Amos, the shepherd, the peasant, the cultivator of the sycamore, cannot be described in brief words. For who can satisfactorily express the three or four transgressions of Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, and Idumea, the sons of Ammon and Moabites, and the seventh and eighth, Judah and Israel? Amos addresses his speech to the fat cows on Mount Samarin, and prophesies the destruction of the house greater and smaller. Amos himself sees the locust producer, and the Lord standing on the poured out or adamantine mountain, and the couch of fruit drawing punishment upon sinners and famine on the earth, not the famine of bread, nor the thirst for water, but the hearing of the word of God. Obadiah, whose name means "servant of God," thunders against bloody Edom and earthly man. With a spiritual spear he strikes the one who is always jealous of his brother James. Jonah, the "dove," most beautiful in his shipwreck, foreshadows the sufferings of the Lord, calls the world to repentance, and under the name of Nineveh proclaims salvation to the Gentiles. Micah the Morasphite, the "joint heir" of Christ, announces the ruin of the robber's daughter and lays an ambush against her for having struck the judge of Israel on the cheek. Nahum, the "comforter" of the earth, prophesies a hail of blood, and after its destruction says: "Behold, on the mountains are the feet of the evangelist, announcing peace" (Nahum 1:15). Habakkuk, a courageous and firm "fighter," stands on his guard and sets his foot on the fortification, in order to behold Christ on the cross and say: "His majesty has covered the heavens, and the earth is filled with His glory. Its brilliance is like sunlight; from His hand are the rays, and here is the hiding place of His power!" (Hab. 3:3-4). Zephaniah, the "contemplator" and knower of the mysteries of the Lord, hears the cry at the gates of the fish, and the weeping in another part of the city, and the great devastation on the hills. He also commands the inhabitants of the ravine to weep, because all the people of Canaan have fallen silent, and all those laden with silver have perished. Haggai, the "solemn" and joyful one, who sowed tears to reap joy, renovates the ruined temple and brings in the Lord the Father, saying: "Once more, and it will be soon, I will shake heaven and earth, sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and He who is desired by all nations will come" (Hagg. 2:6-7). Zechariah, "remembering his Lord," manifold in his prophecies, contemplates Jesus clothed "in spotted garments," and a stone on which "seven eyes" (Zech. 3:3; 9), and a golden lampstand, and as many lamps as there are eyes on the stone, and two olive trees on it, one on the right and the other on the left (4:2-3). And after seeing the horses of black, white, and piebald, and the scattered chariots of Ephraim, and the horse of Jerusalem, he foresees and foretells a pale king sitting on a foal, the son of a foal. Malachi speaks openly, at the conclusion of all the prophets, about the rejection of Israel and the calling of the Gentiles: "I have no favor with you, says the Lord of hosts, and the offering from your hands is not pleasing to Me. For from the east of the sun to the setting of the sun my name shall be great among the nations, and in every place they shall offer incense to my name, a pure sacrifice" (Mal. 1:10-11). Who can understand or expound the teachings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel? Of these, the first, it seems to me, wrote not a prophecy, but a Gospel. The second sees a walnut cane, and a cauldron boiling on the north side, and a leopard stripped of its motleys; and in various meters it makes up the fourfold alphabet [Book of Lamentations]. The third [Ezekiel] contains so much hidden at the beginning and end of his prophecies, that the Jews were not allowed to read these chapters, as well as the beginning of the book of Genesis, until they were thirty years old. And the last of the four prophets, who knows the times and the whole world φιλοίστωρ [expert], proclaims in clear speech about the stone that was torn from the mountain without the help of hands and overthrew all kingdoms. David, our Simonides, Pindar, and Alcaeus, as well as Flaccus, Catullus, and Serenius, speaks of Christ on the lyre and on the ten-stringed psalter evokes His resurrection from the tomb. The peace-loving and God-loving Solomon corrects morals, studies nature, unites Christ with the Church, and sings the sweet wedding song (epithalamium) of Holy Matrimony. Esther, prefiguring the Church, relieves the people from danger, and, as a result of the execution of Haman, whose name "iniquity" erases, gives posterity the lot of the feast and the day of the feast. The book of Chronicles, that is, the επιτομή [abbreviation] of ancient documents, is such that if anyone who does not know it wants to appropriate the knowledge of the Scriptures, he laughs at himself. In almost every name and in every combination of words, the stories omitted in the books of Kings are touched upon, and innumerable Gospel questions are set forth. Ezra and Nehemiah, that is, "the helper and comforter of the Lord," are contained in the same volume; they build the temple, build the walls of the city; the whole crowd of people returning to their homeland, the census of the Levites, Israel, and the strangers, the division of labor in the building of walls and towers, these are the things that Ezra and Nehemiah depict partly on the bark of the tree, and partly in the heart of the tree.

You see that, carried away by my love of writing, I have overstepped the usual dimensions of a letter and still have not written all that I wanted. It was only a question of what we should know and what we should desire, so that we too could say: "My soul is weary for the desire of Thy judgments at all times" (Psalm 118:20). However, let the saying of Socrates be fulfilled in us: "I know only that I know nothing." I will touch briefly on the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are the chariot of the Lord and are truly cherubim, which means "the abundance of knowledge," full of eyes throughout the body, shining like sparks, swift as lightning, having straight feet and directed to grief: they are winged and capable of flying, they support each other, are mutually connected to each other, and like wheels, drawn one after another, they strive where the breath of the Holy Spirit directs them. Spirit. The Apostle Paul wrote to the seven Churches (for the eighth Epistle to the Hebrews is not included in this number by many). He gives instructions to Timothy and Titus, intercedes with Philemon on behalf of the runaway slave [Onesimus]. But about the Apostle Paul, I think, it is better to be silent than to write little. The book of the Acts of the Apostles seems to contain a simple history and narrates the infancy of the nascent church; but if we take into account that the author of this book is the physician Luke, whose "praise is in the Gospel," then we also see here that all his words provide healing for a feeble soul. The Apostles James, Peter, John, and Jude issued seven epistles, so mysterious as they were concise and concise, and at the same time extensive—brief in words, but vast in thought—that hardly anyone's spiritual gaze would fail to be struck by the reading of these epistles. The Apocalypse of John contains as many sacraments as there are words. I have said little, but in comparison with the merit of the book, all praise is insufficient, for in every word there are many meanings.

Please tell me, dear brother: to live among the divine scriptures, to learn from them, to know nothing else and not to seek anything else — does this not already mean here on earth to be an inhabitant of the Kingdom of Heaven? Do not be tempted in the Holy Scriptures by the simplicity and as it were coarseness of words, which occurred either as a result of the error of the translators, or as a result of deliberate adaptation to the edification of the common people; In one and the same saying, the learned will hear some things, and the unlearned will hear others. I am not so bold and stupid as to claim to myself a knowledge of the scriptures, and to boast of being able to pluck fruit from the earth, while the roots are fixed in heaven; But I confess that I want to know the Scriptures, I do not want to sit in one place: by refusing to be a teacher, I promise to be a companion. It is given to him who asks, it is revealed to him who knocks, he who seeks finds. Let us learn on earth that the knowledge of which will be inseparable from us in heaven.

I receive you with open arms, and (I will say inopportunely and with the command of Hermagoras) whatever you ask, I will try to find out with you. You have your most beloved brother Eusebius, who has redoubled for me the pleasure I received from your letter, telling me about the honesty of your morals and your contempt for this world, about faithfulness in friendship, about love for Christ. Your prudence and eloquence, in addition to the testimony of Eusebius, were made known by your letter itself. Hurry, I beg you, and quickly cross, and not untie the rope of the boat that has been lowered into the sea. No one, intending to renounce the world, can profitably sell what he has previously despised. If you suffer any loss, write it down as an acquisition. There is an old saying: "For a miserly there is no more what he has, nor what he does not have." For the believer, the whole world is full of riches, and the unbeliever needs even an obol. Let us live as having nothing and possessing everything. Clothing and food — these are Christian riches! If you have any thing in your hands, sell it; if you do not have, do not worry about gaining. The one who takes away the robe must also be given underwear. If you, constantly postponing until tomorrow, dragging day after day, carefully and little by little sell your possessions, then Christ will have nothing with which to feed your poor. Everything was given to God by the one who sacrificed himself. The apostles leave the ship and nets. A widow puts two mites into the treasury and is considered higher than the rich. Everything is easily despised by the one who is always thinking about his death.

Diesperov A. Blessed Jerome and his century. Appendix: Bl. Jerome. Featured Emails. (Series "History of Christian Thought in Monuments") — Moscow: Kanon+, 2002.

To Vigilantius

It will be quite normal if you are not in the least satisfied with the letter, after you have not believed your own ears: you cannot rely on a scrap of paper if you have not trusted the living speech. But Christ showed us an example of the greatest humility in kissing the betrayer and in accepting repentance from the thief from the cross; and I write to the absent as I have said to those present, that I have read or am reading Origen in the same way as Apollinaris or other writers whose books are not fully accepted by the Church. I do not mean by this that everything contained in their books should be condemned; but I confess that something must be blamed. Such is the purpose of my labors and studies, that I read to many, in order to gather various flowers from many, not so much to approve of everything, as to choose what good things come across; I take many into my hands, that I may learn many things from many, according to what is written: "As you read all, hold fast to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Therefore I am very surprised that you wanted to reproach me with the dogmas of Origen, whose errors, on many points, you do not know even at that age. Am I a heretic? And why, I ask, do the heretics not love me? Are you Orthodox? But if you, who have denounced me, even contrary to your own convictions and your words, did it under compulsion, then you are a turncoat, and if you voluntarily do so, you are a heretic. Thou hast left Egypt, hast forsaken all those provinces in which many stand with complete freedom for thy doctrine, and hast chosen me for thy attacks, and I condemn and publicly condemn all dogmas which are contrary to the Church.

Origen is a heretic. What does this have to do with me, since I do not deny that he is a heretic in many ways? He fell into error in the doctrine of the resurrection of bodies; he was mistaken in the teaching about the state of souls, about the repentance of the devil, and, what is even more important, in his commentaries on Isaiah, he proved that the Son of God and the Holy Spirit are Seraphim. I would be an accomplice in his error if I did not say that he was in error, and did not constantly anathematize all this. For we should not take the good of it in such a way that we are forced to accept the bad at the same time. But in many ways he has interpreted the Scriptures well, clarified the dark passages of the prophets, and revealed the greatest mysteries of both the New and Old Testaments. If, therefore, I have translated it as good, and cut it off, or corrected it, or omitted it, am I to be blamed for the fact that the Latins have his good through me, and do not know what is bad? If this is a crime, then Hilary the Confessor must also be accused, who translated from his books, that is, from Greek into Latin, the commentary on the Psalms and the discourses on Job. The confessor of Vercella, Eusebius, will be guilty of the same, for he translated into our language the commentaries on all the psalms of the heretic (Eusebius of Caesarea), although, leaving aside the heretical, he translated what was the best. I am silent about Victorinus of Pictavia and others who followed Origen and squeezed out of him only in the explanation of the Scriptures, so that it would not seem that I was not so much defending myself as looking for accomplices in the crime. I will turn to you personally: why do you keep his treatises on Job rewritten in your possession – treatises in which, discussing the devil, the stars and the heavens, he expressed something that the Church does not accept? Only you, the wisest head, can pronounce judgment on all writers, both Greek and Latin, and as if with a censor's baton throw some out of libraries, receive others, and when you please, declare me either Orthodox or a heretic; And we cannot reject the perverse and condemn what we have often condemned? Read the books on the Epistle to the Ephesians, read my other writings, especially the commentaries on Ecclesiastes; you will clearly see that from my youth I have never been afraid of anyone's authority, and have never accepted crooked heretical interpretations on faith.

It is not an empty thing to know what we do not know. It is the property of a prudent person to know his own measure, so that, aroused by the devil's jealousy, he will not testify to his ignorance before the whole world. Now, you want to show off, and you boast in your homeland that I am not able to measure your eloquence, and that I am afraid of your chrysippus taunts. Christian modesty restrains me, and I do not want to give refuge in my cell for sarcastic speech. Otherwise I would have exposed all your famous deeds and the pomp of your triumphs. Speaking as a Christian to a Christian, I beseech you, brother, not to try to reason more than you have, lest you discover by your style your inexperience, or simplicity, or even that of which I am silent, and which others will understand, though you yourself will understand, and do not provoke general laughter by your absurdities. It is not given to one and the same person to be an expert in gold coins and in the scriptures, to have a taste in wines and to understand the prophets or apostles. You reproach me; you accuse the holy brother Oksana of heresy; you do not like the way of thinking of the presbyters Vincentius and Paulinian and brother Eusebius. You alone are Cato, the most eloquent of the Romans, relying only on his own eye and wisdom! Remember, I beseech thee, the day when I preached on the resurrection and the reality of the body; You jumped up and down beside me, and applauded, and stamped your feet, and shouted that I was glorified. And when he began to swim and the rot from the bottom of the ship penetrated to your innermost brain, then you recognized us as heretics! What should I do with you? I believed the letter of the holy presbyter Paulinus and did not think that his opinion of your person was erroneous. True, I noticed your speech immediately after receiving the letter, but I assumed in you more shyness and simplicity than stupidity. Nor do I reproach the holy man for wanting to conceal from me what he knew rather than condemn the bearer of the letter in his letter. But I blame myself for trusting in someone else's judgment rather than my own, and when I saw one thing with my eyes, I believed in the note something other than what I saw.

Stop attacking me and overwhelming me with your books. Spare at least your own money, with which you hire scribes and booksellers, which you spend on writers and favorees, perhaps because they praise you because they see profit in your writing. If you want to exercise your mind, devote yourself to grammar and rhetoric, study dialectics, study philosophical systems; When you have studied everything, you will at least remain silent. However, I am foolish in looking for teachers for the universal teacher and trying to set boundaries for the one who does not know how to speak and cannot be silent. A well-known Greek proverb is true: a lyre to a donkey. I thought that the name was given to you. For you are slumbering with all your mind, and you have fallen into a deep sleep, not so much by simple sleep as by lethargy. Among the other blasphemies which your sacrilegious lips have uttered, you have dared to say that the mountain from which, according to Daniel, the stone was cut off without the help of hands, is the devil, and the stone is Christ, as having received a body from Adam, who through his sins entered into a union with the devil, and was born of a virgin, in order to separate man from the mountain, that is, from the devil. O tongue that deserves to be cut and torn to pieces and pieces! Does any Christian represent God the Father Almighty in the person of the devil, and by such a crime does he defile the ears of the whole world? If anyone, I will not say from among the Orthodox, but from heretics or pagans, ever admitted such an interpretation, what you said would be even more excusable. But if the Church has never heard such wickedness, and through your mouth for the first time the One Who said: "I will be like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:14), then do repentance, put on sackcloth and dust, wash away such an evil deed with unceasing tears, and (if only the wickedness is forgiven you in accordance with the error of Origen) then you will receive forgiveness when you have it received, and the devil, who was not caught in greater backbiting than through your mouth. I endured the offense inflicted on me patiently. I could not endure impiety in relation to God. For this reason at the end of the letter I resolved to write more sharply than I had promised, for it would be foolish if, after the repentance with which you would beg forgiveness from me, you should have to begin it another time. May Christ grant you to listen and be silent, to understand and, understanding, to speak.

To Magnus, the great orator of the city of Rome

We learned that our Sebesius had reformed not so much from your letter as from his repentance. [78] And it is surprising how much more pleasant the one who has reformed has become, than the one who has erred has become. The indulgence of the father and the good manners of the son competed with each other: while the one did not remember the past, the other made good promises for the future. Therefore, both you and I need to rejoice together: I have received a son again, and you have a disciple.

At the end of the letter you ask why in my writings I sometimes cite examples from secular sciences and defile the whiteness of the Church with the impurities of the pagans. Here is a short answer to this. You would never have asked this question if Cicero had not completely possessed you, if you had read the Holy Scriptures and, leaving Volcatius, had looked over its interpreters. For who does not know that both Moses and the writings of the prophets borrowed from pagan books, and that Solomon asked questions and answered the philosophers of Tyre? [80] Therefore, at the beginning of the book of Proverbs, he exhorts us to understand wisdom, the craftiness of words, parables and dark speeches, the sayings of the wise men and riddles, which are especially characteristic of dialecticians and philosophers. But the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to Titus also used a verse from the poet Epimenides: "The Cretans are always lying, evil beasts, idle belly" (Titus 1:12), a half-verse verse later used by Callimachus. In Latin, a literal translation does not preserve rhythm, but this is not surprising: even Homer is incoherent in translating into the prose of the same language. In another epistle he also quotes the six-foot verse of Menander: "Evil conversations corrupt good morals." And, speaking to the Athenians in the Areopagus, he cites the testimony of Aratus: "His own is the race of Esma," which in Greek reads: του γαρ και γενος εσμεν — and constitutes the half-verse of the hexameter. And, besides, the leader of the Christian army and an invincible orator, defending the cause of Christ before the court, even uses an accidental inscription as a proof of faith.