Origen Condemned at Alexandria

“Many passages that the bishops had extracted from his books were read out to show that they were written against the catholic faith. But the passage that stirred up the most ill will against him was one in which we read, in his published works, that the Lord Jesus, as he had come in the flesh for the redemption of mankind, and suffering on the cross for the salvation of man, had tasted death to win eternal life for the human race, so by the same course of suffering he would also make the devil a sharer in redemption. He maintained this on the ground that such a thing would be in keeping with his goodness and kindness: he who had restored fallen and ruined man would in this way also set free an angel who had fallen before. When these and other things of the kind were brought forward by the bishops, an uproar broke out through the zeal of the different parties. When the authority of the priests could not quiet it, the governor of the city was called in to regulate the discipline of the church, a perverse precedent. Through the terror he inspired, the brothers were scattered, and the monks fled in different directions, so that once the decrees were published, they were not allowed to settle anywhere. [a]

One fact influenced me greatly: Jerome, a truly catholic man and most skilled in the holy law, who was at first thought to have been a follower of Origen, now went further than almost anyone else in condemning the whole of his writings. I am certainly not inclined to judge anyone rashly; but even the most learned men were said to hold different opinions in this controversy. Still, whether that opinion of Origen’s was simply an error, as I think, or a heresy, as is generally supposed, not only could it not be suppressed by the many censures of the priests, but it could never have spread so far and wide if it had not gained strength from their quarrels.

So when I came to Alexandria, I found the city in a ferment of disturbances over this matter. The bishop of that place, indeed, received me very kindly, in a better spirit than I expected, and even tried to keep me with him. But I had no wish at all to settle there, where a recent outbreak of ill will had brought ruin on the brothers. For although it may perhaps seem that they ought to have obeyed the bishops, so great a multitude of people, all living in open confession of Christ, ought not for that reason to have been persecuted, least of all by bishops.”