Jerome’s Chosen Commentary Condemns Him

These are the things we learn from the Commentaries you point us to. These are the rules for the confusion of our faith that you teach us. You want us to condemn in others what you teach yourself in private. For of course, if you are now that ‘other’ who does not accept the doctrine which holds that our souls existed in heaven before they were joined to bodies, you are undoubtedly the man who not only promises pardon to the devil and his angels and all unbelievers, but also undertakes that they will be granted rewards of the second order. But if you deny this second doctrine, you must be the author of the one we discussed first. [a]

And I wonder that those able and learned men who read these writings of his, which he now writes to recommend, should laugh at me because he calls me a mole, and should not feel that all the while he thinks of them as moles far more than me, for not seeing that the things I have pointed out are embedded in his books. For if he thought they could understand as well as read, he would never have asked them to get a copy of those books in order to condemn the very things their master teaches there; for the things he urges us to condemn are contained in them most plainly and openly.

I have shown, at any rate, that in these chosen Commentaries of his he himself asserts the doctrines he wants condemned in another man’s books: namely, that souls existed in heaven before they were born in bodies in this world; and that all sinners and unbelievers, together with the devil and his angels, will, at the time when every knee will bow to Jesus, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, not only receive pardon but also be summoned to receive the second order of rewards.