He Leans on Cicero and Horace in His Treatise on Translating

Take the treatise he calls On the Best Way of Translating. There is nothing of the best in it except the title he has added; all the rest is of the worst. In it he proves those men to be heretics with whom he is now in communion, and so brings on himself the condemnation of our apostle, who says, “He who judges is condemned if he eats.” I say our apostle, not his, for the ones he calls “his” are Flaccus and Tully. In that treatise, which tells us that no works of any kind can reasonably be rendered word for word, though he has now come around to thinking such rendering reasonable, he inserts whole passages from a work of Cicero. But had he not said, “What has Horace to do with the Psalter, or Maro with the Gospels, or Cicero with the apostle? Will not your brother be offended if he sees you sitting in that idol’s temple?” Here, of course, he convicts himself of idolatry; for if reading gives offense, writing gives much more. But since a man who turns to idolatry does not thereby become wholly and completely a pagan unless he first denies Christ, he tells us that he said to Christ, as Christ sat on the judgment seat with his most exalted angels serving around him, “If ever hereafter I read or own any pagan books, I have denied you.” And now he not only reads them and owns them, not only copies them and compares copies of them, but inserts them among the very words of Scripture, and in discourses meant to build up the church. [a]

What I say is well enough known to everyone who reads his treatises, and needs no proof. But it is just like a man trying to save himself from such a pit of sacrilege and perjury to make up some excuse for himself, and to say, as he does, “I do not read them now. I have a retentive memory, so that I can quote various passages from different writers without a break, and now I am only quoting what I learned in my youth.” Well, if someone asked me to prove that before the sun rose this morning it was night over the earth, or that at sunset the sun had been shining all day, I would answer that if a man doubts what everyone knows, it is his business to show cause for his doubts, not mine to show cause for my certainty. Still, in this case, where a man’s soul is at stake, and the charge is the crime of perjury and of an impious denial of Christ, a condemnation must not be taken as a matter of course, even though the facts are known and understood by everyone. We are not to imitate the man who condemns the accused before they have been examined at all: not only without a hearing, but without summoning them to appear; and not only unsummoned, but when they are already dead; and not only the dead, but men he had always praised until then; and not only men he had praised, but men he had followed and taken as his masters. We must fear the judgment of the Lord, who says, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged,” and again, “With the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” So, though it is really unnecessary, I will bring a single witness against him, but one who must carry the day and whom he cannot challenge: that is, once again, himself and his own writings. Everyone can confirm what I say about this treatise of his, and my statement about it may seem unnecessary. But I must use some specific testimony, so that what I say may not seem unsatisfactory to those who have not read his works.