Chapter XXXIX.—What St. Paul Calls Spiritual Wickednesses Displayed by Pagan Authors, and by Heretics, in No Dissimilar Manner. Holy Scripture Especially Liable to Heretical Manipulation.  Affords Material for Heresies, Just as Virgil Has Been the Groundwork of Literary Plagiarisms, Different in Purport from the Original.

These were the ingenious arts of “spiritual wickednesses,”409    See Eph. vi. 12, and 1 Cor. xi. 18. wherewith we also, my brethren, may fairly expect to have “to wrestle,” as necessary for faith, that the elect may be made manifest, (and) that the reprobate may be discovered. And therefore they possess influence, and a facility in thinking out and fabricating410    Instruendis. errors, which ought not to be wondered at as if it were a difficult and inexplicable process, seeing that in profane writings also an example comes ready to hand of a similar facility. You see in our own day, composed out of Virgil,411    Oehler reads “ex Vergilio,” although the Codex Agobard. as “ex Virgilio.” a story of a wholly different character, the subject-matter being arranged according to the verse, and the verse according to the subject-matter. In short,412    Denique. [“Getica lyra.”] Hosidius Geta has most completely pilfered his tragedy of Medea from Virgil. A near relative of my own, among some leisure productions413    Otis. of his pen, has composed out of the same poet The Table of Cebes. On the same principle, those poetasters are commonly called Homerocentones, “collectors of Homeric odds and ends,” who stitch into one piece, patchwork fashion, works of their own from the lines of Homer, out of many scraps put together from this passage and from that (in miscellaneous confusion). Now, unquestionably, the Divine Scriptures are more fruitful in resources of all kinds for this sort of facility. Nor do I risk contradiction in saying414    Nec periclitor dicere. [Truly, a Tertullianic paradox; but compare 2 Pet. iii. 16. N.B. Scripture the test of heresy.] that the very Scriptures were even arranged by the will of God in such a manner as to furnish materials for heretics, inasmuch as I read that “there must be heresies,”415    1 Cor. xi. 19. which there cannot be without the Scriptures.

CAPUT XXXIX.

In eo comparandi illis qui Virgiliocentonas et Homerocentonas composuisse leguntur.

0052C Haec sunt ingenia de spiritalibus nequitiae, cum quibus luctatio est nobis, fratres, merito contemplanda, fidei necessaria, ut electi manifestentur, ut reprobi detegantur. Et ideo habent vim, et excogitandis instruendisque erroribus facilitatem , non adeo mirandam, quasi difficilem et inexplicabilem, cum de saecularibus quoque scripturis exemplum praesto sit ejusmodi facilitatis. Vides hodie 0053A ex Virgilio fabulam in totum aliam componi , materia secundum versus, versibus secundum materiam concinnatis. Denique Osidius Geta Medeam tragoediam ex Virgilio plenissime exsuxit . Meus quidem propinquus ex eodem poeta inter caetera styli sui otia Pinacem Cebetis explicuit. Homerocentones etiam vocari solent, qui de carminibus Homeri propria opera more centonario ex multis hinc inde compositis in unum sarciunt corpus. Et utique foecundior divina litteratura ad facultatem cujuscumque materiae. Nec periclitor dicere ipsas quoque Scripturas sic esse ex Dei voluntate dispositas, ut haereticis materias subministrarent, cum legam oportere haereses esse, quae sine Scripturis esse non possunt.