Apology for himself against the Books of Rufinus

²¹ My brother Paulinian tells me that our friend has impugned certain things in my commentary on the Ephesians: some of these criticisms he committed to memory, and has indicated the actual passages impugned. I must not therefore refuse to meet his statements, and I beg the reader, if I am somewhat prolix in the statement and the refutation of his charges, to allow for the necessary conditions of the discussion. I am not accusing another but endeavouring to defend myself and to refute the false accusation of heresy which is thrown in my teeth.

On the Epistle to the Ephesians Origen wrote three books. Didymus and Apollinarius also composed works of their own. These I partly translated, partly adapted; my method is described in the following passage of my prologue: “This also I wish to state in my Preface. Origen, you must know, wrote three books upon this Epistle, and I have partly followed him. Apollinarius also and Didymus published certain commentaries on it, from which I have culled some things, though but few; and, as seemed to me right, I put in or took out others; but I have done this in such a way that the careful reader may from the very first see how far the work is due to me, how far to others.”

Whatever fault there is detected in the exposition given of this Epistle, if I am unable to show that it exists in the Greek books from which I have stated it to have been translated into Latin, I will acknowledge that the fault is mine and not another's. However, that I should not be thought to be raising quibbles, and by this artifice of self-excuse to be escaping from boldly meeting him, I will set out the actual passages which are adduced as evidences of my fault.