Coccius, in his elaborate work, quotes the two following passages as Origen's, without expressing any hesitation or doubt respecting their genuineness, in which he is followed by writers of the present day. The passages are alleged in proof that Origen held and put in practice the doctrine of the invocation of saints; and they form the first quotations made by Coccius under the section headed by this title: "That the saints are to be invoked, proved by the testimony of the Greek Fathers."
The first passage is couched in these words: "I will { 135} begin to throw myself upon my knees, and pray to all the saints to come to my aid; for I do not dare, in consequence of my excess of wickedness, to call upon God. O Saints of God, you I pray with weeping full of grief, that ye would propitiate his mercies for me miserable. Alas me! Father Abraham, pray for me, that I be not driven from thy bosom, which I greatly long for, and yet not worthily, because of the greatness of my sins."
Coccius cites this passage as from "Origen in Lament," and it has been recently appealed to under the title of "Origen on the Lamentations." Here, however, is a very great mistake. Origen's work on the Lamentations, called also "Selecta in Threnos," and inserted in the Benedictine edition (Vol. iii. p. 321.), is entirely a different production from the work which contains the above extract. This apocryphal work, on the other hand, does not profess to be the comment of Origen on the Lamentations, but the Lament or Wailing of Origen himself; or, as it used to be called, the Penitence of Origen. (In the Paris edition of 1519 it is called "Planctus, seu Lamentum Origenis." Pope Gelasius refers to it as "Poenitentia Origenis.") That this work has no pretensions whatever to be regarded as Origen's, has been long placed beyond doubt. Even in the edition of 1545, this treatise is prefaced by Erasmus in these words, "This Lamentation was neither written by Origen nor translated by Jerome, but is the fiction of some unlearned man, who attempted, under colour of this, to throw disgrace upon Origen." [Basil, 1545. vol. i. p. 498.] In the Benedictine edition (Paris, 1733.) no trace of this work is to be found. They do not admit it among the doubtful, or even the spurious works; they do not so { 136} much as give room for it in the appendix; on the contrary, they drop it altogether as utterly unworthy of being any longer preserved. Instead, however, of admitting the work itself, these editors have supplied abundant reason for its exclusion, by inserting the sentiments of Huetius, or Huet, the very learned bishop of Avranches. He tells us, that formerly to Origen's work on Principles used to be appended a treatise called, the Lament of Origen, the Latin translation of which Guido referred to Jerome. After quoting the passage of Erasmus (as above cited from the edition of 1545) in proof of its having been "neither written by Origen nor translated by Jerome, but the fabrication of some unlearned man, who attempted, under colour of this, to throw disgrace on Origen, just as they forged a letter in Jerome's name, lamenting that he had ever thought with Origen," Huet proceeds thus: "And Gelasius in the Roman Council writes, 'The book which is called The Repentance of Origen, apocryphal.' It is wonderful, therefore, that without any mark of its false character, it should be sometimes cited by some theologians in evidence. Here we may smile at the supineness of a certain heterodox man of the present age, who thought the 'Lament,' ascribed to Origen, to be something different from the Book of Repentance." [Vol. iv. part ii. p. 326.]