How I Used Origen and Others on Ephesians

My brother Paulinian tells me that our friend has attacked certain things in my commentary on Ephesians. Some of these criticisms he committed to memory, and he has pointed out the actual passages attacked. So I must not refuse to meet his statements. And I ask the reader, if I am somewhat long-winded in stating and refuting his charges, to make allowance for what the discussion requires. I am not accusing another, but trying to defend myself and to refute the false charge of heresy that is thrown in my face. [a]

Origen wrote three books on the Letter to the Ephesians. Didymus and Apollinaris also composed works of their own on it. These I partly translated and partly adapted. My method is described in the following passage of my prologue: “This too I wish to state in my preface. Origen, you must know, wrote three books on this letter, and I have partly followed him. Apollinaris and Didymus also published certain commentaries on it, from which I have gathered some things, though only a few; and, as seemed right to me, I have put in some things and taken out others. But I have done this in such a way that the careful reader may see from the very beginning how much of the work is mine and how much belongs to others.”

Whatever fault is found in my explanation of this letter, if I cannot show that it exists in the Greek books from which I have said it was translated into Latin, I will admit that the fault is mine and not another’s. However, so that I will not be thought to be raising quibbles, or to be escaping a bold encounter with him by this trick of excusing myself, I will set out the actual passages brought forward as evidence of my fault.