Candidus, and the Tale About Hilary

Now compare the words of Origen, which I have translated word for word above, with these that he has turned into Latin, or rather turned upside down, and you will see clearly how great a difference there is between them, not only of words but of meaning. Please do not find my translation tiresome because it is longer; my purpose in translating the whole passage was to show why he suppressed the earlier part. There is a dialogue in Greek between Origen and Candidus, the defender of the Valentinian heresy. I confess that when I read it, I seem to be watching a fight between two blindfolded gladiators. Candidus maintains that the Son is of the substance of the Father, and falls into the error of asserting a probole, or production. On the other side Origen, like Arius and Eunomius, refuses to admit that the Son is produced or born, so that God the Father may not be divided into parts. Instead he says that the Son was a sublime and most excellent creature, who came into being by the will of the Father like other creatures. Then they come to a second question. Candidus asserts that the devil is of a nature wholly evil, which can never be saved. Against this, Origen rightly asserts that the devil is not of a perishable substance, but that it is by his own will that he fell, and he can be saved. Candidus falsely turns this into a reproach against Origen, as if he had said that the devil’s nature could be saved. So what Candidus had falsely accused him of, Origen refutes. But we see that it is in this dialogue alone that Origen accuses the heretics of having corrupted his writings, not in the other books, about which no question was ever raised. Otherwise, if we are to believe that everything heretical comes not from Origen but from the heretics, when almost all his books are full of these errors, nothing of Origen’s will remain, and everything must be the work of people whose names we do not know. [a]

It is not enough for him to slander the Greeks and the men of old, about whom distance in time or place gives him the power to tell any falsehood he likes. He comes to the Latins, and first takes the case of Hilary the Confessor, whose book, he says, was corrupted by the heretics after the Council of Ariminum. On this account, he says, a question arose about Hilary in a council of bishops, and Hilary ordered the book to be brought from his own house. The book, in its heretical form, was in his desk, though he did not know it; and when it was produced, its author was condemned as a heretic and excommunicated, and left the council room. This is the story, a mere dream of his own, that he tells to his close friends; and he imagines his authority to be so great that no one will dare to contradict him when he says such things. I will ask him a few questions. In what city was the synod held that excommunicated Hilary? What were the names of the bishops present? Who signed the sentence? Who voted for it, and who against? Who were the consuls of the year? Which emperor ordered the council to assemble? Were the bishops present from Gaul alone, or from Italy and Spain as well? And for what purpose was the council called together? You tell us none of these things. Yet, in order to defend Origen, you treat as a criminal and as excommunicated a man of the highest eloquence, the very trumpet of the Latin language against the Arians. But we are in the presence of a confessor, and even his slanders must be borne with patience. He next passes on to Cyprian, the illustrious martyr, and tells us that a book by Tertullian called On the Trinity is read as one of Cyprian’s works by those of the Macedonian heresy at Constantinople. In this charge he tells two falsehoods. The book in question is not Tertullian’s, and it does not go under Cyprian’s name. It is by Novatian and bears his name, and the peculiar style proves who wrote it.