Annotation CCLXVI

”We shall all indeed rise, but we shall not all be changed.” — 1 Corinthians 15:51

Whether the writings of heretics are to be read.

Jerome, in the epistle to Minervius and Alexander, when he had brought forward several expositions of the ancients for the explanation of this clause, at last, excusing himself — because in these he had enumerated even the opinions of heretics, and had read their condemned writings — added these [things]: “IF anyone murmurs [complains], why I read the explanations of those with whose dogmas I do not acquiesce; let him know that I gladly hear that [word] of the Apostle,¹ ‘Test all things: [that] which is good, retain’; and the words of the Savior, saying, ‘Be ye approved money-changers’ — so that if any coin is adulterate, and has not the [right] figure, nor is stamped with the public mint, it be rejected; but [that coin] which bears the face of Christ with a clear light, be laid up in the purse of our heart.² I profess, both in adolescence and in extreme [old] age, that both Eusebius and Origen were most learned men, but erred in the truth of [their] dogmas: which we can say also of Theodore, Acacius, and Apollinaris: and yet all left us a monument of their sweat [toil] in the explanations of the scriptures. In the earth gold is sought, and from the beds of rivers the shining gravel is brought forth. And Pactolus [the golden river] is richer in mire than in stream. Why do my friends tear me; and against [me who am] silent do the coarse swine grunt? My purpose is to read the ancients, to test each thing, to retain the [things] which are good, and not to depart from the faith of the catholic Church.”

FROM these words of Jerome, Oecolampadius, and very many other heretics of our times, gather that the reading of the volumes of heretics was unjustly forbidden by the Roman pontiffs, against the judgment of many most grave fathers, who held that the lucubrations [writings] of heretics are to be read — both for the understanding of the scriptures, and on account of the varied erudition of many matters which is not had among the catholics. And among other fathers they bring forward Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria; who, although in the synod of the Hebdomon, together with the other bishops who were present, he had damned all the volumes of Origen, and, by writings also published, had publicly confuted [them]: yet never left off the reading of them. And when he was asked by [his] friends why he again embraced those books which he had before rejected, Socrates, in [his] book of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 17, relates that he answered in this manner: “The books of Origen are like a meadow adorned with flowers of every kind. And so, if I find anything good in them, I excerpt it: but if anything thorny appear, this I pass over as [something] prickly.”

To this testimony of Theophilus they add the authority of Dionysius the martyr, and bishop of the same church [Alexandria]; who, long before him, concerning the reading of heretics’ books, had written thus, word for word, in an epistle to Philemon, a Roman presbyter: “BUT I, indeed, have read even the commentaries and traditions of heretics — defiling my mind, for a little [while], with their most impure thoughts; yet taking thence this [much] of utility, that I may refute them before my own [judgment], and abominate [them] much more. And when I was forbidden by a certain brother presbyter, who feared lest I should be wrapped up in the mire of the malice of those writings, whence my soul might perish — [and] who, as I perceived, spoke truly: a certain vision was divinely offered to me, which strengthened me; and a discourse [word] made to me plainly commanded, saying: ‘Read all things which come into thy hands. For thou shalt be able to weigh and to prove all things. And hence there was given to thee, at the beginning, an occasion [of confirming thy] faith.’ I accepted this vision as conformable to the Apostolic voice, saying to the [more] powerful, ‘Be ye approved dispensers.’” These, then, are the [things] which are brought forward by Oecolampadius for the defense of the reading of heretics.

TO WHICH we answer, that it was neither by the Roman pontiffs, nor ever by any synod, altogether and utterly forbidden, that the writings of heretics be read; but [only forbidden] that they be read without the concession [permission] of superiors — but especially by the unlearned, who could easily be deceived by their reading, and even by the learned, whom no necessity of reading of this kind pressed. For the Fourth Council of Carthage, [in] canon 17, grants to bishops conspicuous for erudition and faith the reading of heretics’ volumes — that they may the more easily recognize their snares, and more forcibly confute [them]. Wherefore all — whether unlearned or learned — sin most gravely, who, without the knowledge and authority of superiors, read the books rejected by the Church, but especially [those] led to it by no necessity. Nor do the sayings and examples of Dionysius, Theophilus, and Jerome in any way excuse them, since on both sides the case between those [fathers] and these [heretics] is far unequal. For those were men everywhere learned, and most constant in the sincerity of the faith. Today

—the common crowd of Christians is, for the greater part, unlearned, and is turned about by every wind of new doctrine. Those [ancients], since they were not far distant from the beginning of the nascent Church and from the Apostolic school, were compelled — on account of the scarcity of catholic interpreters — to consult the commentaries of heretics, that thence they might draw explanations of many parts of the divine scripture which the orthodox doctors had either not yet attempted, or not yet touched happily [successfully] enough. But we, since we abound with so many innumerable pious and most learned commentaries of ancient and recent doctors, and in these have all and each of the parts of both testaments explained far more truly, more learnedly, and more elegantly than in the books of heretics — of what pardon shall we be worthy, if, the purest fountains of doctrine being left, we search after the marshy and deadly waters of the heretics? Those [ancients], in fine, were kept back from the reading of heretics’ volumes by no sanction of a general synod: [but] we, by the authority of many councils, and lastly by the decree of the ecumenical Synod of Trent, under the animadversion [penalty] of anathema, are commanded to abstain altogether from all heretical writings. See some [things] which pertain to this argument, [in] book 2, under the entry [dictio] “Curious Arts,” and under the entry “Sennacherib,” and [in] book 4, under “Julian, bishop of Eclanum.”