I Praised Him, and He Wounded Me

But before I begin to clear up these points, there is one in which I admit that he has spoken the truth to an eminent degree: when he says that he is not returning abuse for abuse. This, I say, is quite true; for it is not for abuse, but for speaking well of him and praising him, that he has returned reproach and abuse. But it is not true, as he says, that he turns the left cheek to one who strikes him on the right. It is the one who is stroking him and caressing his cheek that he suddenly turns on and bites. I praised his eloquence and his industry in the work of translating from the Greek. I said nothing to belittle his faith; yet he condemns me on both these points. He must therefore forgive me if I say some things rather roughly and bluntly. For he has challenged to a reply a man who has no great skill in rhetoric, and who does not have, as he knows, the power to make someone he wishes to injure and wound appear to have received neither wounds nor injuries. Those who love that kind of eloquence must look for it in a man whom every idle rumor stirs up to fault-finding and abuse, and who thinks himself bound, as if he were the censor, to be forever stepping in to set things right. A man who wants to clear himself of the stains that have been thrown on him does not trouble himself, in the answer he is forced to make, about the elegance and neat turns of his reply, but only about its truth. [a]