Apology against Rufinus 1.30–2.10

But since my speech has sailed out of rough and rugged places, and we have repelled the charge of heresy thrown at us with all freedom of brow, let us pass to the other parts of his accusation, with which he tries to bite us. Of these the first is that I am a slanderous man, a detractor of all, always sinking my molar into my predecessors. Let him give one whose name I have marked in my works, or whom, according to his art, I have grazed with figured praise. But if I speak against the envious, and the point of my pen wounds Luscius Lavinius or Asinius Pollio of the family of the Cornelii, if I remove from me a man of a stagey and envious mind, and direct all my darts at one stump, why does he share out his wounds among many? Why, by his impatience to answer, does he show that he is the one aimed at? He charges me with perjury, mixed with sacrilege, because in the book in which I speak to instruct a virgin of Christ, I promised, sleeping before the judge's tribunal, that I would never again give attention to secular letters, and yet I sometimes mention the condemned learning. No doubt this is that Sallustian Calpurnius who, through Magnus the orator, raised no great question against us, which we satisfied in a short book. Now, as to the matter in hand, I must answer for the sacrilege and perjury of a dream. I said that I would not read secular letters thereafter: the promise is about the future, not an abolition of past memory. "And how," you will say, "do you retain what you have not reread for so long?" Again, if I answer something from the old books and say, "so much does habit in tender years count," while I deny it I incur the charge, and in bringing a testimony on my behalf I am accused by the very thing by which I am defended. No doubt I must now weave in a long speech what each one's consciousness proves. Which of us does not remember his childhood? I certainly, unless I make a most severe man like you laugh and you imitate for once Crassus, who, Lucilius says, laughed once in his life, remember that as a boy I ran about through the slaves' rooms, spent holidays in games, and was dragged captive from my grandmother's lap to a raging Orbilius. And, to astonish you more, now with grey and bald head I often seem to myself in dreams to have curly hair, and, putting on the toga, to declaim a little controversy before the rhetor. And when I wake up, I congratulate myself on being freed from the danger of speaking. Believe me, childhood remembers many things clearly. If you had learned letters, the jar of your little mind would smell of what it was once steeped in. No waters wash out the purple of wool. Even asses and dumb animals, though on a long journey, know their inns a second time. Do you wonder that I have not forgotten Latin letters, when you learned Greek without a teacher? The elements of dialectic taught me the seven modes of conclusions; what axiōma means, which we can call "proposition"; how no sentence is made without verb and noun; the steps of the sorites, the subtleties of the liar, the frauds of sophisms. I can swear that after I left school I never read these things at all. I must, then, drink from the stream of Lethe, according to the poets' fables, lest I be accused of knowing what I learned. Come, you who charge me with little knowledge and seem to yourself a man of letters and a Rabbi, answer: why have you dared to write anything, and to translate Gregory, a most eloquent man, with equal splendour of speech? Whence have you such abundance of words, such light of thoughts, such variety of metaphors, a man who in youth barely tasted oratory with the tip of your lips? Either I am deceived, or you secretly read Cicero; and that is why you are so eloquent, and charge me with the crime of reading him, so that you alone among church writers may glory in a river of eloquence. Although you seem rather to follow the philosophers, the thorns of Cleanthes and the twistings of Chrysippus, not from an art which you do not know, but from greatness of genius. And since the Stoics claim logic for themselves, and you despise the ravings of this science, in this respect you are an Epicurean: you do not ask how, but what you say. For what is it to you if another does not understand what you mean, since you speak not to all but to your own? In short, I too, reading your writings, though sometimes I do not understand what you say and think I am reading Heraclitus, yet am not pained, nor do I regret my slowness: for I suffer in reading what you suffer in writing.

I would say this if I had promised anything while awake. But now, a new kind of impudence, he objects my dream against me. Would that the crowds of this place, and the gathering of saints from the whole world, allowed me to read the divine Scriptures! So far am I from having time to study outside things. But let him who accuses a dream hear the voices of the prophets, that dreams are not to be believed, because neither does an adultery in a dream lead me to Tartarus, nor does a crown of martyrdom lift me to heaven. How often have I seen myself dead and laid in the tomb! How often flying over the earth, and crossing mountains and seas by swimming through the air! Let him then compel me not to live, or to have wings on my sides, because the mind is often deceived by wandering images. How many are rich in dreams who, opening their eyes, are suddenly beggars! The thirsty drink rivers, and, waking, burn with dry throats. You demand of me the promise of a dream: I will call you to account more truly and strictly. Have you done all that you promised in baptism? Have either of us fulfilled whatever the name of monk demands? Beware, I pray, lest through your beam you see my speck. I speak unwillingly, and pain drives my reluctant tongue into words. It is not enough for you, what you invent about me awake, unless you accuse even my dreams. You are so curious about my doings that you examine what I did or said asleep. I pass over the things by which, speaking against me, you have disfigured your profession; what you have done in word and deed to the disgrace of all Christians. This one thing I declare, and will warn again and again: you attack a horned beast; and if I did not beware of that saying of the Apostle, "Revilers will not possess the kingdom of God," and, "Biting one another, you are consumed by one another," you would feel now that from a small and deceitful concord a great discord has arisen in the world. What good does it do you to heap curses on us among acquaintances and strangers alike? Is it because we are not Origenists, and do not know that we sinned in heaven, that we are accused as sinners on earth? And did we return to concord for this, that I might not speak against heretics, lest, if I describe them, you think yourself attacked? So long as I did not refuse your praise, you followed me as a master, called me brother and colleague, and confessed me catholic in everything. After I did not acknowledge your praises, and judged myself unworthy of the proclamation of so great a man, at once you reverse your pen and blame everything you praised before, bringing forth from the same mouth both sweet and bitter. Do you perceive what I keep silent, that I do not give words to my burning breast? and I speak with the Psalmist: "Set a guard, Lord, on my mouth, and a fortified door on my lips. Do not incline my heart to words of malice." And elsewhere: "When the sinner stood against me, I was dumb, and was humbled, and kept silent from good things." And again: "I became like a man who does not hear, and has no rebukes in his mouth." But the Lord will answer you as my avenger, who says through the prophet: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord." And in another place: "Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and set a stumbling block against your mother's son. These things you did, and I kept silent; you thought, wicked one, that I would be like you; I will rebuke you and set it before your face," so that you may see condemned in yourself what you falsely accuse in others.

I hear besides that it is objected against me by Chrysogonus, his follower, why I said that in baptism all sins are forgiven, and that when a man married twice dies, a new man rises in Christ; and that there are a number of such priests in the churches. I will answer him in brief: they have the little book which they call into accusation; let him answer it, overturn it by his argument, and refute writings by writings. Why, with austere brow and contracted, wrinkled nostrils, does he weigh out hollow words, and feign holiness before the ignoble crowd with pretended rigour? Let him hear us proclaiming again that the old Adam dies wholly in the laver, and the new is raised with Christ in baptism; the earthy perishes, and the heavenly is born. We say this not because we ourselves, by Christ's favour, are held by this question, but being asked by brothers what we thought, we answered, prejudging no one from following what he wishes, nor overturning another's decree by our opinion. For we do not seek the priesthood, we who lie hidden in our cells; nor, after our lowliness is condemned, do we hasten to buy a bishopric with gold; nor do we wish, with a rebellious mind, to slay a pontiff chosen by God; nor, by favouring heretics, do we show ourselves heretics. Money we neither have nor wish to have: "Having food and clothing, with these we are content," singing continually that saying about the one who climbs the Lord's mountain: "He who has not put out his money at usury, and has not taken gifts against the innocent: he who does these things will not be moved for ever." Therefore he who does not do them has already fallen for ever.

So far I have answered, not as I ought but as I could, with restrained pain, about the charges, or rather on behalf of my alleged crimes, which a crafty praiser once heaped on me and his disciples now press more persistently. For my purpose is not so much to accuse others as to defend myself. I will come to his Apology, by which he tries to satisfy the holy Anastasius, bishop of the city of Rome, and in his own defence builds slander against me again; and he loves me so much that, caught by a whirlwind and plunged into the depths, he grabs my foot above all, so as either to be freed with me or to perish.

He says that he is first answering the rumours by which his faith is carped at in Rome, he a man most approved both in faith and in the love of God; and that, had he not been restored to his parents after thirty years, and been unwilling to desert those whom he had seen so late, lest he be thought inhuman or hard, and had he not been too weak from the labour of so long a journey to repeat his labours, he would have wished to come in person. Since he did not, he has sent against his barkers a staff of letters, for the bishop to hold in his right hand and drive away the dogs raging against him. If he is approved by all, and especially by the bishop to whom he writes, in faith and the love of God, how is he bitten and carped at in Rome, and how does the report of his assailed reputation grow? Next, what humility is yours, to call yourself approved in faith and the love of God, when the apostles ask, "Lord, increase our faith," and hear, "If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed"; and to Peter himself it is said, "O you of little faith, why did you doubt?" What shall I say of love, which is greater than faith and hope, and which Paul wishes for rather than presumes, without which even blood shed in martyrdom and a body given to the flames has no crown of reward? Both of these this man so claims for himself that yet he has barkers against him, who, unless they are driven off by the staff of the illustrious pontiff, do not cease to bark. But that is ridiculous, that he boasts of having returned to his parents after thirty years, a man who has neither father nor mother; and those whom he left living as a young man he misses dead as an old man: unless perhaps in soldiers' and common speech he calls kinsmen and relatives "parents"; and since he does not wish to desert them, lest he be thought inhuman or hard, he has left his native place and lives at Aquileia. That most approved faith of his is in danger at Rome, and he, lying back and tired, after thirty years, cannot come in a carriage along the very easy road of the Via Flaminia; and so he pleads the weariness of a long journey, as if he had been running for thirty years, or, after sitting two years at Aquileia, were exhausted by the labour of his past journey.

"Let us pluck at the rest, and set down the very words of his letter: 'Although, then, our faith was proved, in the time of the persecution of the heretics, while we were living in the holy church of Alexandria, in prisons and exiles which were inflicted for the faith.'" I wonder that he did not add: "A prisoner of Jesus Christ, and I was delivered from the mouth of the lion, and at Alexandria I fought with beasts, and I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; there remains for me the crown of righteousness." What exiles, what prisons does he name? I am ashamed of so open a lie; as if prisons and exiles were inflicted without sentences of judges. Yet I want to know those prisons, and from which provinces he says he endured exile. And surely he has plenty of opportunity to name some one of his many prisons and countless exiles. Let him produce for us the acts of his confession, which until now we have not known, so that among the other martyrs of Alexandria we may read his deeds too, and he may say against his barkers: "From now on let no one trouble me; for I bear the marks of our Lord Jesus Christ in my body."

"Yet, even if there is anyone now who wishes either to test our faith or to hear or to learn it, let him know that we believe thus about the Trinity," and the rest. Above, you hand the bishop a staff against your dogs, armed with which he might walk on your behalf. Now, as if in doubt, you say: "If there is anyone who wishes to test our faith"; you doubt again, though the barking of many has reached you. I do not discuss for a moment your expressions, which you yourself scorn and despise; I will answer only the meaning. One thing is asked of you, and you satisfy for another. Against the doctrines of Arius you had already fought at Alexandria in prisons and exiles, not with voice but with blood. Now a charge is raised against you about the heresy of Origen. I would not have you treat wounds that are healthy. You say the Trinity is of one Godhead. Since the whole world now believes this, I think even the demons confess that the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary and took the flesh and soul of human nature. If I ask something more closely, you will call me contentious. If you say that the Son of God took the flesh and soul of human nature, I beg you to answer without irritation: that soul which Jesus took, did it exist before he was born of Mary? Or was it created together with the body in the virgin origin, which was born of the Holy Spirit? Or, the body being already formed in the womb, was it immediately made and sent from heaven? I want to know which of the three you hold. If it existed before he was born of Mary, then it was not yet the soul of Jesus, and was doing something, and afterwards, for the merits of its virtues, became his soul. If it began by propagation, then human souls, which we confess eternal, and those of brute animals, which are dissolved with the body, have one condition. But if it is created and sent as soon as the body is formed, say so plainly, and free us from scruple.

You say none of these things, but, busy with other matters, you abuse our simplicity, and with the juggling and pomp of words do not let us stick to the question. "What," you will say, "was not the question about the resurrection of the flesh and the punishments of the devil?" I admit it. Then answer briefly and plainly. I do not ask what you write, that the same flesh in which we live will rise, with no limb cut off and no part of the body removed, for these are your words; but I ask what Origen denies: whether bodies will be raised in the same sex in which they died, and Mary will rise as Mary, John as John; or whether, the sexes mixed and confused, there will be neither man nor woman, but both or neither? And whether these bodies, incorrupt and immortal, and, as you shrewdly warn, spiritual according to the Apostle, will remain for ever; and not only bodies, but flesh and blood poured in, watering the veins and bones, which Thomas touched; or whether they will gradually be dissolved into nothing and drawn back to the four elements of which they are composed? These things you ought either to say or to deny, and not to say what Origen craftily admits, as if mocking fools and children: "with no limb cut off and no part of the body removed." No doubt we feared this, that we should rise without nose and ears, and, our genitals cut off and severed, a city of eunuchs would be founded in the heavenly Jerusalem.

Further, about the devil he tempers his opinion thus: "We say also that there is a judgment to come, in which judgment each will receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. And if men are to receive for their works, how much more the devil, who is the cause of sin for all! About whom we hold what is written in the Gospel: that both the devil himself and all his angels, with those who do his works, that is, who accuse the brothers, will together with him obtain the inheritance of eternal fire. If anyone, then, denies that the devil is consigned to eternal fires, let him receive a part with him of the eternal fire, so that he may feel what he denied." Let us go over it point by point. "We say," he says, "that there is a judgment to come, in which judgment," and so on. I had decided to keep silent about faults of words; but since his disciples admire their teacher's eloquence, I will touch on a few. He had said "a judgment to come"; but, a cautious man, he feared to say simply "in which," and put "in which judgment," lest, if he had not repeated "judgment" a second time, we, forgetting what went before, should think "ass" instead of "judgment." That too which he then brings in, "who accuse the brothers will together with him obtain the inheritance of eternal fire," is of the same charm. For who ever heard of "obtaining" fires and "enjoying" punishments? But the Greek seems to me to have wished to translate himself, and, for what among them is said klēronomēsousin, and among us can be said in one word, "will inherit," to have said, more elaborately and ornately, "will obtain the inheritance." His whole speech teems with such trifles and improprieties. But let us return to the meaning.

The devil is struck with a great spear, the cause of sin for all, if he is to render account for his works like a man, and with his angels "obtain the inheritance of eternal fire." For this was lacking, that while men are subjected to torment, he should "obtain" the eternal fires which he had so long desired. And you seem to me in this place to slander the devil, and to accuse the accuser of all with false charges. For you say, "who is the cause of sin for all"; and while you refer crimes to him, you free men from blame and take away the freedom of the will, though the Saviour says that "out of our heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." And again we read in the Gospel of Judas: "After the morsel Satan entered into him": who had sinned of his own accord before the morsel, and was not bent to repentance either by the humility or by the clemency of the Saviour. Hence the Apostle: "Whom I delivered," he says, "to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme." And in another place: "I have delivered such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved." He delivered to Satan, as to a torturer for punishment, those who before they were delivered had blasphemed of their own will. And David: "From my hidden faults cleanse me, Lord, and from those of others spare your servant," briefly signifying both the error of his own will and the incitements of vices. In Ecclesiastes too we read: "If the spirit of one who has power rises against your heart, do not leave your place." From which it clearly appears that if we give place to one who rises, it is we who sinned in giving it, and did not hurl down headlong the enemy climbing the walls. But when you call down on the brothers, that is, on your accusers, eternal fires with the devil, you seem to me not so much to press the brothers as to lift up the devil, since he is to be punished with the same fires as Christian men. But the eternal fires, as Origen usually understands them, I think do not escape you: namely, the conscience of sins and the repentance burning the inner heart. Of which Isaiah too speaks: "Their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched." And it is written to Babylon: "You have coals of fire; you will sit on them; these will be a help to you." And in the Psalm the penitent hears: "What will be given you, or what added to you, against the deceitful tongue? The sharp arrows of the mighty, with desolating coals"; so that the arrows of God's commandments (of which the prophet says in another place, "I was turned in misery while the thorn was fastened in me") may wound and pierce the deceitful tongue, and make a desolation of sins in it. That testimony too in which the Lord says, "I came to cast fire on the earth, and how I wish it were kindled," he interprets thus: "I desire all to do penance, and to burn out vices and sins by the Holy Spirit. For I am he of whom it is written: 'God is a consuming fire.'" It is not a great thing, then, to say of the devil what is prepared also for men. You ought rather (to avoid suspicion of the devil's salvation) to have said: "You have become destruction, and you will not be for ever"; and, in the person of the Lord speaking to Job about the devil: "Behold, his hope will deceive him, and in the sight of all he will be cast down. I will not rouse him as one cruel. For who can resist my face? Who gave to me first, that I should repay him? All things under heaven are mine. I will not spare him, nor his mighty words composed for entreaty." But these things can be excused as those of a simple man; and though they do not escape the learned, among the unlearned they bear the likeness of innocence.

What follows about the state of souls cannot be excused at all. For he says: "I hear that questions have been raised about the soul too: whether the complaint on this matter ought to be received or rejected, you must judge. But if my view on this too is asked, I confess that I have read different things on this question in very many writers. I have read some saying that souls are spread together with the body through the propagation of human seed, and they confirmed this with what assertions they could. I think that among the Latins Tertullian held this, or Lactantius, and perhaps some others. Others assert that, when bodies have been formed in the womb, God daily makes souls and pours them in. Others, that they were made long ago, that is, when God created all things from nothing, and that now by his judgment he dispenses them to be born in the body. This Origen holds, and some other Greeks. But I, though I have read each of these (I say it with God as witness), up to the present hold nothing certain and defined on this question; but I leave it to God to know what is true, and to anyone to whom he may deign to reveal it. Yet I do not deny that I have read each of these, and I confess that I am still ignorant; except for what the church plainly hands down, that God is the maker of both souls and bodies."

Before I discuss the meaning, I will admire the words of this Theophrastus: "I hear," he says, "that questions have been raised about the soul: whether the complaint on this matter ought to be received or rejected, you must judge." If questions about the state of the soul have been raised in the City, what is this complaint or grievance, which is left to the judgment of bishops whether it should be received? Unless perhaps he thinks that "question" and "complaint" mean the same thing, because he found a figure of this kind in the commentaries of Caper. Next he puts: "I have read some saying that souls are spread together with the body through the propagation of human seed, and they confirmed this with what assertions they could." What, I ask, is this licence of figures? What confusion of moods and tenses? "I have read some saying; they confirmed with what assertions they could." And in what follows: "Others assert that, when bodies have been formed in the womb, God daily makes new souls and pours them in. Others, that they were made long ago, that is, when God created all things from nothing, and that now by his judgment he dispenses them to be born in the body." And here is a most beautiful order. "Others," he says, "assert this or that: others that they were made long ago, that is, when God created all things from nothing, and now by his judgment he dispenses them to be born in the body." He speaks so tastelessly and confusedly that I labour more in censuring than he in writing. At the end he put: "But I, though I have read each of these," and, with the sentence still hanging, as if he had brought out something new, he added: "Yet I do not deny that I have read each of these, and I confess that I am still ignorant."

O unhappy souls, wounded by such spears of faults! I do not think they laboured so much, according to Origen's error, when they fell from heaven to earth and were clothed with gross bodies, as now, dashed this way and that by words and thoughts; to pass over the indecent expression by which souls are said to be "spread through the propagation of human seed." I know that among Christians faults of words are not usually censured; but I wished to show from a few how rash it is to teach what you do not know, to write what you are ignorant of, so that we may look for a like prudence in the meaning. He sends a letter, that is, a most sturdy staff with which the bishop of the city of Rome may be armed; and on the very question for which the dogs bark, he says he does not know what is asked. If he is ignorant on the point for which he is slandered, what need is there to send an Apology which contains not a defence of himself but a confession of ignorance? This is not to lull men's suspicions but to sow them. He sets down three opinions on the state of souls, and in conclusion says: "I do not deny that I have read each, and I confess that I am still ignorant." You would think him Arcesilas or Carneades, who declare all things uncertain; though he surpasses them too in caution. For they, unable to bear the odium of all philosophers for taking truth out of life, found the probable, so as to temper their ignorance of things with probable assertion; this man says he is uncertain and does not know at all which of the three is true. If this was what he was going to answer, what reason drove him to make so great a pontiff witness of his ignorance? No doubt this is that weariness, that, exhausted by a journey of thirty years, he could not come to Rome. How many other things we do not know, and yet we do not seek witnesses of our ignorance! About the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, about the birth of the Lord Saviour, of which Isaiah cries out, "Who will declare his generation?", he speaks boldly, and claims for his knowledge the mystery unknown to all past ages; and this alone he does not know, the ignorance of which causes scandal to all. He knows how the Virgin bore God, and does not know how he himself was born. He confesses the Lord as maker of souls and bodies, whether souls existed before bodies, or are born with the beginnings of bodies, or are sent into bodies already formed and shaped in the womb. In all of them we know the Lord as author. Nor is the question now whether God or another made them; but of the three he has set down, he says he does not know which opinion is true. Beware lest it be at once objected to you that you confess ignorance of the three so as not to be forced to condemn one; and spare Tertullian and Lactantius so as not to slay Origen with them. As far as memory serves, unless I am mistaken, I do not know that I have read that Lactantius says the soul is propagated. But you, who write that you have read it, say in which book you read it, lest you seem to have slandered him dead, as you did me asleep. But in this too you go hesitant and cautious. For you say: "I think that among the Latins Tertullian held this, or Lactantius, perhaps some others too." Not only do you doubt about the state of souls, but about the writers' views you "think"; and yet there is some difference. About souls you openly do not know, and confess your ignorance; about the writers you say you know in such a way that you think rather than presume. Only about Origen are you not in doubt. For you say, "This Origen holds." I will ask you: does he hold it rightly or wrongly? "I do not know," you say. Why then do you try, by sending couriers and very frequent messengers, to teach me so that I may know what you do not know? And lest perhaps I should not believe your inexperience, and think you craftily keep silent what you know, you swear with God as witness that up to the present you hold nothing certain and defined on this question, and leave it to God to know what is true, and to anyone to whom he may deign to reveal it. Through so many ages does no one seem to you to have been worthy that the Lord should reveal this question to him? Not a patriarch, not a prophet, not an apostle, not a martyr? Not even to you, when you were living in prisons and exiles, were such mysteries opened? The Lord in the Gospel says, "Father, I have revealed your name to men." He who revealed the Father was silent about the state of souls: and do you wonder if scandals of the brothers are stirred up against you, when you swear that you do not know what the churches of Christ profess they know?