Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume III/Rufinus/Jerome's Apology/Book I/Chapter 24

24. A third passage with which he finds fault is that in which I gave a threefold interpretation of the Apostle&#8217;s words: &#8220;That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.&#8221; The first was my own opinion, the second the opposite opinion held by Origen, the third the simple explanation given by Apollinarius. As to the fact that I did not give their names, I must ask for pardon on the ground that it was done through modesty. I did not wish to disparage men whom I was partly following. and whose opinions I was translating into the Latin tongue. But, I said, the diligent reader will at once search into these things and form his own opinion. And I repeated at the end: Another turns to a different sense the words &#8216;That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace.&#8217; &#8220;Ah,&#8221; you will say, &#8220;I see that in the character of the diligent reader you have unfolded the opinions of Origen.&#8221; I confess that I was wrong. I ought to have said not The diligent but The blasphemous reader. If I had anticipated that you would adopt measures of this kind I might have done this, and so have avoided your calumnious speeches. It is, I suppose, a great crime to have called Origen a diligent reader, especially when I had translated seventy books of his and had praised him up to the sky,&#8212;for doing which I had to defend myself in a short treatise two years ago in answer to your trumpeting of my praises. In those &#8216;praises&#8217; which you gave me you laid it to my charge that I had spoken of Origen as a teacher of the churches, and now that you speak in the character of an enemy you think that I shall be afraid because you accuse me of calling him a diligent reader. Why, even shopkeepers who are particularly frugal, and slaves who are not wasteful, and the care-takers who made our childhood a burden to us and even thieves when they are particularly clever, we speak of as diligent; and so the conduct of the unjust steward in the Gospel is spoken of as wise. Moreover &#8220;The children of this world are wiser than the children of light,&#8221; and &#8220;The serpent was wiser than all the beasts which the Lord had made on the earth.&#8221;