23. Jerome's attack upon Ambrose.
24. Preface to Didymus on the Holy Spirit.
25. Jerome attacks one Christian writer after another.
26. His treatment of Melania.
27. I never followed Jerome's errors, for which he should do penance.
27 a. But I followed his method of translation.
28. Jerome in condemning me condemns himself.
29. He says I shew Origen to be heretical, yet condemns me.
30. His pretence that the Apology for Origen is not by Pamphilus needs no answer.
31. Others did not translate the Peri 'Arxwn because they did not know Greek.
32. Jerome's translation of the Scriptures impugned.
33. Authority of the LXX.
34. Has the Church had spurious Scriptures?
35. Danger of altering the Versions of Scripture.
36. Origen's Hexapla-Its object.
37. St. Paul's method of dealing with erring brethren.
38. How Jerome should have replied to Pammachius.
39. The Books against Jovinian.
40. My translation of the Peri 'Arxwn was meant to aid in a good cause.
41, 42, 43. Recapitulation of the Apology.
44. An appeal to Pammachius.
45, 46. Why my translations of Origen had created offence, but Jerome's not.
47. A Synod, if called on to condemn Origen, must condemn Jerome also.
In the first book of my Apology I have dealt with the accusations of dogmatic error which he endeavours unjustly to fix upon others, and have, by producing his own testimony, turned them back against him. In the second book, I shall be able, now that I have settled and put aside the matters which have to do with controversies of faith, more confidently to reply to him on the other heads of his accusation. For there is another and a very grave accusation, which has, like the former, to be cut down by the scythe of truth. It is this. He says that certain persons have joined themselves to Origen in a secret society of perjury, and that the forms of initiation are to be found in the Sixth book of his Miscellanies: and that this mystery has been detected by no one but himself through all this space of time. I should only excite his ridicule were I to declare, even with an oath, that I was an entire stranger to such a secret society of perjury. The road by which I propose to reach the declaration of the truth is more direct: it is by proving, which I can do quite easily, that I have never possessed those books nor borrowed them from others to read. Not only cannot I defend myself from an accusation the meaning of which I do not know, but I do not see how a matter can be made the subject of a charge against me as to which I do not even know what it is, or whether it exists at all. I only know that my accuser declares that either Origen wrote or his disciples hold, that, when the Scripture says "He that speaketh truth with his neighbour" the words apply to a neighbour only in the sense of one of the initiated, a member of this secret society: and again that the Apostle's words "We speak wisdom among them that are perfect" and the words of Christ "Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine," imply that truth is not to be communicated to all.
2. Let us see what my adversary himself says on this point in those Commentaries which he has selected. In the second book, in commenting on the words "Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth to his neighbour, for we are members one of another" (after a short introduction) he speaks as follows: