A Source Book for Ancient Church History

by Joseph Cullen Ayer

Of the beliefs and public teachings preserved in the Church, some we have from written tradition, others we have received as delivered to us “in a mystery” by the tradition of the Apostles; and both of these have in relation to true piety the same binding force. And these no one will gainsay, at least no one who is versed even moderately in the institutions of the Church. For were we to reject such customs as are unwritten as having no great force, we should unintentionally injure the gospels in their very vitals; or, rather, reduce our public definition to a mere name and nothing more. For example, to take the first and most general instance, who is there who has taught us in writing to sign with the cross those who have trusted in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ? What writing has taught us to turn to the East in our prayers? Which of the saints has left us in writing the words at the invocation and at the displaying of the bread in the eucharist and the cup of blessing? For we are not, as is well known, content with what the Apostle or the Gospel has recorded; but, both before and after, we say other words as having great importance for the mystery, and these we derive from unwritten teaching. Moreover, we bless the water of baptism and the oil of chrism, and, besides this, him who is baptized. From what writings? Is it not from the silent and mystical tradition? What written word teaches the anointing of oil itself? And whence is it that a man is baptized three times? [pg 485] And as to other customs of baptism, from what Scripture comes the renunciation of Satan and his angels? Does not this come from the unpublished and secret teaching which our fathers guarded in silence, averse from curious meddling and inquisitive investigation, having learned the lesson that the reverence of the mysteries is best preserved in silence? How was it proper to parade in public the teaching of those things which it was not permitted the uninitiated to look at?

(b) Jerome, Preface to the Vulgate Translation of the New Testament. (MSL, 29:557.)

Jerome's free critical attitude in his work in his earlier life.

This preface is addressed to Bishop Damasus of Rome and is dated 383.

You urge me to make a new work out of an old and, as it were, to sit in judgment on the copies of the Scriptures already scattered throughout the whole world; and, inasmuch as they differ among themselves, I am to decide which of them agree with the Greek original. A pious labor, but a perilous presumption; to judge others, myself to be judged of all; to change the language of the aged, and to carry back the world already grown gray, back to the beginnings of its infancy! Is there a man, learned or unlearned, who will not, when he takes the volume into his hands and perceives that what he reads differs from the flavor which once he tasted, break out immediately into violent language and call me a forger and a profane person for having the audacity to add anything to the ancient books or to change or correct anything? I am consoled in two ways in bearing this odium: in the first place, that you, the supreme bishop, command it to be done; and secondly, even on the testimony of those reviling us, what varies cannot be true. For if we put faith in the Latin texts, let them tell us which; for there are almost as many texts as copies. But if the truth is to be sought from many, why should we not go back to the original Greek and correct the mistakes introduced by inaccurate translators, and the blundering [pg 486] alterations of confident and ignorant men, and further, all that has been added or altered by sleepy copyists? I am not discussing the Old Testament, which was turned into Greek by the Seventy Elders, and has reached us by a descent of three steps. I do not ask what Aquila and Symmachus think, or why Theodotion takes a middle course between the ancients and the moderns. I am willing to let that be a true translation which had apostolic approval [i.e., the LXX]. I am now speaking of the New Testament. This was undoubtedly composed in Greek, with the exception of the work of the Apostle Matthew, who first published the gospel of Christ in Judea and in Hebrew. This [i.e., the New Testament], as it is in our language, is certainly marked by discrepancies, and the stream flows in different channels; it must be sought in one fountainhead. I pass over those manuscripts bearing the names of Lucian and Hesychius, which a few contentious persons perversely support. It was not permitted these writers to amend anything in the Old Testament after the labor of the Seventy; and it was useless to make corrections in the New, for translations of the Scriptures already made in the language of many nations show that they are additions and false. Therefore this short preface promises only the four gospels, of which the order is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, revised by a comparison of the Greek manuscripts and only of the ancient manuscripts. And that they might not depart far from the Latin customarily read, I have used my pen with some restraint, so that having corrected only the passages which seemed to change the meaning, I have allowed the rest to remain as it was.

(c) Jerome, Ep. 7, ad Pammachium. (MSL, 23:376.)

The principal errors of Origen according to Jerome.

This is the most important work of Jerome in the controversy known as the Origenistic controversy. Jerome attacks in this work John, bishop of Jerusalem, and writes as a result of the work of Epiphanius in Palestine three years before. The following were addressed to John to reject, as a test of that bishop's orthodoxy. See above, [§ 43].

First, in the book περὶ ἀρχῶν it is said [I, 1:8]: “For as it is unfitting to say that the Son can see the Father, so it is not meet to think that the Holy Spirit can see the Son.”