I Praised Eusebius and Origen Only as Writers

Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, whom I mentioned above, in the sixth book of his Apology for Origen makes the same complaint against Methodius, bishop and martyr, that you make against me in your praises of me. He says: How could Methodius dare to write against Origen now, after saying this and that about his teachings? This is not the place to speak about the martyr; one cannot discuss everything everywhere. For the present, let it be enough to point out that an Arian complains of the same things in a most eminent and eloquent man, and a martyr, that you first make a subject of praise as a friend and afterward, when offended, turn into an accusation. In this very passage I have given you the chance, if you like, to build a slander against me. “How is it,” you may ask, “that he now runs down Eusebius, after praising him in other places?” The name Eusebius is, of course, different from Origen; but the ground of complaint is the same in both cases. I praised Eusebius for his Church History, for his Chronicle, and for his description of the Holy Land; and these works of his I gave to the people of my own language by translating them into Latin. Am I to be called an Arian because Eusebius, the author of those books, is an Arian? If you should dare to call me a heretic, remember your preface to On First Principles, in which you bear witness that I am of the same faith as you. And at the same time I beg you to listen patiently to the protest of one who was once your friend. You get into heated disputes with others, and trade insults with men of your own order; whether you are right or wrong in this is for you to say. But even a true accusation against a brother is distasteful to me. I do not say this to blame others; I only say that I would not do it myself. We are separated from each other by a vast distance. What sin had I committed against you? What is my offense? Is it that I answered that I was not an Origenist? Are you to be treated as accused because I defend myself? If you say you are not an Origenist and never have been, I believe your solemn assurance. If you once were one, I accept your repentance. Why do you complain if I am what you say you are? Or is my offense that I dared to translate On First Principles after you had done it, and that my translation is supposed to take away from your work? But what was I to do? Your praise of me, or your accusation against me, was sent to me. Your “praise” was so strong and so long that, if I had let it pass, everyone would have thought me a heretic. Look at what is said at the end of the letter I received from Rome: “Clear yourself of the suspicions people have taken up against you, and convict your accuser of speaking falsely; for if you leave him unanswered, you will be thought to agree with his charges.” Pressed by such conditions, I decided to translate these books, and I ask you to note the answer I made. It was this: “This is the position my friends have put me in” (notice that I did not say “my friend,” for fear of seeming to aim at you): “if I keep silent, I am to be counted guilty; if I answer, I am counted an enemy. Both conditions are hard; but of the two I will choose the easier. A quarrel can be healed, but blasphemy admits of no forgiveness.” You see that I felt this as a burden laid on me; that I was unwilling and resisting; that I could quiet my foreboding of the quarrel this undertaking would bring only by pleading necessity. If you had translated On First Principles without mentioning me, you would have a right to complain that I translated it afterward to your harm. But as it is, you have no right to complain, since my work was only an answer to the attack you had made on me under the guise of praise; for what you call praise everyone takes as accusation. Let it be understood between us that you accused me, and then you will not be indignant that I replied. But now suppose that you wrote with a good intention, that you were not merely innocent but a most faithful friend, from whose mouth no untruth ever came, and that you wounded me quite unknowingly. What is that to me, who felt the wound? Am I not to treat my wound because you gave it without evil intent? I am struck down and pierced through, with a wound in my breast that will not be eased; my limbs, white before, are stained with blood; and you say to me, “Please leave your wound alone, for fear I may be thought to have wounded you.” And yet the translation in question is a rebuke to Origen rather than to you. You altered for the better the passages you considered heretics had inserted. I brought to light what the whole Greek world with one voice attributes to him. Which of our two views is truer is not for me or for you to judge; let each be marked with the censor’s rod by the reader. The whole of that letter in which I answer for myself is aimed at the heretics and at my accusers. How does it touch you, who claim to be both an orthodox person and my admirer, if I am a little too sharp with heretics and expose their tricks in public? You should rejoice at my attacks on them; otherwise, if you are annoyed by them, you may be thought a heretic yourself. When something is written against a particular vice without naming anyone, the man who grows angry accuses himself. It would have been the part of a wise man, even if he felt hurt, to hide his sense of injury and, by the calm of his face, to clear away the cloud that lay on his heart. [a]