He Admits What He Owes to Porphyry

When he wrote his treatises against Jovinian and someone had raised objections to them, he was told of these objections by Domnio, that old man whose memory we all revere. In his answer to Domnio he said that a man like himself could not possibly be in the wrong, since his knowledge reached to everything that could be known. And he went on to list the various kinds of syllogisms and the whole art of learning and of writing, assuming, of course, that the man who found fault with him knew nothing of such things. Then he goes on like this: “It was foolish of me, it seems, to think that I could not know all these things without the philosophers, and to regard the end of the stylus that strikes out and corrects as better than the end we write with. It was useless, it seems, for me to have translated the Commentaries of Alexander, and for my learned master to have brought me into a knowledge of logic through Porphyry’s Introduction. And, to say nothing of my teachers in literature, there was no reason for me to have had Gregory of Nazianzus and Didymus as my teachers in the Scriptures.” [a]

This, you see, is the man who said to Christ, “I have denied you, if ever I am found to own or to read the works of the pagans.” He might at least, one would think, have left out Porphyry, who was Christ’s special enemy and who tried, as far as it lay in him, to overturn the Christian religion completely. Yet he now glories in having had Porphyry as his instructor, through his Introduction to logic. He cannot plead that he learned these things at an earlier time, for before his conversion he and I alike knew nothing whatever of the Greek language and literature. All these things came after his oath, after that solemn promise had been made. It is no use for us to argue in such a case. We will be told at once, “Man, you are wrong. God is not mocked, and no syllogisms spun out of the books of Alexander will carry any weight with him.” I think, my brother, it was an ill-omened thing that you submitted yourself to Porphyry’s Introduction. Into what has that faithless man introduced you? If it is into the place where he is now, that is the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. For there dwell the apostate and the enemies of God; and perhaps the perjurers will go there too.