20. Your Origen allows himself
to treat of the transmigration of souls, to introduce the belief in an
infinite number of worlds, to clothe rational creatures in one body
after another, to say that Christ has often suffered, and will often
suffer again, it being always profitable to undertake what has once
been profitable. You also yourself assume such an authority as to turn
a heretic into a martyr, and to invent a heretical falsification of the
books of Origen. Why may not I then discuss about words, and in doing
the work of a commentator teach the Latins what I learn from the
Hebrews? If it were not a long process and one which savours of
boasting, I should like even now to shew you how much profit there is
in waiting at the doors of great teachers, and in learning an art from
a real artificer. If I could do this, you would see what a tangled
forest of ambiguous names and words is presented by the Hebrew. It is
this which gives such a field for various renderings: for, the sense
being uncertain, each man takes the translation which seems to him the
most consistent. Why should I take you to any outlandish writers? Go
over Aristotle once more and Alexander the commentator on Aristotle;
you will recognize from reading these what a plentiful crop of
uncertainties exists; and you may then cease to find fault with your
friend in reference to things which you have never had brought to your
mind even in your dreams.