Saint Jerome, Complete Works, Vol. I

judged it, and illustrated it with notes, [but] left this passage untouched: however, I think there will easily be learned men in this age who find it hard to persuade themselves that Jerome was the author of such a work. For my part, I would prefer to attribute it to Audentius, a Spanish bishop who is said to have lived around the year 360; Gennadius records chapter 14 that he wrote a book Against the Manichaeans, in which he demonstrated that the eternal divinity of the Son of God existed toward the Father, and did not receive the beginning of Divinity from God the Father at that time when He was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary, by the work of God, as a man. Or, if this perhaps seems less likely, I would assign it to Sabbatius, a bishop of the Gallican church around the year 440, who, as the same Gennadius testifies chapter 25, composed a book on a similar argument, showing that Christ had true flesh, through which, by eating, drinking, becoming tired, weeping, dying, and rising again, He was proven to be true man. In truth, since nothing can be established for certain, and there are no sure arguments to take this work away from Jerome, lest we seem to rashly diminish the authority of Agobard as well, and overlook some work of Jerome’s without consideration, we describe that very fragment. Finally, the proposed sentence itself confirms this, which testifies that the first Adam was made into a living soul, the last into a life-giving spirit. Behold why, after countless years and incomprehensible cycles of centuries, He is separated from all mortals by whom He was born according to the flesh, as the one who is the first living [being], and the latter the life-giving [one]; the former possessing what was given to him, the latter granting what is to be possessed. The Psalmist explained this in two verses, saying: What is man, that you are mindful of him? Or the son of man, that you visit him? Man is to be understood as Adam; the son of man is to be understood as the Lord; who is visited in the memory of the old, and is filled with the spirit of greeting in the recollection of the deceased. The words themselves express this, so that it is not surprising to see a plain matter, while memory is joined to man, and visitation is coupled to the son of man. What else could remain for that mortal? What else needed to be infused into this life-giving one? For memory is owed to the deceased, [and] visitation is shown to the living. Both are confirmed to have been fulfilled in the Lord through the incarnation, when the last is visited for the commemoration of the first, and through the visitation of the last, the first is also saved. Germane to this sense is that statement: The first man is of the earth, earthly; the second is from heaven, heavenly. Who is this heavenly one? Without doubt, the One who made the one He bore in baptism hear what no one before Him had heard: You are my Son; today I have begotten you. And how is "today" spoken of, if in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God? Because it is not that Word, which is to be believed to have always been in the Father, and with the Father, and with the Father; but [it is] the man whom God the Word had assumed into the grace of salvation, who heard it. This son of man, through the Son of God, earns the right to be a son of God in the Son of God, nor is adoption separated from nature, but nature is joined with adoption. Since when the Word was made flesh, the Assumer did not decrease through the assumed, but the assumption grew in the Assumer. For the substance of infirmity could be changed by the Creator; however, the nature of the Creator's eternity could not be converted into a creature. And therefore, when it is said, The prior man is of the earth, earthly; the second is from heaven, heavenly; it is not the matter of the body that is separated, but the vital form; nor is the flesh removed, but the Assumer of the flesh is shown: that one, I say, who says in the Gospel, You are from below; I am from above. He says "from above," not by any means with starry flesh, but with divine power.

33. Two books against Helvidius, etc. — I purposely pass over certain other things which are mere errors of men in reviewing the writings of Jerome. Such is that of the author of the Praedestinatus, who mentions two books against Helvidius, not one. Jerome, that egregious doctor, wrote two books against the Helvidians, which, when read in time, will condemn them with worthy execration. But let there be no place here for those things which Jerome indeed promised he would work on at night, but did not carry out. Of this kind are the commentaries on the Song of Songs, which he promised to Principia when he was expounding the 44th Psalm to her Epistle 75, at the end. But, as he reports in the Commentaries on Matthew, he was excluded from that work by a long illness, and deferred the hope to the future; nor did any occasion for completing it offer itself afterward. Likewise, the Ecclesiastical History, which he professes in these very brilliant words, at the limit of the life of Malchus, that he intended to write: For I have decided to write, if the Lord grants me life, and if my detractors cease to pursue me at least while I am fleeing and hidden, from the coming of the Savior until our own age, that is, from the apostles until the dregs of our time, how and through whom the Church of Christ was born, and grown through persecutions, and crowned by martyrdoms, and after it came to Christian princes, became greater indeed in power and wealth, but lesser in virtues. But it is concluded clearly enough, neither from the catalog nor from any other work, that this vow was fulfilled. For what he says in the first book Against Ruffinus, I praised Eusebius in ecclesiastical history, in the digest of times, in the description of the Holy Land; and translating these little works into Latin, I gave them to the men of my language, it is better to understand that he wanted the praise of ecclesiastical history [and] the translation [to] be referred to the other two little works.

THIRD PART. — In which it is explained what has been achieved in this new edition.

34. Partition of the works. — Now, therefore, let us finally say what has been achieved by us in preparing this edition. First, the economy and partition by which all of Jerome's works have been digested by us must be briefly explained, and the rationale of our entire edition rendered. Whatever writings of Jerome we were able to scrape together have been distributed by us into ten volumes in such a way that the rationale of the arguments and the subjects being treated would be primarily considered, and one would in a way entice the reader to another. The first volume contains the letters; the second, the treatises or booklets which have a specific argument and fixed subject matter, whatever that may be, but is especially directed against heretics. The third exhibits, firstly, two sorts of apparatus for the Holy Scripture, then the commentaries themselves up to the Song of Songs. The following two explain the prophets. The sixth, the most noble parts of the New Testament. The seventh is completed by the Latin interpretation of the Eusebian chronicle and its supplement. The eighth and ninth, the Hebraica veritas Hebrew truth, or the Latin translation of the Hebrew canon of the Scriptures, then what he converted from the Greek of the Old Testament and rendered into the faith of the Greek New Testament. Finally, in the last, we provide those things that indeed sell themselves under Jerome's title but belong to another, whether a certain or uncertain author, which we have admitted into the family of the Holy Father like house-born servants, lest if we had utterly rejected them, it would be necessary for them to wander without a roof and perish. His own preface will be set before each volume, explaining the causes and reasons for all things that pertain to that volume, and especially of those not few works with whose accession each one has been enriched: indicating, if they were previously unpublished, whether they were extracted from autographs, or if they were adopted from elsewhere, for what reasons, or in what order; for the timeline of events will also be explained, and many other things will be published, so that the nature of the books may shine forth immediately at the threshold.