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0347-0420 – Hieronymus – Adversus Jovinianum Libri Duo Against Jovinianus this file has been downloaded from http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.html NPNF (V2-06) St. Jerome not, it is true, a commandment from the Lord respecting virginity, for that grace surpasses the unassisted power of man, and it would have worn an air of immodesty to force men to fly in the face of nature, and to say in other words, I want you to be what the angels are. It is this angelic purity which secures to virginity its highest reward, and the Apostle might have seemed to despise a course of life which involves no guilt. Nevertheless in the immediate context he adds,4252 “But I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. I think therefore that this is good by reason of the present distress, namely, that it is good for a man to be as he is.” What is meant by present distress?4253“Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days!” The reason why the wood grows up is that it may be cut down. The field is sown that it may be reaped. The world is already full, and the population is too large for the soil. Every day we are being cut down by war, snatched away by disease, swallowed up by shipwreck, although we go to law with one another about the fences of our property. It is only one addition to the general rule which is made by those who follow the Lamb, and who have not defiled their garments, for they have continued in their virgin state. Notice the meaning of defiling. I shall not venture to explain it, for fear Helvidius may be abusive. I agree with you, when you say, that some virgins are nothing but tavern women; I say still more, that even adulteresses may be found among them, and, you will no doubt be still more surprised to hear, that some of the clergy are inn-keepers and some monks unchaste. Who does not at once understand that a tavern woman cannot be a virgin, nor an adulterer a monk, nor a clergy-man a tavern-keeper? Are we to blame virginity if its counterfeit is at fault? For my part, to pass over other persons and come to the virgin, I maintain that she who is engaged in huckstering, though for anything I know she may be a virgin in body, is no longer one in spirit. 24. I have become rhetorical, and have disported myself a little like a platform orator. You compelled me, Helvidius; for, brightly as the Gospel shines at the present day, you will have it that 346 equal glory attaches to virginity and to the marriage state. And because I think that, finding the truth too strong for you, you will turn to disparaging my life and abusing my character (it is the way of weak women to talk tittle-tattle in corners when they have been put down by their masters), I shall anticipate you. I assure you that I shall regard your railing as a high distinction, since the same lips that assail me have disparaged Mary, and I, a servant of the Lord, am favoured with the same barking eloquence as His mother. Against Jovinianus. 4252 1 Cor. vii. 25. 4253 Matt. xxiv. 19: S. Mark xiii. 17. 664 NPNF (V2-06) St. Jerome ———————————— Book I. Jovinianus, concerning whom we know little more than is to be found in the two following books, had published at Rome a Latin treatise containing all, or part of the opinions here controverted, viz. (1) “That a virgin is no better as such than a wife in the sight of God. (2) Abstinence is no better than a thankful partaking of food. (3) A person baptized with the Spirit as well as with water cannot sin. (4) All sins are equal. (5) There is but one grade of punishment and one of reward in the future state.” In addition to this he held the birth of our Lord to have been by a “true parturition,” and was thus at issue with the orthodoxy of the time, according to which the infant Jesus passed through the walls of the womb as His Resurrection body afterwards did out of the tomb or through the closed doors. Pammachius, Jerome’s friend, brought Jovinian’s book under the notice of Siricius, bishop of Rome, and it was shortly afterwards condemned in synods at that city and at Milan (about a.d. 390). He subsequently sent Jovinian’s books to Jerome, who answered them in the present treatise in the year 393. Nothing more is known of Jovinian, but it has been conjectured from Jerome’s remark in the treatise against Vigilantius, where Jovinian is said to have “amidst pheasants and pork rather belched out than breathed out his life,” and by a kind of transmigration to have transmitted his opinions into Vigilantius, that he had died before 409, the date of that work. The first book is wholly on the first proposition of Jovinianus, that relating to marriage and virginity. The first three chapters are introductory. The rest may be divided into three parts: 1 (ch. 4–13). An exposition, in Jerome’s sense, of St. Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor. vii. 2 (ch. 14–39). A statement of the teaching which Jerome derives from the various books of both the Old and the New Testaments. 3. A denunciation of Jovinianus (c. 40), and the praises of virginity and of single marriages derived from examples in the heathen world. The treatise gives a remarkable specimen of Jerome’s system of interpreting Scripture, and also of the methods by which asceticism was introduced into the Church, and marriage brought into disesteem. 1. Very few days have elapsed since the holy brethren of Rome sent to me the treatises of a certain Jovinian with the request that I would reply to the follies contained in them, and would crush with evangelical and apostolic vigour the4254Epicurus of Christianity. I read but could not in the least comprehend them. I began therefore to give them closer attention, and to thoroughly sift 4254 From this expression and that quoted in the notice above, it would be supposed that Jerome knew Jovinianus and his mode of life. But there is no reason to think that he had this knowledge; and his imputations against his adversary must be taken as the inferences which he draws from his opinions. 665 NPNF (V2-06) St. Jerome not only words and sentences, but almost every single syllable; for I wished first to ascertain his meaning, and then to approve, or refute what he had said. But the style is so barbarous, and the language so vile and such a heap of blunders, that I could neither understand what he was talking about, nor by what arguments he was trying to prove his points. At one moment he is all bombast, at another he grovels: from time to time he lifts himself up, and then like a wounded snake finds his own effort too much for him. Not satisfied with the language of men, he attempts something loftier. 4255 “The mountains labour; a poor mouse is born.” 4256 “That he’s gone mad ev’n mad Orestes swears.” Moreover he involves everything in such inextricable confusion that the saying of4257Plautus might be applied to him:—“This is what none but a Sibyl will ever read.” To understand him we must be prophets. We read Apollo’s4258 raving prophetesses. We remember, too, what4259Virgil says of senseless noise.4260Heraclitus, also, surnamed the Obscure, the philosophers find hard to understand even with their utmost toil. But what are they compared with our 347 riddle-maker, whose books are much more difficult to comprehend than to refute? Although (we must confess) the task of refuting them is no easy one. For how can you overcome a man when you are quite in the dark as to his meaning? But, not to be tedious to my reader, the introduction to his second book, of which he has discharged himself like a sot after a night’s debauch, will show the character of his eloquence, and through what bright flowers of rhetoric he takes his stately course. 2. “I respond to your invitation, not that I may go through life with a high reputation, but may live free from idle rumour. I beseech the ground, the young shoots of our plantations, the plants and trees of tenderness snatched from the whirlpool of vice, to grant me audience and the support of many listeners. We know that the Church through hope, faith, charity, is inaccessible and impregnable. In it no one is immature: all are apt to learn: none can force a way into it by violence, or deceive it by craft.” 3. What, I ask, is the meaning of these portentous words and of this grotesque description? Would you not think he was in a feverish dream, or that he was seized with madness and ought to 4255 Hor. Ars Poet. 139. 4256 Pers. Sat. iii. 118. 4257 Plautus, Pseudolus, i. 1. 23. Has quidem, pol, credo, nisi Sibylla legerit, Interpretari alium potesse neminem. 4258 The allusion is probably to the Sybilline books. 4259 Æn x. 640. 4260 The philosopher of Ephesus. Flourished about b.c. 513. 666 NPNF (V2-06) St. Jerome be put into the strait jacket which Hippocrates prescribed? However often I read him, even till my heart sinks within me, I am still in uncertainty of his meaning.4261 Everything starts from, everything depends upon, something else.