My Prefaces and My Faith

But I wrote a preface to each of these works. In both, and especially in the preface to the work of Pamphilus, which was translated first, I put a statement of my faith in the forefront, declaring that my belief is in accordance with the catholic faith. I stated that, whatever people might find in the original or in my translation, my part in it in no way compromised my own faith. And further, with regard to On First Principles, I gave this warning. I had found that in these books some things concerning the faith were set out in a catholic sense, just as the church proclaims them, while in other places, where the very same thing is in question, expressions of a contrary kind are used. I had thought it right to set out these points in the way the author had set them out when he had put forward the catholic view of them. On the other hand, when I found things contrary to the author’s real opinion, I regarded them as things inserted by others (for he testifies, by the complaints in his letter, that this has been done). So I rejected them, or at any rate considered that I might leave them out, as having nothing of the “godly building up in the faith.” It will not, I think, be thought unnecessary to insert these passages from my prefaces, so that proof may be at hand for each statement. And further, so that the reader will not mistake the passages I quote from other documents, I have put a single mark beside a passage where the quotation is from my own works, but a double mark where the words are those of my opponent. [a]