I Never Followed Jerome in His Errors

But there is a danger of stretching my treatise too far and becoming a burden to the reader. It is enough that in the passages I have quoted he speaks of Origen as almost an apostle and a teacher of the churches; that he says it is not because of new teachings, as the mad dogs pretend, that the senate of Rome is stirred up against him; that he follows him because he himself and all the wise approve of him; and all the other testimonies from his prefaces set out above. But however these matters stand, and whatever your relations may be with these writers, old or new, whether you call them apostles or men of loose life, prophets or perverse teachers, what is that to me? It is for you to do penance for all your changes of opinion, your violent words, and the wounds you have dealt to good men, whether you have done so yet or not. [a]

As for me, what do you mean by saying, “If they followed me when I erred, let them follow me also now that I have amended”? Get behind me! Far be such a thing from me. I never followed you or any other man in your errors. In the strength of Christ I will follow, not you, nor any other man, but the catholic church. But you, who have written all these things, who followed those you knew to be in error, who, as I have shown, have written so unworthily of God: go, I say, and do penance, if at least you have any hope that your crime of blasphemy can be pardoned.