Why I Praised Origen Before I Knew On First Principles

It is said that recently, at a gathering where the letters of Theophilus exposing the errors of Origen were read, our friend stopped his ears and, together with everyone present, pronounced a clear condemnation on the author of so much evil. And he said, I am told, that until that moment he had never known that Origen had written anything so wrong. I say nothing against this. I do not make the remark that someone else perhaps might make: that he could not possibly have been ignorant of what he had translated himself, when he had also published a heretic’s defense of Origen under the name of a martyr, and had taken up that martyr’s defense in a book of his own. On that subject I will have some critical remarks to make later, if I have time to write them. [a]

I make only one observation, and it admits of no contradiction. If it is possible that he misunderstood what he translated, why is it not possible that I knew nothing of the book On First Principles, which I had never read before, and that I had read only the homilies I translated, in which he himself testifies there is nothing wrong? But if, against the opinion he once stated, he now finds fault with me for the very things he once praised me for, he will be caught between two choices. Either he praised me believing me to be a heretic, while confessing that he shared my opinion; or else, if he praised me before as orthodox, his present accusations come to nothing and spring from sheer malice. But perhaps it was only because he was my friend that he once kept silent about my errors, and now that he is angry with me he brings to light what he had kept hidden.