45. After this Apology had been written, one of the brethren
who came to us from you at Rome and helped me in revising it, observed
that one point in my defence had been passed over which he had heard
adversely dwelt upon by my detractors there. The point turns upon a
statement in my Preface, where I said of him who is now my persecutor
and accuser that in the works of Origen which he translated there are
found certain grounds of offence in the Greek, but that he has in his
translation so cleared them away that the Latin reader will find
nothing in them which is dissonant from our faith. On this sentence
they remark: “You see how he has praised his method of
translation and has borne his testimony that in the books he has
translated no grounds of offence are to be found, and promised that he
would himself follow the same method. Why then is not his own
translation free from grounds of offence, as he bears witness is the
case with the writings of the other?”