all the world.
4. Your letter goes on:
"Pray do not trouble yourself to give a large sum of gold to bribe my secretary, as your friends did in the case of my papers containing the eri rxwn, before they had been corrected and brought to completion, so that they might more easily falsify documents which no one possessed, or at least very few. Accept the document which I send you gratis, though you would be glad to pay a large sum to buy it."
I should have thought you would be ashamed of such a beginning of your work. What! I bribe your Secretary! Is there any one who would attempt to vie with the wealth of Croesus(14) and Darius?(15) who is there that does not tremble when he is suddenly confronted with a Demaratus(16) or a Crassus?(17) Have you become so brazen-faced, theft you put your trust in lies and think lies will protect you and that we shall believe every fiction which you choose to frame? Who then was it who stole that letter in which you were so highly praised, from the cell of our brother Eusebius? Whose artfulness was it, and whose accomplices, through which a certain document was found in the lodgings of that Christian woman Fabiola and of that wise man Oceanus, which they themselves had never seen? Do you think that you are innocent because you can cast upon others all the imputations which properly belong to you? Is every one who offends you, however guiltless and harmless he may be, at once held to become a criminal? You think so, I suppose, because you are possessed of that through which the chastity of Danaë(18) was broken down, that which had more power with Gihazi than his master's sacred character, that for which Judas betrayed his Master.(19)
5. Let us understand what was the wrong done by my friend(20) who, you say `falsified parts of your papers when they had not yet been corrected nor carried to completion, and it was the more possible to falsify them because very few if any as yet possessed them.'(21) I have already said, and I now repeat, with protestations in the presence of God, that I did not approve his accusing you, nor of any Christian accusing another Christian; for what need is there that matters which can be corrected or set right in private should be published abroad to the stumbling and fall of many? But since each man lives for his own gullet, and a man does not by becoming your friend become master of your will, while I blame the accusing of a brother even when it is true, so also I cannot accept against a man of saintly character this accusation of falsify-ing your papers. How could a man who only knows Latin change anything in a translation from the Greek? Or how could he take out or put in anything in such books as the eri rxwn, in which everything is so closely knit together that out part hangs upon another, and anything that may be taken out or put in to suit your will must at once show out like a patch on a garment? What you ask me to do, it is for you to do yourself. Put on at least a small measure of natural if not of Christian modesty in your assertions; do not despise and trample upon your conscience, and imagine yourself justified by a show of words, when the facts are against you. If Eusebius bought your uncorrected papers for money in order to falsify them, produce the genuine papers which have not been falsified: and if you can shew that there is nothing heretical in them, he will become amenable to the charge of forgery. But, however much you may alter or correct them, you will not make them out to be catholic. If the error existed only in the words or in some few statements, what is bad might be cut off and what is good be substituted for it. But, when the whole discussion(22) proceeds on a single principle, namely, the notion that the whole universe of reasonable creatures have fallen by their own will, and will hereafter return to a condition of unity: and that again from that starting point another fall will begin: what is there that you can amend, unless you alter the whole book? But if you were to think of doing this, you would no longer be translating another man's work but composing a work of your own.
However, I hardly see which way your argument tends. I suppose you mean that the papers being uncorrected and not having undergone a final revising were more easily falsified by Eusebius. Perhaps I am stupid; but the argument appears to me somewhat foolish and pointless. If the papers were uncorrected and had not undergone their final revision, the errors in them mast be imputed not to Eusebius but to your sloth and delay in putting off their correction; and all the blame that can be laid upon him is that he circulated among the body of Christians writings which you had intended in course of time to correct. But if, as you assert, Eusebius falsified them, why do you put forward the allegation that they were uncorrected, and that they had gone out before the public without their final revision? For papers whether corrected or uncorrected are equally susceptible of falsification. But, No one, you say possessed these books, or very few. What contradictions this single sentence exhibits! If no one bad these books, how could they be in the hands of a few? If a few possessed them, why do you state falsely that there were none? Then, when you say that a few had them, and by your own confession the statement that no one had them is overthrown, what becomes of your complaint that your secretary was bribed with money? Tell us the secretary's name, the amount of the bribe, the place, the intermediary, the recipient. Of course the traitor has been cast off from you, and one convicted of so great a crime has been separated from all familiarity with you. Is it not more likely to be true that the copies of the work which Eusebius obtained were given him by those few friends whom you speak of, especially since these copies agree and coincide with one another so completely that there is not the difference of a single stroke. We might ask also whether it was quite wise to give a copy to others which you bad not yet corrected? The documents had not received their last corrections, and yet other men possessed these errors of yours which needed correction. Do you not see that your falsehood will not hold together? Besides, what profit was there for you, at that particular moment-how would it have helped you in escaping from the condemnation of the bishops-that the book which was the subject of discussion should be open to everyone, and that you should thus be refuted by your own words? From all this it is clear, according to the epigram of the famous orator, that you have a good will for a lie, but not the art of framing it.
6. I will follow the order of your letter, and subjoin your very words as you spoke them. "I admit, that, as you say, I praised, your eloquence in my Preface; and I would praise it again now were it not that contrary to the advice of your Tully, you make it hateful by excessive boastfulness." Where have I boasted of my eloquence? I did not even accept willingly the praise which you bestowed on it. Perhaps your reason for saying this is that you do not wish, yourself, to be flattered by public praise given in guile. Rest assured you shall be accused openly; you reject one who would praise you; you shall have experience of out who openly arraigns you. I was not so foolish as to criticize your illiterate style; no one can expose it to condemnation so strongly as you do whenever you write. I only wished to show your fellow-disciples who shared your lack of literary training what progress you had made during your thirty years in the East, an illiterate writer, who takes impudence for eloquence, and universal evil speaking a sign of a good conscience. I am not going to administer the ferule; I do not assume, as you put it, to apply the strokes of the leather thong to teach an aged pupil his letters. But the fact is your eloquence and teaching is so sparkling that we mere tract-writers cannot bear it, and you dazzle our eyes with the acuteness of your talents to such an extent that we must all seem to be envious of you; and we must really join in the attempt to suppress you, for, if once you obtain the primacy among us as a writer, and stand on the summit of the rhetorical arch, all of us who profess to know anything will not be allowed to mutter a word. I am, according to you, a philosopher and an orator, grammarian, dialectician, one who knows Hebrew, Greek and Latin, a `trilingual' man. On this estimate, you also will be `bilingual,' who know enough Latin and Greek to make the Greek think you a Latin scholar and the Latin a Greek: and the bishop Epiphanius will be a `pentaglossic(23) man' since he speaks in five languages against you and your favorite.(24) But I wonder at the rashness which made you dare to say to one so accomplished as you profess to think me: "You, whose accomplishments give you so many watchful eyes, how can you be pardoned if you go wrong? How can you fail to be buried in the silence of a never ending shame?" When I read this, and reflected that I must somewhere or other have made a slip in my words (for(25) "if any man does not go wrong in word, the same is a perfect man") and was expecting that he was about to expose some of my faults; all of a sudden I came upon the words: "Two days before the carrier of this letter set out your declamation against me was put into my hands." What became then of those threats of yours, and of your words: "How can you be pardoned if you go wrong? How Call you fail to be covered with the silence of a never ending shame?" Yet perhaps, notwithstanding the shortness of the time, you were able to put this in order; or else you were intending to hire in one of the learned sort, who would expect to find in my works the ornaments and gems of an eloquence like yours. You wrote before this: "Accept the document which I send which you wished to buy at a great price;" but now you speak with the pretence of humility. "I intended to follow your example; but, since the messenger who was returning to yon was hurrying back again I thought it better to write shortly to you than at greater length to others." In the meantime you boldly take pleasure in your illiteracy. Indeed you once confessed it, declaring that `it was superfluous to notice a few faults of style, when it was acknowledged that there were faults in every part.' I will not therefore find fault with you for putting down that a document was acquired when you meant that it was bought; though acquiring is said of things like in kind, whereas buying implies the counting out of money: nor for such a sentence as "as he who was returning to you was hurrying hack again" which is a redundancy worthy of the poorest style of diction. I will only reply to the arguments, and will convict you, not of solaecisms and barbarisms, but of falsehood, cunning and impudence.
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