Heresy I, Of the New Testament in General

OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN GENERAL — Heresy the First (De Novo Testamento in universali haeresis prima)

Since the New Testament was not written by the Apostles of Christ, there is no need to believe all the things that are contained in it, but [one may] accept certain of them, and reject certain others as fallaciously brought in by falsifiers.

ASSERTORES HVIVS HAERESEOS [The Assertors of this Heresy]

¹ The chief heresy of the Manichaeans is this, which Faustus, bishop of the Manichaeans, defended fiercely beyond the other Manichaeans; concerning which he himself speaks thus in Augustine: “It is agreed that the New Testament was written neither by Christ nor by his Apostles, but a long time afterward by certain men of uncertain name, who — lest no credit should be given to them writing things they did not know — set upon the fronts [title-pages] of their writings partly the names of the apostles, partly the names of those who seemed to have followed the apostles, asseverating that they had written according to them.” And in another book, in the same Augustine, yet more plainly: ² “Many words,” he says, “have been inserted by your forefathers into the utterances of our Lord, which, though marked with his name, do not agree with his faith — written neither by Christ nor by his Apostles, but discovered, long after their assumption [death], by I know not whom, half-Jews even discordant among themselves, out of rumors and opinions; who nevertheless, referring all these same things to the names of the apostles, or of those who seemed to have followed the apostles, lied that they had written their own errors and falsehoods according to them.” And what those things were that had been falsely thrust into the New Testament and were repudiated by the Manichaeans, the same Faustus taught in many places, asserting that two kinds of lies had been inserted into the New Testament: ³ first, all the testimonies of the Old Testament which are found in the New Testament; secondly, all those scriptures in which it should be read that Christ was truly a man and truly suffered human things. These two being excluded, the rest, which pertained to the divinity of Christ, the Manichaeans willingly accepted and confessed to be most true. Helvidius also, in those same times, affirmed that the Greek exemplars of the New Testament had been falsified in many places, as St. Jerome left attested in the book which he wrote against him. But in our own times, in which all things are called back into doubt, the execrable Anabaptists and Servetians have — to the great harm of the Church — restored this error so often routed, confessing indeed that some books of the New Testament were written by the apostles, but that they were afterwards falsified by heretics and contaminated with many errors, and that these same errors have endured in the New Testament even to this day.

IMPVGNATIO [The Refutation]

Among the nefarious and pernicious heresies which in this our age have revived by the work of the Anabaptists, none surely is more pestilent than this one. For whereas all other heresies can be confuted out of the sacred letters, this one alone cannot be overcome by the arms of holy Scripture: for whatever from the sacred scriptures shall have been brought forward by Catholics to prove the sincerity [integrity] of the sacred volumes, the heretics will at once answer that it was said neither by Christ nor by the Apostles, but written under their name by falsifiers and corrupters. Yet although this detestable heresy cannot be conquered by the arms of holy Scripture, it can easily be stormed by other forces — namely, by the authority of the holy fathers, of the sacred councils, and of the apostolic Church. For this, as Augustine says, is the one and only engine (machina) of religion, which has once for all abolished all heresies, by the help of Christ, who promised her: “I am with you even unto the consummation of the age.” ⁴ From the authority, therefore, of this Catholic Church the [following] arguments are drawn.

1. First, against Faustus it is most evidently demonstrated that the Apostles were the authors of the New Testament, the continued succession of all the apostolic churches consenting in this. ⁵ And this rule of succession, as it pleases Augustine, is wont to be observed not only in judging the sacred books, but also in discerning the authors of secular writings. “For whence,” says Augustine, “is it agreed that the books now current are those of Hippocrates, the most noble physician, except that the series of succession has so commended them, from the very time of Hippocrates down to this time, that to doubt of them would be [the mark] of a madman? Likewise the books of Plato, of Aristotle, of Cicero, of Varro, and of other authors of that sort — whence have men known that they are theirs, except by the same continuous attestation of times succeeding one another? Wherefore, if it be asked of us whence we know these letters to be the apostles’, we answer briefly: From the most well-founded attestation of the Church, carried down by sure successions from the times of the apostles even to these times; which [Church] has always believed the New Testament to have been written by the apostles and evangelists, and has set it forth to be believed.”

2. Next, that the books of the New Testament have in no wise been falsified or corrupted is shown by the reading of it in the Church, always the same and continued after the same manner. Augustine uses this argument in the book On the Profit of Believing, saying: ⁶ “By no exemplars extant in so recent a memory can it be proved that the divine scriptures have been falsified. For if we speak of the New Testament, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, and the other fathers who followed one another in the Church through the series of times succeeding each other, cite and read it in the same manner. But that all these together were deceived, and that along with them the whole succession of the Catholic Church was through so many years so deluded that she read corrupted and falsified [texts] for uncontaminated ones — who would ever say this, unless one utterly impious?”

3. To this is added moreover both the dignity and the merit of the Church: since Christ, the highest truth, promised her that he would be with her perpetually, it is not to be believed that he was unwilling to preserve for his spouse her scriptures intact and inviolate — seeing he has granted this to so many writings of the gentiles, that they should be kept inviolate. ⁷ For who is blinded with such fury — unless he be subverted by consenting to the malice and fallacy of the demons’ lying — as to say that the church of the apostles could not have de-

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served [could not have merited] that the church of the apostles — so faithful, so numerous a concord of brethren — should faithfully convey their writings to posterity, seeing that it has preserved their chairs (cathedras) by a most certain succession even to the present bishops; and seeing that this comes to pass with such felicity for the writings of men of whatever sort, whether outside the Church or within the Church itself?

4. Moreover, if anything in the New Testament, however least, be said to be falsified, all the credit and authority of the New Instrument is taken away. For just as it will be permitted to suspect the corruption of one part, so it will be permitted to opine the same of its other parts, since there is no weightier reason why this part rather than that ought to have been preserved uncontaminated. Whence Augustine, writing to Jerome, says: ⁸ “To me it seems that it is most ruinously believed that any lie is contained in the holy letters — that is, that those men by whom they were written lied in anything; for if once some officious [well-meant] lie be admitted into so lofty a summit of authority, no particle of those books will remain which — as it shall seem to each man — being either difficult as to morals or incredible as to faith, may not by the same most pernicious rule be referred to the design and office of a lying author.”

5. But not only is all the authority of holy Scripture abrogated if either the name of the writer or the context [text] of the Scripture be believed falsified; rather, all the writings of all nations will also be rendered doubtful, uncertain, and suspect of falsity and lying, as regards their authors and the things set down in them. ⁹ “For what letters will ever have any weight of authority, if the evangelical and apostolic letters have none? Of what book will it be certain whose it is, if it be uncertain whether those letters be the apostles’ which the Church — propagated from the apostles themselves and declared with such eminence throughout all nations — declares and holds to be the apostles’?”

6. Besides these things, if it be permitted to each man according to his own caprice to approve or to reject whatever he will out of the New Testament, not only will all scriptures, divine as much as human, be subverted, but even our whole faith. For our faith will no longer be faith — that faith, namely, which, the intellect being made captive, and the judgment of human reason and of carnal prudence being renounced, commits itself wholly to the divine words and to the authority of the Church — but a certain empty conjecture of one’s own fancy, and a certain foolish opinion emerging out of the murky darkness of our blind reason; and we shall believe the holy scriptures not on account of their venerable authority, but on account of the foolish persuasion of our insane reason — which ought to be so absurd in the eyes of a faithful man that nothing could be more absurd. Whence Augustine, casting the deformity of this absurdity in the teeth of the Manichaeans, says: ¹⁰ “You see, therefore, that you are aiming at this: that all authority be removed from the midst of the scriptures, and that each man’s own mind be the author [judge] of what to approve and what to disapprove in each scripture — that is, that he be not subjected to the authority of the scriptures unto faith, but subject the scriptures to himself: not that a thing therefore pleases him because it is read written in that sublime authority, but it seems rightly written because it pleased him.”

7. Finally, while the heretics press too hard upon the overthrow of our doctrines, they hurl themselves headlong by their own impulse, and utterly destroy all their own scriptures and all their own heresies. ¹¹ For if our Gospel codices are falsified and lack credit — codices which, from the very times of Christ’s presence, through the dispensations of the apostles and the other successions of bishops from their sees, have come down to these times, kept, commended, and made illustrious throughout the whole world — how shall the furtive codices of the heretics, lately hammered out by them in their lurking-holes, be able to find any credit among men? Next, if our evangelical scriptures are falsified, whence, O wretched and unhappy men, will you prove your perverse doctrines, and whence will you assert the things you say? ¹² You will answer that you prove them from the Gospel. From what Gospel — you who do not accept the whole of it, since you say it has been falsified? For who would himself first say that his own witness has been corrupted by falsity, and then produce him for testimony? For if we believe him in what you wish, and do not believe him in what you do not wish, then we shall be believing not him, but you. But if we were willing to believe you, we should not demand a witness from you. Therefore either you are compelled to confess those codices truthful, if you wish to establish your heresies from their authority; or to affirm them deceitful — and then you have overturned all your own heresies.

OBIECTIONES HAERETICORVM [The Objections of the Heretics]

1. First: the scriptures of the New Testament are so dissonant among themselves and so various, so stuffed with contrarieties of narrations as well as of sentences, that neither does the one agree with the other, nor the same with themselves; and if these be attributed to the apostles, what else is that but to calumniate good men, and to summon the concordant company of Christ’s disciples to the charge of discord? ¹³ And that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John conflict with the other apostles and among themselves, whoever shall have compared the histories of the four Evangelists with one another will easily know of himself; and we too shall show this very thing when we speak particularly of each of their histories.

2. And that it is lawful for us to accept and believe certain things in the New Testament, and neither to accept nor believe certain others, we demonstrate by your own example: you who, since you do not accept so many things of the Old Testament, and think they are to be cast away as unworthy of faith, ¹⁴ admonish us to do the same likewise in the New Testament according to the same rule. For how would you compel us to accept all the things that are inserted in the monuments of the New Testament, when you neither believe nor accept so many things of the Old Testament — which nevertheless you affirm to be equal in sanctity to the New? For you do not believe what is said in the Old Testament, namely: that he is accursed who has not raised up seed in Israel (since that would comprehend all virgins too); or that he shall utterly perish from his race who has not been circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin ¹⁵ (since this too would pertain to every Christian); or that he who has broken the sabbath is to be put out [stoned to death] with stones; or that he is not to be spared who has violated any single commandment of the Old Testament; or that God is to be appeased with sacrifices, offerings, and immolations (as seems good to Moses); or that the Pasch is to be cele-

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brated with a lamb and the eating of unleavened bread, and that for seven days one must beware of leaven; or that one must not abstain from the foods prohibited in the Law. And since these things are in no wise believed by you — seeing that you do not observe them — but are repudiated as alien, far removed from the Christian rite, and in no part to be believed or observed, why should it not be lawful for us to do the same in the New Testament? — especially in those things which agree neither with the gravity of the writers nor with the Christian faith, but discolor the beauty and grace of the Gospel itself, and diminish the honor and praise of the majesty of Christ: as that Christ was born of a woman shamefully, circumcised Jewishly, sacrificed after the manner of the gentiles, baptized humbly, led about by the devil through the deserts, and by him most wretchedly tempted. All which things we think are deservedly to be rejected, as written imprudently by unskilled men, or wickedly inserted by enemies.

3. For this same cause we also reject all the testimonies of the prophets and of the old Law which are found in the New Testament — not only because they have been falsely and wrongly inserted into the New Testament, but because they are brought in superfluously and beside the point, and lead the reader to suspicion rather than to faith: as though the majesty of the Son of God, his authority, the testimonies of his works, and his miracles were not sufficient to confirm and establish the authority of the Gospel; but these arguments were so invalid and infirm that, casting them aside, it should be necessary to summon foreign witnesses from this side and that, and — for the strengthening of the Gospel’s stability — to beg from the Jews, even our enemies, the doubtful, uncertain, and suspect testimonies of our foes. Thus far Faustus. ¹⁶

4. But the Anabaptists strive to show, out of the testimonies of many fathers, that the codices of the New Testament, Latin as well as Greek — even those which the Catholic Church used — were falsified of old. And first, concerning the falsified exemplars of the Latins: Ambrose, say they, bringing in against the heretics that testimony of Paul, “We serve by the Spirit of God,” speaks thus: ¹⁷ “But if anyone contends about the variety of the Latin codices, some of which the perfidious have falsified, let them inspect the Greek codices, and observe that it is written: οἱ πνεύματι θεῷ λατρεύοντες [they who worship God in the Spirit].” ¹⁸ And Jerome, in the preface to the four gospels addressed to Damasus, asserts that the greatest variety is found in the Latin exemplars, and that there are as many Latin exemplars as codices; adding that the New Testament in our tongue is discordant, and that therefore he wished to correct the New Testament to the Greek truth, and to emend in it whatever things had either been badly put forth by faulty translators, or more perversely emended by unskilled presumers, or added or changed by drowsing copyists. But in what way Jerome could have restored the Latin New Testament to its integrity by a collation made with the Greek codices does not appear, since the Greek codices in his age were much more depraved than the Latin, and much more divergent — as he himself confesses upon the fifth chapter of [the epistle to] the Galatians; and in the preface to the Pentateuch he writes that the Latin exemplars are more correct than the Greek. And the divine Ambrose, in the exposition of the fifth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, speaking of the diversity and discrepancy of the Greek exemplars, says: “The Greeks have divers codices, which through zeal for contention disagree with one another.” And this discrepancy of the Greek codices is shown by Jerome’s very translation, which the Church now has; which, since in many things (as is manifest) it disagrees with the truth [text] of the Greek codices which the Church now holds, it remains either that Jerome did not translate the New Testament faithfully, or, if he translated faithfully, that he had other Greek exemplars greatly divergent from these, which at that time were read in the church as sincere and uncontaminated, and that from those, as from the true fountain, he translated the New Testament — those Greek codices which are now found being rejected as vitiated and by no means entire. Nor are there wanting those who judge that the Greek codices which we now have were vitiated by the Greeks after they separated themselves, on account of their contentions, from the Roman Church. Yet we know that even long before those discords of the Greek and Latin Church, down to the times of Origen, the Greek codices of the New Testament disagreed much among themselves; and that Origen himself, though laboring diligently, could not reduce that dissension into concord. For Origen himself affirms this in the eighth homily upon Matthew, in which he sets down these words: “We have found much difference among the exemplars. In the exemplars of the Old Testament indeed, whatever things were consonant we were able, God assisting, to fit together, using the judgment of the other editions. For those things which seemed doubtful in the Seventy because of the consonance of exemplars, making a judgment from the remaining editions, we kept what agreed; and certain things we marked as not set down in the Hebrew, not daring to remove them altogether; and certain things we added with asterisks, that it might be manifest that we added, in agreement with the Hebrew, from the other editions the things not set down in the Seventy. But in the exemplars of the New Testament I did not think I could do this very thing without peril; I judged it not unreasonable that I ought only to set forth suspicions and reasonings, and the causes of the suspicions.” By which words Origen most clearly shows that the Greek codices of the New Testament in his age were various among themselves, and that this variety could not be removed by applying asterisks and obeli, as had been done by him in the Old Testament. Now an irreconcilable variety and dissension is an argument of falsity.

DILVTIO OBIECTORVM [The Dissolution of the Objections]

1. Since the heretics, with a certain general and indefinite calumny, accuse the evangelical scriptures as discordant and fighting among themselves, and yet do not prove it, promising that they will do so hereafter, therefore for the present we shall answer them with nothing but a certain general response: namely, that this variety of the evangelists, which the heretics object in place of falsity, is with us the greatest argument of truth — as the most eloquent Chrysostom excellently demonstrated when, against the heretics, he wrote on behalf of the evangelical diaphony [discord] in the preface on Matthew after this manner: ¹⁹ “But, you will say, there is no truth in the Evangelists, because they are found divergent from one another in many things;

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and dissonant. Nay rather, this very thing is the greatest testimony of truth. For if they agreed entirely and in all things, and if with excessive diligence and care their words ran together equally, down to the times, all the places, and the very single words, no enemy would ever have believed but that they, gathered by a common counsel to deceive, had composed the Gospel as it were by a certain human contrivance; for they would judge that so anxious a consonance was not [the mark] of simplicity. But as it is, that seeming dissonance in small matters defends them from all suspicion, and clearly enough protects the reputation of the writers. If, however, they have spoken variously of times and places, that in no way prejudices the truth of the things said. Yet nevertheless, as God shall grant, proceeding onward we shall attempt to declare what this [variety] is; after this asking what we have said [before] — that you note diligently that in those principal matters, in which both our life and the sum of the preaching consist, no one of them is found to differ even in the least. And what are these? That God was made man; that he worked marvels; that he was crucified; that he was buried; that he rose again; that he ascended into heaven; that he is to be judge; that he established saving precepts; that he brought in no law contrary to the former; that he is the Son of God; that he is only-begotten; that he is of the same substance with the Father — and whatsoever things are of this kind. For in all these we find their concord to be greatest. But if, in the choosing of the marvels [to relate], not all have said all the same things, but this one narrated those and another others, let it not disturb you at all. For if any one of them had said everything, the number of the rest would have been superfluous; and if they had all written things divergent among themselves and all new, no proof of their agreement could have appeared. For this reason they have both said many things in common, and nonetheless each has written down something proper and special to himself; and lest anything should seem added superfluously and unseasonably, [each so wrote] that neither would nothing new be added, nor — had he said everything different — would the whole credit of the matters be called into doubt.” Let these words of the divine John [Chrysostom] suffice for now. But when the heretics begin to produce by name passages of the gospels [allegedly] fighting with one another, we too shall answer each one appositely, according to the series of their objections, so far as can be done.

2. Now let us pass to Faustus’s comparison, whereby he claims it is lawful for him not to believe certain things of the New Testament because we do not believe many things of the Old Testament — those, namely, which we do not observe out of it. This comparison is indeed null, because it is one thing to believe the things Faustus mentions from the Old Testament, and another to observe them. For if we speak of faith and belief, we believe all the things contained in those books, and we praise, accept, and approve them as written most truly and most profitably for eternal life, and we defend them with the firmest reason of truth. ²⁰ But if the discourse is about the observance of the same, we say that we do not observe with bodily operation the things commanded in them; because we know that they were most rightly commanded, suitably to that time and to that people; and we have learned that they were a shadow of things to come, and we now know that they are being fulfilled. And hence, whoever at that time failed to observe, even in deed, the things commanded to be done for signification, paid by God’s most righteous judgment the divinely appointed penalties — just as now, if anyone should dare with sacrilegious temerity to violate the sacraments of the New Testament, distinct [from the old] according to the reckoning of the time. ²¹ We believe, therefore, and accept all things — whether those we observe, that we may live rightly, or those we do not observe, that we may now see fulfilled the things which then were commanded and observed in figure and prophecy. Faustus lies, therefore, in saying that we do not believe many things of the Old Testament because we pass over their bodily observance, since nevertheless we accept all those things within the number of things to be believed.

3. Concerning the testimonies of the Old Testament, which he rejects as false or superfluous, our response is this: they can be neither false nor superfluous. ²² False — by no means: since Paul, whom the Manichaeans venerate most of all, and profess to have entire [uncorrupted], testifies in many places that all the evangelical mysteries were promised by God in the holy scriptures through the mouths of the Prophets. And superfluous — not at all; nay, they are necessary in the highest degree: not indeed that we believe the testimony of Christ to need the authority of external testimony for its stability, or that we prefer the testimonies of the prophets to him; but lest, unmindful of the benefit received, we be ungrateful to the prophets, extinguishing the oracles of the prophets, by whose attestation the apostles demonstrated to us that their preaching was true, and by their authority invited [men] to the faith of Christ. Likewise, that we may have the means whereby to invite all unbelievers, Hebrews as well as gentiles, to the faith of Christ, if they do not resist; or whereby to defend that same faith of Christ against them, if they contradict — showing to both that the things which are now fulfilled in Christ and in the Church were foretold by the prophets so long a time before, that no one, unless wholly devoid of reason, can deny them.

4. But to that which the Anabaptists object concerning the corruption of the Greek as well as the Latin codices, we say: it is not lawful to infer, from the particular depravation of some codices, a universal and general corruption of all codices. For from the fact that Ambrose, Jerome, and Origen said either that some Latin codices had been falsified by certain perfidious men, or that there is much variety in the Greek exemplars, one may not conclude that all the codices of the Catholic Church together were vitiated. Just as neither from the particular negligence of certain unskilled men, or the malice of falsifiers, is it lawful to deduce what Faustus and the Anabaptists have perniciously deduced — namely, that our forefathers, to mock the simple and rude Christians, corrupted all the evangelical codices on purpose. Since (as Augustine says) ²³ even if all the fathers had conspired in this — to deprive themselves and others of the truth of the scriptures (which cannot be imagined) — yet they could not have falsified all the codices everywhere, which were by now worn by the hands of Christians throughout the whole world; because as soon as they had begun to do it, with all Christians everywhere crying out against them, they would have been convicted and confuted as falsifiers out of the truth of the ancient codices — especially since [the scriptures were] now not in one language

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but the Gospel was contained in many languages. But even if we should grant to the heretics that all the codices were corrupted in some part, and that the several exemplars of the Catholic Church were vitiated in certain particular places, it will nevertheless not follow that all the codices together were corrupted in the same places, parts, sentences, and words; but some were corrupted in some, others in other parts, sentences, and words — in such wise that the things which in certain exemplars had been depraved, whether by chance or by malicious industry, remained in certain others entire and inviolate. And in this manner indeed the truth of the evangelical text, which in the single and particular codices of the church had been varied according to the diversity of times and of copyists, remained always entire and incorrupt in all the exemplars collected together — God so willing: that the integrity of the true reading, which the malice or negligence of men had corrupted in parts, should be preserved at least in the whole universality of the churchly codices; lest the church of Christ should for any time lack the integrity of the divine scriptures; and that pious and erudite men might always have the means to correct and emend whatever the ignorance of the unskilled or the perfidy of the wicked had vitiated, a collation of many exemplars with one another being made. From which it is now plain whence the Latin New Testament could be emended (a thing that seems impossible to the heretics): namely, from the collation of the Latin codices with the Greek exemplars, and of the Greek likewise among themselves.

Nor does it stand in the way that Ambrose and Jerome say the Greek codices were more depraved than the Latin. For Ambrose does not speak universally — that all the Latin codices are more correct than those of the Greeks — but particularly of certain ones which the simplicity of the times preserved incorrupt. And Jerome, in the preface to the Pentateuch, said not by way of assertion that the Latin are more correct than the Greek, but brought forth those words as something impossible (adynaton) or absurd, saying: “If the Latin [copies] are more correct than the Greek, and the Greek more than the Hebrew…” Whence the same [Jerome], in the epistle to Sunnia and Fretela, affirms that one must have recourse to the Greek codices as the more correct, in these words: “In the New Testament, if ever a question arises among the Latins, and there is variety among the exemplars, we run back to the fountain of the Greek speech, in which the New Testament was written.” And this Jerome certainly observed when he restored the New Testament to the Greek truth. It remains, therefore, that there were always among the Greeks certain codices entire and faithful, from which the Latin codices could be emended. And even if it be conceded that some faultiness could befall these too through the fault of copyists, they could nevertheless easily be restored to their pristine integrity: because from several exemplars corrupted by chance, when collated into one, the true reading is very often detected; for it frequently happens that what has been depraved in one codex by the carelessness of scribes is found entire in another codex.

But when the heretics subjoin that either the Greek codex which the church now commonly has is not the one Jerome used in translating, or that Jerome did not translate rightly and faithfully, we say: that the Greek codex which is now read in the church is that very same one which the Greek church used in the times of Jerome, and long before, even to the times of the apostles — true, sincere, faithful, and contaminated by no fault of falsity; ²⁴ as the continued reading of all the Greek fathers most lucidly shows, they all reading always one and the same tenor of the scripture: Dionysius, Justin, Irenaeus, Melito, Origen, Africanus, Apollinarius, Athanasius, Eusebius, Basil, Chrysostom, Theophylact, and other fathers before and after the times of Jerome. Nor is it likely that the Greek fathers vitiated their own codices to the detriment of the Latins; for if they had done this out of hatred of the Western church, they would have depraved them chiefly in those places about which there was fighting and dissension between them and the Latin church; and since those places endure still entire and inviolate, and the Greeks have not vitiated them, much less is it to be believed that they vitiated others. Nor is Jerome for this reason to be believed to have translated the New Testament badly — because our vulgate edition, which is said to be Jerome’s, differs in many things from the Greek truth. For (as we have said abundantly elsewhere, when we treated of the translations of holy Scripture) the vulgate edition of the New Testament which we now use is not purely Jerome’s from Greek into Latin, but a certain mixed edition, gathered partly from the old vulgate edition, partly from a certain new castigation [revision] of Jerome upon the New Testament. For it is not altogether certain whether he translated the whole New Testament from the Greek, or corrected it as already translated before by others — which latter he may be conjectured rather to have done, from many of his writings, especially from the preface to the four gospels, where he says: “Thus in this emendation we have tempered our pen, that, correcting only those things which seemed to change the sense, we permitted the rest to remain as they had been.” But although this edition be not Jerome’s, and many things in it do not answer to the Greek truth, yet one ought not to assail it with calumnies as false and by no means sincere and entire, as the heretics do: because even if there be many things in it which do not agree thus exactly (adamussim) with the Greek, nevertheless no evangelical precepts nor mysteries of our faith have been omitted in this our vulgate edition, or translated so obscurely that they cannot be understood, or turned into a sense divergent from and contrary to our doctrines; nor do they — whether in the things that regard faith or in the things that pertain to morals — contain anything less than is read in the Greek. But concerning the integrity of this edition we have spoken elsewhere, in the treatise on Translations, as much as was fitting. Now let us proceed to the other heresies.