The first trace we meet with in history of this accusation is in the _Treatise against Heresies_,(38) by S. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, and given to the world one hundred years after the death of Origen. This slander, never repeated by the learned—if we except Petavius, in the XVIIth century, while employed on the works of Epiphanius—has been wiped out of ecclesiastical history by the weight of such writers as Baronius, Halloix,(39) Raynaudet, Henry Valois, Vincent de la Rue, and Frederic Spanheim.(40) This defamation of his character, unfounded as it is, though so much like other insinuations against the noble Alexandrian, was not even alluded to in the Justinian age, in which he was so violently and bitterly opposed. Had S. Jerome credited this monstrous fabrication, had it rested upon anything but a sandy foundation, the literary war between the lifelong friends, Jerome and Rufinus, would have terminated at the first volley from the pen of the learned scriptural writer. It would have been a crushing argument against Rufinus, and S. Jerome was the person to turn it to advantage. In those times, it was a common thing to be reproached if one, arrested for the faith, escaped death. Some of the greatest saints, S. Cyprian, S. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and others, suffered not a little from calumnies of like import. Origen’s behavior, on the occasion to which the allusion refers, was honorable, heroic, and in entire harmony with his life‐long fidelity to principle. He was seized, and—whether it was the design of the magistrates to draw many Christians back to the gods of the empire by circulating the fall of Origen, or their admiration of the genius of their noble victim that prevented his summary decapitation—was thrown into a cold cell, bound in an iron collar, with heavy shackles to his feet, and his legs drawn apart to a painful degree. It appears that during the first years that Origen filled the regency of the Alexandrian theological seminary, he experienced no small amount of inconvenience, in his controversial discourses with Jews and pagans, in consequence of the different versions of the Holy Scriptures. In their inspired pages he found true wisdom and spiritual life: “Oh! how have I loved thy law, O Lord! It is my meditation all the day.”(41) In this sacred department he stands without a rival, if we except S. Jerome, “the greatest doctor, divinely raised up to interpret the Sacred Scriptures.”(42) Yet to Origen the indebtedness of S. Jerome is very great. He borrowed(43) from him, studied him,(44) followed him,(45) admired him,(46) and then attacked him.(47) S. Jerome declares that in reading the _Twelve Prophets_ by Origen, in the works of S. Pamphilus, he saw in them the wealth of Crœsus; and, as far as our judgment goes, we never read a higher eulogium than the one S. Jerome pays to the genius of Origen on his two homilies _in Cantica Canticorum_.