"
Coccius cites this passage as from "Origen in Lament," and it has been
recently appealed to under the title of "Origen on the Lamentations."
Here, however, is a very great mistake. Origen's work on the
Lamentations, called also "Selecta in Threnos," and inserted in the
Benedictine edition (Vol. iii. p. 321.), is entirely a different
production from the work which contains the above extract. This
apocryphal work, on the other hand, does not profess to be the comment
of Origen on the Lamentations, but the Lament or Wailing of Origen
himself; or, as it used to be called, the Penitence of Origen. (In the
Paris edition of 1519 it is called "Planctus, seu Lamentum Origenis."
Pope Gelasius refers to it as "Poenitentia Origenis.") That this work
has no pretensions whatever to be regarded as Origen's, has been long
placed beyond doubt. Even in the edition of 1545, this treatise is
prefaced by Erasmus in these words, "This Lamentation was neither
written by Origen nor translated by Jerome, but is the fiction of some
unlearned man, who attempted, under colour of this, to throw disgrace
upon Origen." [Basil, 1545. vol. i. p. 498.] In the Benedictine edition
(Paris, 1733.) no trace of this work is to be found. They do not admit
it among the doubtful, or even the spurious works; they do not so {136}
much as give room for it in the appendix; on the contrary, they drop it
altogether as utterly unworthy of being any longer preserved.
Pages:
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168