In Condemning Me He Condemns Himself

I repeat that there are no writings of mine in which there is any error to correct. There are many of yours which, as I have shown, ought by your present opinion to be condemned outright. You made an exception for your Commentaries on Ephesians, in which you imagined you had written more correctly. But even you must have seen, as I have shown, how like Origen’s views they are all the way through, and indeed how they contain something more extreme than the views you demand that we condemn. You have cut yourself off from the power of repentance by saying, “Read over my Commentaries on the Letter to the Ephesians, and you will acknowledge that I have opposed the doctrines of Origen.” But for that, you might perhaps wish to turn around and do penance for those too, and in this case as in the rest condemn yourself. As far as I am concerned, I give you full leave to repent of these also. Indeed, the best thing you can do is to do penance for all you have said, and also for all you are going to say; for it is certain that everything you have ever written is to be repented of.

But if anyone blames me for having translated anything at all of Origen’s, then I say that I am the last of many who have done it, and the blame, if there is any, should begin with the first. Yet does anyone ever punish a deed he had not forbidden beforehand? We did what was allowed. If there is to be a new law, it holds good only for the future. But it may be said that the works themselves ought to be condemned, and their author as well. If that is so, what is to happen to the other author who writes the same things, as I have shown most fully above? He must receive the same judgment. I do not ask for this, or press for it, although he plays the enemy toward me. But I cannot help seeing that he is heaping up such a judgment for himself by his rash condemnation of others.