A Friendly Letter My Friends Held Back

Otherwise, if everything said against Origen and his followers is supposed to be said by me against you, then we must suppose that the letters of the popes Theophilus and Epiphanius, and of the other bishops, which I recently translated at their request, are meant to attack you and tear you to pieces. We must suppose, too, that the emperors’ written rulings ordering the Origenists to be banished from Alexandria and from Egypt were written at my dictation. The horror the pontiff of the city of Rome showed toward these men was nothing but a scheme of mine. The outburst of hatred against Origen, who had been read without prejudice before, which blazed up through the whole world immediately after your translation, was the work of my pen. If I have all this power, I am surprised you are not afraid of me. But in fact I acted with the greatest restraint. In my public letter I took every precaution so that you would not suppose anything in it was aimed at you. But at the same time I wrote you a short letter, protesting to you about your “praises.” My friends did not think it right to send you this letter, because you were not at Rome, and because, as they tell me, you and your companions were spreading charges that my way of life was unworthy of the Christian profession. But I have attached a copy of it to this book, so that you may understand how much pain you gave me, and with what brotherly self-restraint I bore it. [a]