Skip to content

Primary source · patristic

Against Vigilantius and Against John

St. Jerome

Against Vigilantius

1. The world has given birth to many monsters; in4944Isaiah we read of centaurs and sirens, screech-owls and pelicans. Job, in mystic language, describes Leviathan and Behemoth; Cerberus and the birds of Stymphalus, the…

§1–4 (¶1)

5. Madman, who in the world ever adored the martyrs? who ever thought man was God? Did not Paul and Barnabas, when the people of Lycaonia thought them to be Jupiter and Mercury, and would have offered sacrifices to…

§5–8 (¶2)

9. Respecting vigils and the frequent keeping of night-watches in the basilicas of the martyrs, I have given a brief reply in another letter which, about two years ago, I wrote to the reverend presbyter Riparius.

§9–12 (¶3)

13. Something, also, appears to be troubling you. You are afraid that, if continence, sobriety, and fasting strike root among the people of Gaul, your taverns will not pay, and you will be unable to keep up through the…

§13–16 (¶4)

17. At the request of the reverend presbyters, as I have said, I have devoted to the dictation of these remarks the labour of a single night, for my brother Sisinnius is hastening his departure for Egypt, where he has…

§17 (¶5)

Against John, Bishop of Jerusalem

1. If, according to the4986Apostle Paul, we cannot pray as we feel, and speech does not express the thoughts of our own minds, how much more dangerous is it to judge of another man’s heart, Rom. viii. 26.

§1–3 (¶1)

4. And first, before I translate and insert in this book the letter which you wrote to Bishop Theophilus, and show you that I understand your excessive care and circumspection, I should like a word of expostulation with…

§4–7 (¶2)

8. These are the arrows with which you are pierced; these the weapons with which throughout the whole letter you are wounded; or I should rather say Epiphanius throws himself as a suppliant at your knees, and casts his…

§8–11 (¶3)

12. What, I ask, is the meaning of this effrontery and bombast? All philosophers and orators attack Gorgias of Leontini for daring openly to pledge himself to answer any question which any person might choose to put to…

§12–15 (¶4)

16. We want to know whether souls, before man was made in paradise, and Adam was fashioned out of the earth, were among reasonable creatures; whether they had their own rank, lived, continued, subsisted; and whether the…

§16–19 (¶5)

20. One of your company, when pressed by me to say what he thought concerning the soul, whether it had existed before the flesh, or not, replied that soul and body had existed together.

§20–23 (¶6)

24. Again, in another part of his letter, that is, towards the end of his own homilies, that he might cheat the ear of the ignorant, he makes a grand parade and noise about the Resurrection, but in ambiguous and…

§24–27 (¶7)

28. In the symbol of our faith and hope, which was delivered by the Apostles, and is not written with paper and ink, but on fleshy tables of the heart, after the confession of the Trinity and the unity of the Church,…

§28–31 (¶8)

32. But as for the arguments drawn from boys, and infants, and old men, and meats, and excrements, which you employ against the Church, they are not your own; they flow from a heathen source.

§32–35 (¶9)

36. I pray you, who use such elaborate arguments against the resurrection, let us have some simple talk together. Do you believe that our Lord really rose again in the same body in which He died and was buried, or do…

§36–39 (¶10)

40. To proceed with the letter. “But when the ordination of Paulinianus, and the others associated with him, was brought forward, they began to feel that they themselves were in the wrong.

§40–43 (¶11)

44. “They,” you go on, “also take advantage of other letters which they say Epiphanius wrote to them. But he, too shall give account for all his doings before the judgment seat of Christ, where great and small shall be…

§44 (¶12)