How Jerome Should Have Answered Pammachius

But you will say, “I could not possibly have replied otherwise than I did. The letter I received was such that, if I had not replied, and had not translated again, word for word, the books you had translated freely, I would myself have been thought a follower of Origen.” I will say nothing for now about the character of that letter, except that it bears the name of a man of high rank, Pammachius. But I ask: would there have been anything discourteous in a reply like this? [a]

“My brothers, we ought not to be quick to judge other men’s works. You remember what you did when I had sent my books against Jovinian to Rome, and some people understood them in a different sense from the one in which, if my memory serves me, I had written them. They were read by a great many people, and almost everyone was offended by them, you yourself among them, it was believed. Did you not on that occasion withdraw from circulation the copies that had been put on sale publicly in the forum, and send them, not to someone else, but to me, pointing out at the same time why you thought so many had been offended? And I, as you remember, wrote a defense in new terms, so as to give, as far as I could, a sounder meaning to expressions that had been taken in a different sense. “Well, it is only fair that as we would have others do to us, so we should do to them. So, as you sent my books back to me for correction, do the same now with these books. Send them back to their author, and hint to him what you think blameworthy in them, so that if he has gone wrong in anything, he may correct it. Besides, though I have exercised my talents on many subjects and labored over many works, this is almost the first work he has attempted, and possibly he did even this under pressure, so it is not strange if he has not gone quite straight at first. We should not seize on opportunities to disparage men who are Christians, but seek their good by correcting what they have done wrong.”