Apology for himself against the Books of Rufinus

¹² We must consider the fact, which comes first, and so in order reach the inference, which comes after. Now I find among many bad things written by Origen the following most distinctly heretical: that the Son of God is a creature, that the Holy Spirit is a servant: that there are innumerable worlds, succeeding one another in eternal ages: that angels have been turned into human souls; that the soul of the Saviour existed before it was born of Mary, and that it is this soul which “being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied itself and took the form of a servant;” that the resurrection of our bodies will be such that we shall not have the same members, since, when the functions of the members cease they will become superfluous: and that our bodies themselves will grow aërial and spirit-like, and gradually vanish and disperse into thin air and into nothing: that in the restitution of all things, when the fullness of forgiveness will have been reached, Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones, Principalities, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Archangels and Angels, the devil, the demons and the souls of men whether Christians Jews or Heathen, will be of one condition and degree; and when they have come to their true form and weight, and the new army of the whole race returning from the exile of the world presents a mass of rational creatures with all their dregs left behind, then will begin a new world from a new origin, and other bodies in which the souls who fall from heaven will be clothed; so that we may have to fear that we who are now men may afterwards be born women, and one who is now a virgin may chance then to be a prostitute. These things I point out as heresies in the books of Origen. It is for you to point out in which of his books you have found them contradicted.

13. Do not tell me that “you have found the same things treated by the same author in other places in a catholic sense,” and thus send me to search through the six thousand books of Origen which you charge the most reverend Bishop Epiphanius with having read; but mention the passages with exactness: nor will this suffice; you must produce the sentences word for word. Origen is no fool, as I well know; he cannot contradict himself. The net result arising from all this calculation is, then, that what you cut out was not due to the heretics, but to Origen himself, and that you translated the bad things he had written because you considered them good; and that both the good and the bad things in the book are to be set to your account, since you approved his writings in the Prologue.