8. I had given Latin
versions, as my friend tauntingly says, of seventy books of Origen, and
of some parts of his Tomes, but no question was ever raised about my
work; no commotion was felt on the subject in Rome. What need was there
to commit to the ears of the Latins what Greece denounces and the whole
world blames? I, though translating many of Origen’s work in the
course of many years, never created a scandal: but you, though unknown
before, have by your first and only work become notorious for your rash
proceeding. Your Preface tells us that you have also translated the
work of Pamphilus the martyr in defence of Origen; and you strive with
all your might to prevent the church from condemning a man whose faith
the martyr attests. The real fact is that
Eusebius Bishop of Cæsarea, as I have already said before, who was
in his day the standard bearer of the Arian faction, wrote a large and
elaborate work in six books in defence of Origen, showing by many
testimonies that Origen was in his sense a catholic, that is, in our
sense, an Arian. The first of these six books you have translated and
assigned it to the martyr. I must not wonder, therefore, that you wish
to make me, a small man and of no account, appear as an admirer of
Origen, when you bring the same calumny against the martyr. You change
a few statements about the Son of God and the holy Spirit, which you
knew would offend the Romans, and let the rest go unchanged from
beginning to end; you did, in fact, in the case of this Apology of
Pamphilus as you call it, just what you did in the translation of
Origen’s Περὶ
᾽Αρχῶν. If that
book is Pamphilus’s, which of the six books is Eusebius’s
first? In the very volume which you pretend to be Pamphilus’s, mention is made of the later books. Also, in the second and following books, Eusebius says that he had said such and such things in the first book and excuses himself for repeating them. If the whole work is Pamphilus’s, why do you not translate the remaining books? If it is the work of the other, why do you change the name? You cannot answer; but the facts make answer of themselves: You thought that men would believe the martyr, though they would have turned in abhorrence from the chief of the Arians.