Commenitorium Orosii ad Augustinum de Errore Priscillianistarum et Origenistarum

Paul Orosius’s Memorandum to Aurelius Augustine on the Error of the Priscillianists and Origenists. To the Most Blessed Father, Bishop Augustine, Orosius. 1. I had indeed already suggested this to your Holiness, but I was planning to offer a memorandum of the matter suggested at the time when I should have perceived you to be free in mind from other necessities of dictation. But since my lords, your sons, the bishops Eutropius and Paul, moved by the same concern for the salvation of all as I, your little child, have already given a memorandum concerning some heresies, yet have not indicated all, it became necessary for me to hasten to bring forth and heap together into one all the trees of perdition with their roots and branches, and to offer them to your burning spirit, so that you, having seen the line of battle and perceived the wickedness, may measure what disposition of virtue you can apply. Only you, most blessed father, root out and cut down the evil plantings or graftings of others, and scatter the true seed for us who will water it from your springs. I pledge God as witness and hope for the increase of your work, because that land which now shows ungrateful fruits through insincere cultivation, if you visit it by entrusting and filling it with that hidden manna which you possess, will at length, with more generous abundance, pour forth fruit up to a hundredfold. Through you, our Lord God, through you, I say, blessed father, may he correct in word those whom he has chastised with the sword. I was sent to you through God; I hope from you through him, while I consider how it has come about that I came here.

I recognize why I have come: without will, without necessity, without consent I departed from my homeland, driven by some hidden force, until I was carried to the shore of this land; here at last I came to my senses and understood that I was commanded to come to you. Do not judge me shameless, if you accept me as one who confesses. Make me a suitable merchant for my beloved lady, having found a pearl, not a runaway slave returning after the substance has been squandered. We have been more grievously torn apart by wicked teachers than by the most bloodthirsty enemies. We confess the offense: you see the wound; what alone remains: with the Lord’s help, grant the medicine! Briefly, therefore, I will show both what was badly planted earlier and took root, and what was later grafted in worse and prevailed. 2. Priscillian, first of all, is more wretched than the Manichaeans in this, that he also confirmed his heresy from the Old Testament, teaching that the soul, which is born from God, proceeds from some kind of storehouse, professes before God that it will fight, and is instructed in the worship of angels; then, descending through certain circles, it is seized by malignant principalities and, according to the will of the victorious prince, is thrust into various bodies and a bond is assigned to them. Hence he also maintained that astrology prevails, asserting that Christ dissolved this bond and affixed it to the cross through his passion, as Priscillian himself says in a certain letter of his:

This first wisdom is in the types of souls to understand the natures of divine powers and the arrangement of the body, in which the heaven is seen to be bound and all the principalities of the age are seen to be constrained; but the dispositions of the saints are to surpass. For the patriarchs hold the first circle and the divine chirograph of souls to be sent into flesh, fabricated by the consents of angels and of God and of all souls; they possess the work of the formal militia against it, and the rest. Moreover, he handed down that the names of the patriarchs are members of the soul, in that Ruben is in the head, Judah in the breast, Levi in the heart, Benjamin in the thighs, and similar things; but on the contrary, the signs of the heavens are disposed in the members of the body, that is, Aries in the head, Taurus in the neck, Gemini in the arms, Cancer in the breast, and the rest, wishing it to be understood that eternal darknesses exist and that the prince of this world proceeded from them, and confirming this itself from a certain book which is inscribed 'Memoria Apostolorum', where the Saviour is seen to be questioned secretly by the disciples and to show from the evangelical parable which has 'the sower went out to sow' because he was not a good sower, asserting that if he had been good, he would not have been negligent or would not have cast the seed beside the way or on rocky ground or in uncultivated places, wishing it to be understood that this is the sower who would scatter captured souls into diverse bodies as he wished.

In which book also many things are said about the prince of moistures and the prince of fire, wishing it to be understood that all good things in this world are done by the art, not the power, of God. For he says there is a certain virgin light, which God, wishing to give rain to men, shows to the prince of moistures, who, when he desires to seize her, being stirred up, sweats and makes rain, and, abandoned by him, stirs up thunder with his bellowing. But he spoke of the Trinity only in word, for, asserting a union without any existence or property, and removing the 'and,' he taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are this one Christ. 3. Then two of my fellow citizens, Avitus and another Avitus, when such a shameful confusion was already being laid bare by truth itself alone, sought foreign lands. For one set out for Jerusalem, the other for Rome; having returned, one reported Origen, the other Victorinus; of these two, one yielded to the other: both, however, condemned Priscillian. We know little of Victorinus, because still almost before his own editions, a follower of Victorinus yielded to Origen. Therefore, many magnificent things began to be set forth from Origen, which truth itself would cut short on slight occasion. For we learned a sufficiently sound doctrine concerning the Trinity, that all things which were made were made by God and were all very good and made from nothing: then, also, sufficiently sober solutions of the scriptures. All these things were immediately received by the wise with a faithful purging of former things; only the offense concerning nothing remained.

It was firmly believed that the soul exists, yet it could not be persuaded that it was made from nothing, they arguing that the will of God cannot be nothing. This persists almost to the present day. But these two Aviti, and with them the Greek Saint Basil, who, most blessed one, taught these things, handed down certain teachings from the books of Origen himself, not correctly, as if for the first time: first, that all things, before they appeared as made, always remained made in the wisdom of God, saying this with the phrase: 'For God, whatever he made, did not begin by making'; then they said that angels, principalities, powers, souls, and demons have one origin and one substance, and that place was given to an archangel, or a soul, or a demon according to the quality of their merits, using this phrase: 'A greater place was earned by a lesser fault'. Finally, they taught that the world was made so that in it souls which had previously sinned might be purified; and they proclaimed that the eternal fire by which sinners are punished is neither true fire nor eternal, saying that it is called fire as the punishment of one's own conscience, and that 'eternal', according to Greek etymology, is not perpetual, adding also a Latin testimony, because it is said 'in aeternum' and 'in saeculum' placed 'aeterno' after 'saeculum': and thus all the souls of sinners, after the purification of conscience, will return into the unity of the body of Christ.

They also wished to make assertions concerning the devil, but did not prevail: because, since the substance created good in him cannot perish, the substance of the devil is to be saved at some time, with his wickedness entirely burned away. Concerning the Lord's body, they taught as follows: that when the Son of God came to us, after so many thousands of years he had not been idle up to that point, but was preaching remission to angels, powers, and all higher beings; and that, as he assumed the quality of form of those whom he visited, he thickened to the point of the palpability of flesh by the appearance of assumption; that he determined this by his passion and resurrection, and then, as he ascended until he reached the Father, he thinned again; so that the body was never laid aside anywhere, nor is God, reigning in any body, circumscribed. They also said that the sun, moon, and stars are to be understood as a creature subject to corruption, not willingly; and that these are not elemental lights, but rational powers, and that they perform service to corruption because of him who subjected them in hope.

This I have set forth briefly, as I was able to retain it, so that, having surveyed all the maladies, you may hasten to apply the medicine. The truth of Christ is in me, because I would not dare to be impudent out of reverence for your venerable holiness, unless I recognized by evident judgment and ordinance of God that you were chosen and I was sent to bring remedies to that great and such a people, upon whom a blow has been inflicted as upon one sinning, and to whom care is owed after the blow. Deign, most blessed father, to be mindful of me and of the many who, with me, await your eloquence as dew to descend upon them.