Why You Translated On First Principles

The next passage in this defense reads as follows: “I am neither a champion nor a defender of Origen, nor am I the first to have translated his works. Others before me have done the same thing, and I did it, the last of many, at the request of my brothers. If an order is to be given that such translations are not to be made, that order holds for the future, not the past. But if those who made these translations before any such order was given are to be blamed, the blame must begin with those who took the first step.” Here at last he has vomited up what he wanted to say, and all his inflamed mind has broken out into this malicious accusation against me. When he translates On First Principles, he declares that he is following me. When he is accused for having done it, he gives me as his example. Whether he is in danger or out of danger, he cannot live without me. So let me tell him what he claims not to know. No one reproaches you for translating Origen; otherwise Hilary and Ambrose would be condemned. You are reproached because you translated a heretical work and tried to win support for it by praising me in your preface. I myself, whom you accuse, translated seventy homilies of Origen and parts of his Tomes, so that by translating his best works I might draw attention away from the worst. And I have also openly translated On First Principles, to prove your translation false and to show the reader what to avoid. If you wish to translate Origen into Latin, you have at hand many of his homilies and Tomes, in which some question of conduct is handled or some obscure passage of Scripture is opened up. Translate these; give these to those who ask you for them. Why should your first labor begin with what is infamous? And why, when you were about to translate a heretical work, did you put in front of it, as its support, the supposed book of a martyr, and force on the ears of the Romans a book whose translation threw the world into panic? At any rate, if you translate such a work in order to show its author to be a heretic, change nothing from the Greek text, and make this clear in the preface. This is what Pope Anastasius has most wisely set down in the letter he addressed to Bishop John against you. He frees me, who have done this, from all blame, but condemns you, who would not do it. You will perhaps deny that this letter exists. So I have attached a copy of it, so that if you will not listen to your brother when he advises you, you may listen to the bishop when he condemns you. [a]