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# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/On Christian Doctrine/Book III/Chapter 26

Chapter 26.—Obscure Passages are to Be Interpreted by Those Which are Clearer.
Now from the places where the sense in which they are used is more manifest we must gather the sense in which they are to be understood in obscure passages. For example, there is no better way of understanding the words addressed to God, “Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for mine help,” than by referring to the passage where we read, “Thou, Lord, hast crowned us with Thy favor as with a shield.” And yet we are not so to understand it, as that wherever we meet with a shield put to indicate a protection of any kind, we must take it as signifying nothing but the favor of God. For we hear also of the shield of faith, “wherewith,” says the apostle, “ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” Nor ought we, on the other hand, in regard to spiritual armor of this kind to assign faith to the shield only; for we read in another place of the breastplate of faith: “putting on,” says the apostle, “the breastplate of faith and love.”

## Footnotes

* ↑ Ps. xxxv. 2.
* ↑ Ps. v. 12.
* ↑ Eph. vi. 16.
* ↑ l Thess. v. 8.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/On Christian Doctrine/Book III/Chapter 27

Chapter 27.—One Passage Susceptible of Various Interpretations.
38. When, again, not some one interpretation, but two or more interpretations are put upon the same words of Scripture, even though the meaning the writer intended remain undiscovered, there is no danger if it can be shown from other passages of Scripture that any of the interpretations put on the words is in harmony with the truth. And if a man in searching the Scriptures endeavors to get at the intention of the author through whom the Holy Spirit spoke, whether he succeeds in this endeavor, or whether he draws a different meaning from the words, but one that is not opposed to sound doctrine, he is free from blame so long as he is supported by the testimony of some other passage of Scripture. For the author perhaps saw that this very meaning lay in the words which we are trying to interpret; and assuredly the Holy Spirit, who through him spoke these words, foresaw that this interpretation would occur to the reader, nay, made provision that it should occur to him, seeing that it too is founded on truth. For what more liberal and more fruitful provision could God have made in regard to the Sacred Scriptures than that the same words might be understood in several senses, all of which are sanctioned by the concurring testimony of other passages equally divine?
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Jerome's Apology/Book III/Chapter 44

44. In the end of your letter you say: “I hope that you love peace.” To this I will answer in a few words: If you desire peace, lay down your arms. I can be at peace with one who shews kindness; I do not fear one who threatens me. Let us be at one in faith, and peace will follow immediately.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Jerome's Apology/Book III/Chapter 9

9. I call Jesus the Mediator to witness that it is against my will, and fighting against necessity, that I come down into the arena of this war of words, and that, had you not challenged me, I would have never broken silence. Even now, let your charges against me cease, and my defence will cease. For it is no edifying spectacle that is presented to our readers, that of two old men engaging in a gladiatorial conflict on account of a heretic; especially when both of them wish to be thought catholics. Let us leave off all favouring of heretics, and there will be no dispute between us. We once were zealous in our praise of Origen; let us be equally zealous in condemning him now that he is condemned by the whole world. Let us join hands and hearts, and march with a ready step behind the two trophy-bearers of the East and West. We went wrong in our youth, let us mend our ways in our age. If you are my brother, be glad that I have seen my errors; if I am your friend, I must give you joy on your conversion. So long as we maintain our strife, we shall be thought to hold the right faith not willingly but of necessity. Our enmity prevents our affording the spectacle of a true repentance. If our faith is one, if we both of us accept and reject the same things, (and it is from this, as even Catiline testifies, that firm friendships arise), if we are alike in our hatred of heretics, and equally condemn our former mistakes, why should we set out to battle against each other, when we have the same objects both of attack and defence? Pardon me for having praised Origen’s zeal for Scriptural learning in my youthful days before I fully knew his heresies; and I will grant you forgiveness for having written an Apology for his works when your head was grey.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Theophilus of Alexandria—Anastasius of Rome.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Jerome's Apology/Book III/Chapter 7

7. If it is true that you write a letter to me so as to admonish me, and, because you wish that I should be reformed, and that you do not wish that men should have a stumbling block put in their way, and that some may be driven mad and others be put to silence; why do you write books addressed to others against me, and scatter them by your myrmidons for the whole world to read? And what becomes of your dilemma in which you try to entangle me, “Whom, best of masters, did you think to correct? If those to whom you wrote, there was no fault to find with them; if me whom you accuse, it was not to me that you wrote”? And I will reply to you in your own words: “Whom did you wish to correct, unlearned master? Those who had done no wrong? or me to whom you did not write? You think your leaders are brutish and are all incapable of understanding your subtilty, or rather your ill will, (for it was in this that the serpent was more subtile than all the beasts in paradise,) in asking that my admonition to you should be of a private character, when you were pressing an indictment against me in public. You are not ashamed to call this indictment of yours an Apology: And you complain that I oppose a shield to your poniard, and with much religiosity and sanctimoniousness you assume the mask of humility, and say: “If I had erred, why did you write to others, and not try to confute me?” I will retort on you this very point. What you complain that I did not do, why did you not do yourself? It is as if a man who is attacking another with kicks and fisticuffs, and finds him intending to shew fight, should say to him: “Do you not know the command, ‘If a man smites you on the cheek, turn to him the other’?” It comes to this, my good sir, you are determined to beat me, to strike out my eye; and then, when I bestir myself ever so little, you harp upon the precept of the Gospel. Would you like to have all the windings of your cunning exposed?—those tricks of the foxes who dwell among the ruins, of whom Ezekiel writes, “Like foxes in the desert, so are thy prophets, O Israel.” Let me make you understand what you have done. You praised me in your Preface in such a way that your praises are made a ground of accusation against me, and if I had not declared myself to be without any connexion with my admirer, I should have been judged as a heretic. After I repelled your charges, that is your praises, and without shewing ill will to you personally, answered the accusations, not the accuser, and inveighed against the heretics, to shew that, though defamed by you, I was a catholic; you grew angry, and raved and composed the most magnificent works against me; and when you had given them to all men to read and repeat, letters came to me from Italy, and Rome and Dalmatia, shewing each more clearly than the last, what all the encomiums were worth with which in your former laudation you had decorated me.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Ezek. xiii. 4
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Jerome's Apology/Book III/Chapter 8

8. I confess, I immediately set to work to reply to the insinuations directed against me, and tried with all my might to prove that I was no heretic, and I sent these books of my Apology to those whom your book had pained, so that your poison might be followed by my antidote. In reply to this, you sent me your former books, and now send me this last letter, full of injurious language and accusations. My good friend, what do you expect me to do? To keep silence? That would be to acknowledge myself guilty. To speak? But you hold your sword over my head, and threaten me with an indictment, no longer before the church but before the law-courts. What have I done that deserves punishment? Wherein have I injured you? Is it that I have shewn myself not to be a heretic? or that I could not esteem myself worthy of your praises? or that I laid bare in plain words the tricks and perjuries of the heretics? What is all this to you who boast yourself a true man and a catholic, and who shew more zeal in attacking me than in defending yourself? Must I be thought to be attacking you because I defend myself? or is it impossible that you should be orthodox unless you prove me to be a heretic? What help can it give you to be connected with me? and what is the meaning of your action? You are accused by one set of people and you answer only by attacking another. You find an attack made on you by one man, and you turn your back upon him and attack another who was for leaving you alone.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Jerome's Apology/Book III/Chapter 41

41. I come now to your Epilogue, (that is to the revilings which you pour upon me,) in which you exhort me to repentance, and threaten me with destruction unless I am converted, that is, unless I keep silence under your accusations. And this scandal, you say, will recoil upon my own head, because it is I who by replying have provoked you to the madness of writing when you are a man of extreme gentleness and of a meekness worthy of Moses. You declare that you are aware of crimes which I confessed to you alone when you were my most intimate friend, and that you will bring these before the public; that I shall be painted in my own colours; and that I ought to remember that I am lying at your feet, otherwise you might cut off my head with the sword of your mouth. And, after many such things, in which you toss yourself about like a madman, you draw yourself up and say that you wish for peace, but still with the intimation that I am to keep quiet for the future, that is that I am not to write against the heretics, nor to answer any accusation made by you; if I do this, I shall be your good brother and colleague, and a most eloquent person, and your friend and companion; and, what is still more, you will pronounce all the translations I have made from Origen to be orthodox. But, if I utter a word or move a step, I shall at once be unsound and a heretic, and unworthy of all connexion with you. This is the way you trumpet forth my praises, this is the way you exhort me to peace. You do not grant me liberty for a groan or a tear in my grief.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume III/Doctrinal Treatises of St. Augustin/On the Catechising of the Uninstructed/Chapter 24

Chapter 24.—Of the Church in Its Likeness to a Vine Sprouting and Suffering Pruning.
44. “But that vine, which was spreading forth its fruitful shoots throughout the circle of lands, according as had been prophesied with regard to it, and as had been foretold by the Lord Himself, sprouted all the more luxuriantly in proportion as it was watered with richer streams of the blood of martyrs. And as these died in behalf of the truth of the faith in countless numbers throughout all lands, even the persecuting kingdoms themselves desisted, and were converted to the knowledge and worship of Christ, with the neck of their pride broken. Moreover it behoved that this same vine should be pruned in accordance with the Lord’s repeated predictions, and that the unfruitful twigs should be cut out of it, by which heresies and schisms were occasioned in various localities, under the name of Christ, on the part of men who sought not His glory but their own; whose oppositions, however, also served more and more to discipline the Church, and to test and illustrate both its doctrine and its patience.
45. “All these things, then, we now perceive to be realized precisely as we read of them in predictions uttered so long before the event. And as the first Christians, inasmuch as they did not see these things literally made good in their own day, were moved by miracles to believe them; so as regards ourselves, inasmuch as all these things have now been brought to pass exactly as we read of them in those books which were written a long time previous to the fulfillment of the things in question, wherein they were all announced as matters yet future, even as they are now seen to be actually present, we are built up unto faith, so that, enduring and persevering in the Lord, we believe without any hesitation in the destined accomplishment even of those things which still remain to be realized. For, indeed, in the same Scriptures, tribulations yet to come are still read of, as well as the final day of judgment itself, when all the citizens of these two states shall receive their bodies again, and rise and give account of their life before the judgment-seat of Christ. For He will come in the glory of His power, who of old condescended to come in the lowliness of humanity; and He will separate all the godly from the ungodly,—not only from those who have utterly refused to believe in Him at all, but also from those who have believed in Him to no purpose and without fruit. To the one class He will give an eternal kingdom together with Himself, while to the other He will award eternal punishment together with the devil. But as no joy yielded by things temporal can be found in any measure comparable to the joy of life eternal which the saints are destined to attain, so no torment of temporal punishments can be compared to the everlasting torments of the unrighteous.

## Footnotes

* ↑ John xv. 2
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Prolegomena/Works of Rufinus
## Contents

* Original Works which still Survive
* Translations from Greek Writers
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Title Page

Life and Works of Rufinus
with
Jerome’s Apology Against Rufinus.
Translated with Prolegomena and Notes,
by
The Hon. and rev. William Henry Fremantle, M.A.
Canon of Canterbury, Fellow and Tutor of Baliol College, Oxford.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On Marriage and Concupiscence/Book II/Chapter 3

Chapter 3.—The Same Continued.
The words which he has quoted and endeavoured to refute out of my book, which I sent to you, and with which you are very well acquainted, are the following: “They are constantly affirming, in their excessive hatred of us, that we condemn marriage and that divine procedure by which God creates human beings by means of men and women, inasmuch as we maintain that they who are born of such a union contract original sin, and do not deny that, of whatever parents they are born, they are still under the devil’s dominion unless they be born again in Christ.” Now, in quoting these words of mine, he took care to omit the testimony of the apostle, which I adduced by the weighty significance of which he felt himself too hard pressed. For, after saying that men at their birth contract original sin, I at once introduced the apostle’s words: “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for in him all men sinned.” Well, as I have already mentioned, he omitted this passage of the apostle, and then closed up the other remarks of mine which have been now quoted. For he knew too well how acceptable to the hearts and consciences of all faithful catholics are these words of the apostle, which I had adopted, but which he omitted,—words which are so direct and so clear, that these new-fangled heretics use every effort in their dark and tortuous glosses to obscure and deprave their force.

## Footnotes

* ↑ See above, Book i. ch. 1 of this treatise.
* ↑ Rom. v. 12.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On Marriage and Concupiscence/Book II/Chapter 25

Chapter 25 [XII.]—Augustin Not the Deviser of Original Sin.
“This sexual connection of bodies,” he says, “together with the ardour, with the pleasure, with the emission of seed, was made by God, and is praiseworthy on its own account, and is therefore to be approved; it, moreover, became sometimes even a great gift to pious men.” He distinctly and severally repeated the phrases, “with ardour,” “with pleasure,” “with emission of seed.” He did not, however, venture to say, “with lust.” Why is this, if it be not that he is ashamed to name what he does not blush to praise? A gift, indeed, for pious men is the prosperous propagation of children; but not that shame-producing excitement of the members, which our nature would not feel were it in a sound state, although corrupted nature now experiences it. On this account, indeed, it is that he who is born of it requires to be born again, in order that he may be a member of Christ; and that he of whom he is born, even though he be already born again, wants to be freed from that which exists in this body of death by reason of the law of sin. Now since this is the case, how is it he goes on to say, “You must, therefore, of necessity confess that the original sin which you had devised is done away with”? It was not I who devised the original sin, which the catholic faith holds from ancient times; but you, who deny it, are undoubtedly an innovating heretic. In the judgment of God, all are in the devil’s power, born in sin, unless they are regenerated in Christ.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On Marriage and Concupiscence/Book II/Chapter 28

Chapter 28 [XIV.]—Augustin’s Answer to This Argument. Its Dealing with Scripture.
Now to this lengthy statement of his we have to say in answer, that, in the passages which he has quoted from the sacred writings, there is nothing said about that shameful lust, which we say did not exist in the body of our first parents in their blessedness, when they were naked and were not ashamed. The first passage from the apostle was spoken of the seeds of corn, which first die in order to be quickened. For some reason or other, he was unwilling to complete the verse for his quotation. All he adduces from it is: “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened;” but the apostle adds, “except it die.” This writer, however, so far as I can judge, wished this passage, which treats only of corn seeds, to be understood of human seed, by such as read it without either understanding the Holy Scriptures or recollecting them. Indeed, he not merely curtailed this particular sentence, by omitting the clause, “except it die,” but he omitted the following words, in which the apostle explained of what seeds he was speaking; for the apostle adds: “And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, but the bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain.” This he omitted, and closed up his context with what the apostle then writes: “But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed its own body;” just as if the apostle spoke of man in cohabitation when he said, “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened,” with a view to our understanding of human seed, that it is quickened by God, not by man in cohabitation begetting children. For he had previously said: “Sexual pleasure does not complete the entire process of man’s making, but rather presents to God, out of the treasures of nature, material with which He vouchsafes to make the human being.” He then added the quotation, as if the apostle affirmed as follows: Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened,—quickened, that is, by thyself; but God forms the human being out of thy seed. As if the apostle had not said the intermediate words, which this writer chose to pass over; and as if the apostle’s aim was to speak of human seed thus: “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened; but God giveth to the seed a body such as pleaseth Him, and to every seed its own body.” Indeed, after the apostle’s words, he introduces remarks of his own to this effect: “If, therefore, God has assigned to human seed, as to everything else, its own proper body, which no wise or pious man will deny;” quite as if the apostle in the passage in question spoke of human seed.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Gen. ii. 25.
* ↑ 1 Cor. xv. 36.
* ↑ 1 Cor. xv. 37.
* ↑ Above, ch. 26 [xiii.].
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On Marriage and Concupiscence/Book II/Chapter 26

Chapter 26 [XIII.]—The Child in No Sense Formed by Concupiscence.
But as he was speaking of Abraham and Sarah, he goes on to say: “If, indeed, you were to affirm that the natural use was strong in them, and there was no offspring, my answer will be: Whom the Creator promised, the Creator also gave; the child which is born is not the work of cohabitation, but of God. He, indeed, who made the first man of the dust, fashions all men out of seed. As, therefore, the dust of the earth, which was taken as the material, was not the author of man; so likewise that power of sexual pleasure which forms and commingles the seminal elements does not complete the entire process of man’s making, but rather presents to God, out of the treasures of nature, material with which He vouchsafes to make the human being.” Now the whole of this statement of his, except where he says, that the seminal elements are formed and commingled by sexual pleasure, would be correctly expressed by him were he only earnest in making it to defend the catholic sense. To us, however, who are fully aware what he strives to make out of it, he speaks indeed correctly in a perverse manner. The exceptional statement to the general truth, which I do not deny belongs to this passage, is untrue for this reason, because the pleasure in question of carnal concupiscence does not form the seminal elements. These are already in the body, and are formed by the same true God who created the body itself. They do not receive their existence from the libidinous pleasure, but are excited and emitted in company with it. Whether, indeed, such pleasure accompanies the commingling of the seminal elements of the two sexes in the womb, is a question which perhaps women may be able to determine from their inmost feelings; but it is improper for us to push an idle curiosity so far. That concupiscence, however, which we have to be ashamed of, and the shame of which has given to our secret members their shameful designation, pudenda, had no existence in the body during its life in paradise before the entrance of sin; but it began to exist “in the body of this death” after sin, the rebellion of the members retaliating man’s own disobedience. Without this concupiscence it was quite possible to effect the function of the wedded pair in the procreation of children: just as many a laborious work is accomplished by the compliant operation of our other limbs, without any lascivious heat; for they are simply moved by the direction of the will, not excited by the ardour of concupiscence.