PREFACE
Although we thought we should have done a worthy work if we collected into one body all the Works of Origen—both those of which it is certain that he is the genuine author and those which were formerly circulated under his name—yet, since some learned men have complained and taken it ill that in the earlier volumes of this edition some works were added that were wrongly attributed to Origen, which seemed to them altogether superfluous and therefore burdensome to the purchasers, for this reason we have decided that the remainder of such spurious works should be omitted from the later volumes. Such are the second Commentary on Job translated into Latin by Joachim Perionius, the Commentaries on the Gospel of Mark which the most learned Huetius had once proposed to himself to publish, the Homilies on various topics, and others which the earlier common Latin editions present: whence it happens that the entire collection of the Origenian Works is now comprised not in five volumes, as had been proposed at the beginning, but in four only.
But it will perhaps seem strange that this fourth and final volume, which in the preface to the third in the year 1740 I had announced as about to be sent to the press almost immediately, should nevertheless appear so long after the others. But besides the fact that, upon closer inspection, I found scarcely anything in it elaborated and ready for the press, and being shortly after absent and occupied with other labors, I was not able to keep my promises. For in the year 1742, upon the death of our master Pierre Sabatier, who had published at Reims in two folio volumes the first two volumes of the old Latin Bible, which they call the Itala, I was sent by my Superiors to Reims in 1743 to carry on this edition, which he had most urgently requested and to which the most serene Duke and Prince of Orléans had contributed his funds, and I spent six whole years there in completing the third and final volume of this. Once that was finished, I returned entirely to Origen, I collated and corrected the individual parts against the manuscript codices, I illustrated them with notes, and finally I spared no care, nor study, nor labor, so that it might turn out to be an integral and perfect volume, finished in all its parts. If any delay occurred thereafter, it is to be attributed either to the greed and negligence of the printers who, lest their printing shop ever be vacant, are always eager to print new things and neglect those begun, or to other chances of any kind, such as the never-constant vicissitude of human affairs brings about.
Furthermore, this fourth and final volume is divided into two parts; the prior of which contains the remaining works of Origen on John, a fragment from the fourth homily on the Acts of the Apostles, his Commentaries on Paul's Epistle to the Romans, with fragments on the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews, and the two usual indexes, the one of the places of Sacred Scripture, the other of notable things: the posterior part embraces the Works pertaining to Origen, namely the Apology for Origen by the holy martyr Pamphilus, and the Panegyrical Oration for the same, composed by Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus as he was preparing to return to his homeland from the school of Origen and publicly delivered at Caesarea in Palestine; the *Origeniana* written by the most learned Huetius, and illustrated with historical and critical notes where we do not agree with him, with a summary of the books, sections, chapters, and numbers of the same work; and an excerpt from George Bull, the ninth chapter of his *Defense of the Nicene Faith*, on the Son as *homoousios*, where the Catholic faith of Origen concerning the Trinity is most especially vindicated.
To the Commentaries on John and the Apology of Pamphilus a special Preface is attached. But since the fragments on the Acts of the Apostles and on the Epistles of Paul are dealt with in book III of the *Origeniana*, section 2, numbers 7 and 8, page 297, and section 3, numbers 14 and 15, pages 305 and 306, where we have noted in the annotations what new material has been discovered by us, it results from this that to preface them again seems superfluous, unless perhaps something additional should be said about the Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans.
On the Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans.
Since Origen mentions his own lucubrations on the Epistle to the Romans in books V and VIII of *Contra Celsum*, it is certain that he wrote these before that Epistle than *Contra Celsum*, and therefore before he finished commanding Philip. It is also clear that this work was elaborated after his Homilies on Leviticus, the second of which he mentions in book IX, number 1 of the Commentaries on the same Epistle. Moreover, since, in the judgment of Rufinus, these Homilies were pronounced extempore, they could not have been held until after the year of Christ 245. Whence we conclude the time at which Origen was putting together the Commentaries on Matthew, namely around the year 246, under the emperor Philip, and that at the same time he also adorned the Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans. And for that reason
it is considered more likely that in volume XVII on Matthew he adverts to his own explanations on the Epistle to the Romans, and in book I on the Epistle to the Romans, no. 5, he promises that he will write about the genealogy of the Savior related by Matthew more fully in its proper place in what follows. A
Cassiodorus, in *Institutiones divinarum litterarum*, chapter 8, relates that twenty books on this Epistle were written by Origen. "The first and most admirable of all," he says, "is recognized to be the destination to the Romans, which Origen expounded in twenty books in the Greek language." But Rufinus, who undertook to donate them to the Latin tongue at the prompting of Heraclius, enumerates only fifteen in the preface of his translation; indeed, the readings vary, and instead of fifteen, as all the published editions read, two of the most ancient codices that we have used—one from the cathedral church of Évreux, the other from the monastery of Val-des-Clairs—have, one ten, another twelve [books]. But perhaps Rufinus only denotes the books that survived in his own age; for he testifies in his preface to Heraclius that some had already been lost. B Be that as it may, he confesses in the same place that he added things of his own to those that were lost, and had contracted the whole work to about half its size: and in fact, as Cassiodorus testifies in the same place as above, out of twenty books he fashioned only ten. "Which, however," he says, "the aforementioned Rufinus, reducing them into ten books, translated quite copiously into Latin." Erasmus blazes with anger against this audacity, and not undeservedly did some reproach Rufinus, just as he himself says it was objected to him in the peroration of his translation, that he had not inscribed his own name rather than Origen’s in the title of this work. For hence it happens that you can scarcely find Origen in Origen, and you will more easily detect the injury brought upon Origen if you compare certain fragments of this work inserted into the *Philocalia* with the Rufinian translation. C
Theophilus Salodianus, a professor of the order of the Observant Friars Minor of Saint Jerome, from a manuscript codex of the Fiesole library of his convent—which carried the name of Jerome as interpreter on the front—was the first to publish these ten books under the name of Jerome at Venice in the year 1506. Following him, Merlin, Erasmus, Genebrardus, the Basle editors of the works of Jerome, in the year 1571, and Philippus Labbeus in *De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis*, volume II, page 145, likewise ascribed the translation of his work to Jerome. But that this is to be attributed to Rufinus is proven most evidently by Cassiodorus, by our own manuscripts, and by the peroration of Rufinus himself, where he says that a little later he would translate the books of Clement—which it is established was done by Rufinus. Erasmus, accusing the booksellers of fraud, thinks the name of Jerome was used by them as a pretext for attracting buyers. But Huetius, rejecting this more probable opinion of Erasmus, sets forth his own—with which we by no means agree—in *Origeniana*, book III, chapter 2, sect. 3, no. 15: "I think that this (translation) was attributed to Jerome by the cunning and craft of Rufinus, who, to avoid the odium of the deed (for the name of Origen was in bad repute), and to shift the blame onto Jerome, by whom he had often been harassed on account of Origenism, did not put his own name, pretending that it was done out of modesty, when it had been done by evil arts." He says almost the same thing in no. 5 of the same section, where he discusses the *Homilies on Joshua*. But we shall discuss these things in their proper place. D
Besides that contracted and truncated translation by Rufinus, we have a not insignificant fragment of the first volume in chapter 24 of the *Philocalia*, and two smaller snippets in the *Apology of Pamphilus*. Socrates, *Historia ecclesiastica*, book VII, chapter 32, observes that Origen in that same earlier volume had explained most extensively for what reason the Virgin Mary could be called the Mother of God (*Theotokos*). Origen himself, book V *Contra Celsum*, no. 47, says that he had treated of circumcision in the *Commentaries on this Epistle to the Romans*. Saint Basil in his book *On the Holy Spirit*, chapter 29, relates a passage from these same *Commentaries* with these words: *Αἱ ἱεραὶ δυνάμεις χωρητικαὶ τοῦ Μονογενοῦς καὶ τῆς τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος θεότητος* (The sacred powers are capable of the divinity of the Only-Begotten and of the Holy Spirit); but he did not note the book from which he had extracted it; yet the same words are found in the translation of Rufinus, book III, no. 8, p. 515. Again, Origen in volume XVII on Matthew, no. 52, relates that many things in his *Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans* were said by him regarding this context of the Apostle: "Do you not know, brothers (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has power over a man as long as he lives," etc., up to that point: "if she shall have been with another man." Another fragment from volume IX is offered to us by the ninth chapter of the *Philocalia*. Finally, Origen again in book VIII *Contra eundem Celsum*, no. 65, says that he had treated at greater length and in a different sense those verses: "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but from God; and those that are, are ordained of God: therefore they that resist the power, resist the ordinance of God." And although these things demonstrate most clearly that Adamantius [Origen] is the legitimate author of these *Commentaries*, nevertheless a certain novice heterodox writer did not hesitate to cast these very books into a series of supposititious writings of Origen; deceived by William Perkins, who indeed wrote that they were badly translated by Rufinus—which is most true—but he by no means thought that they were falsely attributed to Origen.