[379] A ...so that those who were ignorant of the Hebrew elements might, through the help of Greek letters, be able to understand the force of Hebrew words. Therefore, in the Hexapla and Octapla, as he calls them, by arranging the two Hebrew columns and the six others of the interpreters side by side, he brought great usefulness of knowledge to those who love learning. And would that he had not shamefully erred in his writings, nor brought harm upon himself and to the whole world, when he published perverse dogmas about the faith and interpreted many places of Scripture incorrectly!
When, however, he had found the Fifth and Sixth editions, and did not know who their authors were, he denoted the Fifth by ε' and the Sixth by ς'. B Furthermore, some people, when they see the Hebrew edition as the first, the second of Aquila, then of Symmachus, afterward the LXX; from this, that of Theodotion, and consequently the Fifth and Sixth, think that Aquila and Symmachus were before the Seventy Interpreters, but they are hallucinating. For Origen arranged these things in this way, and justly and deservedly gave the middle place to the LXX edition: he placed it in the middle for this reason, that it might refute those which were on the sides.
SAINT EPIPHANIUS
BISHOP OF CYPRUS
EPISTLE TO JOHN, BISHOP OF JERUSALEM
TRANSLATED BY THE DIVINE PRESBYTER JEROME
(From the edition of Vallarsi, Opp. Hieron., Verona 1777)
He excuses himself for having ordained the presbyter Paulinianus without consulting him. Then he warns him to abstain from the errors of Origen.
To the most beloved brother, Bishop John, Epiphanius.
I. It is fitting for us, most beloved, not to abuse the honor of the clergy C for pride, but to be what we are called through the keeping of God's commandments and the most diligent observance thereof. For if holy Scripture speaks: "Their clergy shall not profit them," what arrogance will the rank of the clergy be able to confer upon us, when we sin not only in thought and feeling, but even in speech? I have heard, indeed, that you are swelling with rage against us, and are angry, and are threatening to write to the farthest ends of the earth, so that I shall not name the places and provinces. And where is the fear of God, which ought to shake us with that trembling which was spoken of by the Lord: "If anyone is angry with his brother without cause, he shall be liable to judgment"? It is not that I greatly care if you write what you please. For epistle-scrolls were written D according to Isaiah and were "cast upon the waters," which quickly pass away with the age. We have harmed you in nothing, we have done no injury, nor have we violently extorted anything. In the monastery of the brethren, and of the foreign brethren, who owed nothing to your province: and on account of...
our lowliness, and the letters which we frequently sent to them, they also began to have a discord in their communion, lest they should seem to be separated from the Church by a certain hardness and conscience of the ancient faith, we ordained a deacon: and after he had ministered, we again ordained a presbyter, over which you ought to have rejoiced, understanding that we were compelled to do this for the fear of God: especially since there is no diversity in the priesthood of God, and where provision is made for the utility of the Church. For, even if individual bishops of churches have A churches under them, over which they seem to bestow care, and no one extends himself beyond another's measure, yet the charity of Christ, in which there is no simulation, is preferred to all: and one must not consider what has been done, but at what time, and in what manner, and in whom, and why it has been done. For when I had seen that a multitude of holy brethren was residing in the monastery, and that the holy presbyters Jerome and Vincent, out of modesty and humility, would not exercise the sacrifices due to their name, and would not labor in this part of the ministry, which is the principal salvation of Christians: but you could not find and apprehend the servant of God, who, because he did not wish to take up the heavy burden of the priesthood, often fled from you B; nor could any other of the bishops easily find him. Whence I even wondered enough how, by the dispensation of God, he came to us with the deacons of the monastery and the other brethren, so that he might satisfy me, because I know not what sadness I had against them. When therefore the Collect was being celebrated in the church of the village, which is near our monastery, I, being ignorant of him, and having no suspicion at all, ordered him to be apprehended by many deacons, and his mouth to be held, lest by chance, desiring to be freed, he might adjure us by the name of Christ; and we ordained him first a deacon, setting before him the fear of God, and compelling him to minister; for he was indeed strongly resisting, crying out that he was unworthy, and protesting that the heavy burden was beyond his strength. We therefore with difficulty compelled him, and were able to persuade him by the testimonies of the Scriptures and by the proposal of the commandments of God. And when he had ministered in the holy sacrifices, again with great difficulty, holding his mouth, we ordained him a presbyter: and with the same words, with which we had persuaded him before, we compelled him to sit in the order of the presbyterate. After these things we wrote to the saints C of the monastery, and to the other brethren; and we rebuked them, why they had not written about him, when a year ago I had heard many of them complaining, why they did not have someone who might offer for them the holy mysteries, and all might seek him with their testimony, and testify to the great utility in the common monastery: why then, when the opportunity was found, they had not written to us, nor had asked for anything concerning his ordination. D II. These things were done, and I spoke in the charity of Christ which I believed you to have toward our lowliness: although I ordained him in the monastery, and not in the parish which is subject to you. O truly blessed meekness and goodness of the bishops of Cyprus, and our rusticity worthy of the mercy of God by your sense and judgment! For many bishops of our communion have ordained presbyters in our province, whom we could not comprehend, and they sent to us deacons and subdeacons, whom we received with grace. And I myself exhorted the bishop Philo of blessed memory, and the holy Theoprepus, that in the churches of Cyprus, which were near them, but which seemed to pertain to my own parish, because it was a large and broadly extending province, they should ordain presbyters, and provide for the Church of Christ. But I have never ordained deaconesses, and sent them to foreign provinces, nor have I done anything to rend the Church. What therefore has seemed to you so gravely to swell and to be tossed against us for the work of God, which was done for the edification, and not for the destruction of the brethren? But I also strongly wondered at this, that you spoke to my clerics, asserting that you had commanded me through the holy presbyter and abbot of monks Gregory, that I should ordain no one, and that I had promised this, saying: Am I a young man, or am I ignorant of the canons? Hear therefore the truth in the word of God, that I have neither heard this, nor do I know it, nor do I remember this speech at all. But I suspected whether by chance among many things, as a man, I had forgotten: and for this reason I questioned the holy Gregory, and the presbyter Zeno, who is with him. Of whom the abbot Gregory replied that he was completely ignorant of this. But Zeno said that when the presbyter Rufinus was speaking to him of I know not what other things cursorily, he also said this: Do you think the holy bishop is going to ordain anyone? and that the speech had stopped there. But I, Epiphanius, neither heard anything, nor did I answer. Whence, most beloved, let not fury forestall you, nor indignation occupy you, nor let you be moved in vain: and grieving at one thing, do not turn yourself to other things, so that you may seem to have found an occasion of sinning. Which the prophet avoiding, prays to the Lord, saying: Do not incline my heart to words of malice, to excuse excuses in sins.
III. I am also struck with wonder, upon hearing that certain persons, who are accustomed to carry rumors to and fro, and always to add something to the things they have heard in order to stir up sadness and quarrels among the brethren, have also disturbed you, and said that when we offer sacrifices to God in prayer, we are accustomed to say for you: "Lord, grant to John that he may believe rightly." Do not think us so rustic as to have been able to say this so openly. For although I always pray for this in my heart, nevertheless, to confess it simply, I have never uttered it to foreign ears, lest I should seem to disparage you, most beloved. But when we complete the prayer according to the rite of the mysteries, and we say for all and for you as well: "Guard him who preaches the truth," or at least in this way: "Do you, Lord, grant and guard, that he may preach the word of truth," as the occasion of the discourse may suggest, and the prayer may have consistency. Wherefore, I beseech you, most beloved, and falling at your feet, I pray: grant to me and to yourself, that you may be saved, as it is written, from a perverse generation; and depart from the heresy of Origen, and from all heresies, most beloved. For I see that for this reason your [al. our] entire indignation has been aroused, because I called him the father of Arius (95), and the root and parent of other heresies, and you ought not to praise him. And when I asked you not to err in this way, and warned you, you contradicted me, and brought me to sadness and tears. And not only me, but also many other Catholics who were present. From this I understand that this is the whole indignation and that fury. And therefore you threaten that you will send letters against me, so that your discourse may run here and there; and because of the defense of the heresy you stir up hatreds against me, you break the charity which we had for you: to such an extent that you have made us even do penance because we have communicated with you, since you so defend the errors and dogmas of Origen (97).
IV. I speak simply [al. shall speak]: We, according to what is written, do not even spare our own eye, so that we may not pluck it out if it has scandalized us; nor our hand, nor our foot, if it has caused a scandal to us. And therefore, if you have been our eyes, or hands, or feet, you will suffer similar things. For who of the Catholics could bear with an equal mind, and [who of] those who adorn their faith with good works, that they should hear the doctrine and counsel of Origen, and believe that pre-eminent preaching of his: "The Son cannot see the Father, nor can the Holy Spirit see the Son"? These things are written in the books *De principiis*, and in these words we read, and thus Origen has spoken: "For just as it is incongruous to say that the Son can see the Father, so it is inconsequent to opine that the Holy Spirit can see the Son." Who can also bear Origen saying that souls, if they have been angels in the heavens and after they have sinned in the supernal realms, have been cast down into this world, and as if into tombs and sepulchers, they are thus relegated into these bodies to pay the penalties of ancient sins? And that the bodies of believers are not temples of Christ, but prisons of the condemned? From there, perverting the truth of history with the lie of allegory, he multiplies infinite words; and, supplanting all the simple ones with various persuasion, he now asserts that souls are for that reason, according to the Greek etymology, called *psychai*, from *psychesthai* (98), because coming from the celestial to the lower realms, they have lost their pristine heat; now he says that this body, for this reason, according to the Greeks, is called *demas*, that is, a bond, or according to another property, a cadaver (99): because souls have fallen from heaven. 261 But by many, according to the various store of the Greek language, *soma*, that is, body, is interpreted as *sema*, that is, a monument, for the reason that it holds the soul closed within it, just as sepulchers and tombs hold the cadavers of the dead. And if this is true, where is our faith? Where is the proclamation of the resurrection? Where is the apostolic doctrine which thus far endures in the Churches of Christ? Where is that blessing to Adam and to his seed, and to Noah and to his sons: *Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth*? For then it will no longer be a blessing, but a curse.
A For according to Origen, who turns angels into souls, and makes them descend from the sublime height of dignity to lower things, it is as if God could not give souls to the human race through a blessing unless the angels had sinned, and there were as many ruinous falls in heaven as there are births on earth. We must therefore abandon the doctrine of the apostles and prophets, and of the Law and of the Lord Savior Himself thundering in the Gospel. On the contrary, Origen commands and gives a law—or rather, he compels his disciples—that no one should pray to ascend into heaven, lest, sinning worse there than he had previously sinned on earth, he be cast down into the world. Although he is accustomed to affirm such trifles and delusions by means of a perverse interpretation of the Scriptures, signifying something other than what is the truth, saying: *Before I was humbled because of malice I went astray* B; and that: *Return, O my soul, unto thy rest*; and also: *Bring my soul out of prison*; and in another place: *I will please the Lord in the land of the living*. Yet, without doubt, the sense of the divine Scripture is different from that which he, by malignant interpretation, distorts into his own heresy. This is what the Manichaeans, the Gnostics, the Ebionites, the followers of Marcion, and other heresies—eighty in number—do, who, taking testimonies from the most pure fountain of the Scriptures, do not interpret them as they are written, but wish the simplicity of ecclesiastical discourse to signify what they themselves think.
V. I do not know whether I should grieve or laugh at that which he also strives to assert. The "egregious" doctor C dares to teach that the devil will again be what he was, and will return to the same dignity, and will ascend to the kingdoms of heaven. Oh, the crime! Who is so mad and stupid as to accept this, that the holy John the Baptist, and Peter, and John the apostle and evangelist, and Isaiah also, and Jeremiah and the remaining prophets, should become co-heirs with the devil in the kingdom of heaven? I pass over his frivolous exposition concerning the coats of skins, with how great effort and with how many arguments he acted so that we might believe that the coats of skins were human bodies. Among many things he says: "Was God a tanner or a leather-worker, that He should prepare the skins of animals and sew from them coats of skins for Adam and Eve?" "It is manifest, therefore," he says, "that He speaks of our bodies." And if this is so, how do we read before the coats of skins, and before the disobedience, and the ruin from paradise, that Adam was speaking not according to allegory—D but truly: *This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh*? Or from where was that taken which divine discourse testifies: *And God cast a sleep upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs; and filled up flesh for it; and He built the rib, which He had taken from him, into a wife*? Or what bodies were Adam and Eve covering with fig leaves, after they had eaten from the forbidden tree? But who could patiently bear Origen denying the resurrection of this flesh with slippery arguments, as he declares most manifestly in the volume of *Explanations of the First Psalm*, and in many other places? Or who would listen to Origen granting us a paradise in the third heaven, and transferring the one whom Scripture commemorates from earth to celestial regions: and interpreting all the trees which are written in Genesis allegorically, assuming that the trees are angelic powers, when the truth does not accept this? For divine Scripture did not say: "God put Adam and Eve down into the earth," but: *He cast them out of paradise, and made them dwell over against paradise*. It does not say, "under paradise." *And He placed a flaming sword, and Cherubim to guard the entrance of the tree of life*. It did not say, "an ascent." *And a river went out from Eden*; it did not say, "it descended from Eden." This is divided into four heads: the name of one is Phison, and the name of the second is Gehon. I have seen the waters of Gehon, the waters which I have looked upon with these fleshly eyes. This is the Gehon which Jeremiah points out, saying: *What is the way to Egypt for you, to drink the muddy water of Gehon?* I have also drunk simply from the great river Euphrates, the waters which you can touch with your hand and swallow with your mouth, not spiritual waters. Now where there are rivers which are seen and drunk, it is a consequence that there are also fig trees and other woods: about which God says: *Of every tree that is in paradise you shall eat*: these are similar to other woods and trees, just as rivers are similar to rivers and waters. If, however, the water that is seen is truly water, it is necessary that the fig tree and other woods also be true; and that Adam was created true in the body from the beginning, just as Eve, and not as a phantom, and that he did not receive a body afterward because of sin (as Origen wishes). But you say: "We read that the holy Paul was caught up as far as the third heaven, and as far as paradise." You speak well: when he sets down the third heaven, and afterward adds, "and into paradise," he proves that heaven is in one place, and paradise in another. But those…
who would not immediately cast aside and despise such things, and who is the enemy that has arisen? For among many evils, he has also dared to say that Origen, speaking of the waters which are above the firmament, says they are not waters, but certain powers of angelic capacity, and again that the waters which are upon the earth, that is, under the firmament, are contrary powers, that is, demons. And how do we read that in the flood the windows of heaven were opened, and the waters of the flood inundated the earth, whence the fountains of the abyss were opened, and the whole world was covered with waters?
VI. O fury of men joined to folly, who have abandoned that which is said in the Proverbs: "Hear, my son, the word of thy father, and do not cast away the law of thy mother," and have turned toward error, and say to the fool that he should be their leader; nor do they despise foolish things, which are said by a fool, as Scripture testifies: "The fool speaks folly, and his heart understands vain things." Whence I beseech you, most beloved, and as if sparing my own members, on account of the charity which I have for you, I pray, writing and entreating, that you may fulfill that which is said: "Have I not hated those who hate thee, O Lord, and pined away over thy enemies?" The words of Origen are inimical and worthy of hatred, and repugnant to God and his saints, and not these alone which I have spoken, but also innumerable others. For it is not my purpose now to dispute against all the dogmas of Origen. Nothing has Origen stolen from me, nor was he in my generation; nor did I undertake hatred and struggles against him on account of worldly matters or inheritance; but, to speak simply, I grieve, and greatly grieve, seeing very many of the brethren, and especially those who hold a profession not of the least sort, and have reached even to the highest degree of the priesthood, deceived by his persuasions and, by his most perverse doctrine, become food for the devil, in whom that is fulfilled which is said: "He plays upon every fortification, and his feasts are chosen, and he has gathered captivity like sand." But may God deliver you, brother, and the holy people of Christ who are entrusted to you, and all the brethren who are with you, and especially Rufinus the priest, from the heresy of Origen, and from other heresies and their perdition. For if, on account of one word or two that are contrary to the faith, many heresies are rejected by the Church, how much more shall he be held among heretics, who has discovered such perversities and such evil dogmas B against the faith, and has dared to say, as a A foe, that Adam lost the image of God, though in no place whatever does Scripture signify this? For if it were so, all things that are in the world would never serve the seed of Adam, that is, the whole human race, just as the apostle James also speaks: "All things are tamed, and are subject to human nature." For never would all things be subject to men, if men did not have, in accordance with what they command all things, the image of God. For divine Scripture, joining and associating the grace of the blessing which it had bestowed upon Adam, and the generations which were from him, lest any should perhaps dare to say, through a malignant interpretation, that the grace of God was given to one alone, and that he alone was made in the image of God because he was fashioned from dust, and his wife, whom He had created from the rib of the man; but that those who are conceived in the womb, and are not born as Adam was, do not have the image of God—it immediately joins by order and says: "And Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, and he knew Eve his wife, and she bore him a son according to his likeness and according to his image, and he called his name Seth." And again, in the tenth generation, after two thousand two hundred and forty-two years, God, vindicating his image and showing that the grace which He had given to men remained in them, says: "You shall not eat flesh with [in] its blood; for I will avenge your blood from the hand of every man shedding it, because I have made man in the image of God." C And also after another ten generations unto Abraham, and from Abraham unto David, another fourteen generations, which twenty-four generations together make two thousand one hundred and seventeen years; the Holy Spirit in the thirty-eighth Psalm, when he was complaining of all men, that they walked in vanity and were subject to sins, speaks: "Nevertheless, every man walks in an image." And also after David, even under his son Solomon, we read of something named concerning the image of God. He says in Wisdom, which is inscribed with his title: "God created man incorruptible, and gave him the image of his own propriety." And again after a thousand one hundred and eleven years, more or less, in the New Testament we read that men did not lose D the image of God. For the apostle James says: "Therewith we bless God the Father, and therewith we curse men, who are made after the likeness of God."