Correcting Correction

Si ad me tantum epistolam scribis, ut me commoneas, et emendatum velis, ne caeteris scandalum facias, et aliis furentibus, jugulentur alii: cur libros contra me scribis ad alios, et legendos per satellites tuos toto orbe dispergis? Ubi est syllogismus tuus, quo me irretire conaris, et loqueris? Quem in hoc, magister optime, emendare cupiebas? si illos, ad quos scribis, nihil deliquerant; si me quem arguis, non ad me scripseras. Et ego tuis respondebo tibi sermonibus: Quem emendare cupiebas, magister indocte? eosne, qui non peccaverant? an me, ad quem non scripseras? Brutos putas esse lectores, et omnes non intelligere prudentiam tuam, immo malitiam, qua et serpens prudentior fuit cunctis bestiis in paradiso: ut a me secretam admonitionem flagites, quem publica accusatione persequeris; et non te pudet accusationem tuam Apologiam vocare? Quererisque cur opponam clypeum pugioni tuo, et tibi quasi religiosulus et sanctulus personam humilitatis imponis et dicis: Si erraveram, quare scribis aliis, et non meipsum redarguis? Hoc ipsum in te retorquebo: Quidquid enim me non fecisse causaris, quare non ipse fecisti? Velut si quis pugnis aliquem calcibusque collidens, si resistere voluerit, dicat ei: Nonne tibi praeceptum est: Qui te percusserit in maxillam, praebe illi et alteram? Quid enim, bone vir, tibi praeceptum est, ut me verberes; oculum mihi effodias; et si paululum me commovero, Evangelii mihi praecepta cantabis. Vis scire totas argutiarum tuarum strophas, et vulpecularum insidias, quae habitant in parietinis, de quibus Ezechiel loquitur: Quasi vulpes in deserto Prophetae tui, Israel? Ausculta quid feceris. Ita me in tua Praefatione laudasti, ut objicerentur mihi laudes tuae, et nisi me alienum a tanto laudatore dixissem, haereticus judicarer. Postquam repuli crimina, id est laudes tuas, et absque invidia tui nominis, respondi criminibus, non criminatori: atque ut me catholicum a te infamatus probarem, invectus sum in haereticos; irasceris, furis, et luculentissimos libros contra me cudis: quos quum legendos et cantandos omnibus tradidisses, certatim ad me de Italia, et urbe Roma, atque Dalmatia scripta venerunt, quibus me laudator pristinus ornasses praeconiis. Sanctus Hieronymus, Apologia Adversus Libros Rufini, Liber Tertius Source: Migne PL 23.462d-463c

If it is true that to me alone you write a letter so that you might admonish me, and, because you wish that I alone should be corrected and you do not want to scandalise others so that some will be enraged and some struck down, then why do you write books against me and send them to others, and indeed through your associates scatter them far and wide for the whole world to read? Where is your dilemma, with which you try to entangle me? 'Whom, best teacher, did you desire to correct with this correction? If it was those to whom you wrote, they did not err; if it was me whom you accuse, you did not write to me.' I will even reply to you in your own words: 'Whom did you wish to correct, unlearned master? Those who had done no wrong? Or me to whom you did not write?' Do you think your readers such brutes that none of them are capable of understanding your cleverness, or rather your wickedness, by which the serpent was more clever than all the beasts in paradise, 1 in insisting that my admonishment of you should be private, while you pursue a public accusation, and you do not even blush to call your accusation 'An Apology?' Then you complain that I oppose a shield to your dagger, and with much religiosity and sanctimoniousness you sport the mask of humility, and say: 'If I had erred, why did you write to others, and not refute me?' I will retort to you on this very point. What you complain I did not do, why did you not do yourself? It is as if a man is assaulting another with kicks and fists, and if the other should dare to resist, he will say to him: 'Do you not know the teaching, 'If someone strikes you on the cheek, turn the other one to him'? 2 What is this teaching to you, good fellow, but that when you would deal me a blow and strike out my eye, if I rouse myself a little, you sing to me the teachings of the Gospel. Do you wish to know all the windings of your cunning, and the plots of the foxes who dwell among the ruins, concerning which Ezekiel says, 'Like foxes in the desert are your prophets, O Israel.' 3 Listen to what you have done. You lauded me in your preface in such a way that your praises are made a ground of accusation against me, and if I had not said that I was stranger to such an admirer, I would have been judged a heretic. After I repelled your charges, that is, your praise, and that without ill will to you personally, for I addressed the accusations and not the accuser, and having inveighed against heretics to show that I was Catholic, though I was defamed by you, you became angry and were maddened, and you threw together the most magnificent works against me, which works when you had handed them over for everyone to read and announce, then writings came to me from Italy and Rome and Dalmatia, in which you, my old adulator, had adorned me with public acclaim. Saint Jerome, from the Apology Against The Books Of Rufinus, Book 3 1 Gen 3.1 2 Mt 5.39 3 Ezek 13.4