Demetrius, not unlikely hearing of the warm reception extended to Origen in Palestine, convened, after a short interval, another council. The works of Origen were subjected to the sharpest examination. One instinctively inquires why Demetrius, if he were simply actuated by zeal for the preservation of ecclesiastical discipline and the purity of revealed truth, did not introduce those serious charges in the former council. To resort to the non‐publication of the _Periarchon_ and _Dialogues_ at the time of the first convocation of bishops, in order to remove the suspicions that point to the malice of Demetrius, is an ingenious special plea, unsupported by facts and testimonies. S. Jerome, studying this question learnedly, defends Origen and censures Demetrius. Why did the Patriarch of Alexandria, next in hierarchical honor to the Bishop of Rome, permit Origen for over a quarter of a century to expound within his own hearing the sublime dogmas of Christianity, if his conceptions of those dogmas were radically false? Can we suppose that the few months between the assembly of the two councils were spent by the bibliophilist in composing a work that would give the lie to the glorious achievements of thirty years? Or can we allow the conviction to settle in our minds that he, so remarkable in virtue, would deliver in the pulpit one doctrine, and write in his books another? Will we find fault with saints and illustrious doctors of the church, who, by the nature of their high calling, are bound to avoid false teachers, for extending to Origen the warmest hospitalities, or acknowledge, with Eusebius of Cæsarea and S. Pamphilus, the severe and unjustifiable measures adopted by Demetrius? Whatever secret motives guided Demetrius in the prosecution of the inquisition, his course, disapproved of by his contemporaries, has never secured a sincere advocate of ordinary importance. The errors which he imagined he had detected in the writings assumed, in the eyes of Demetrius’ council, sufficient gravity to cause the deposition and excommunication of Origen.