692 ORIGEN scripts and provided seven amanuenses. Thus appeared at Alexandria his commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the first five tomes on the Gospel of St. John, his tract on the resurrection, his Stro- mata, and his work Uepl 'Ap^wv, " On Princi- ples." This last work, as he afterward wrote to Fahian, bishop of Kome, was published against his will by Ambrose ; and its mixture of Christian principles and Platonic philosophy furnished his opponents at a later period with serious matter of accusation. About 228 he was sent by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, on a mission to Greece, visited Palestine on his way, and was everywhere invited to preach in the churches, though not yet in holy orders. Without, as it appears, asking the consent of his own bishop, and concealing the impedi- ment of his voluntary mutilation, he was or- dained priest. Demetrius not only refused to acknowledge the validity of this ordination, but in two synods held in Alexandria divulged the secret, denied him all clerical rank, and had several of his opinions condemned as heretical. Demetrius is accused by St. Jerome, but with- out proof, of having been moved by jealousy in these proceedings. Origen, though forbid- den to teach in the school of catechists, con- cluded his fifth tome on the Gospel of St. John, and took refuge with the bishop of Csesarea. Meanwhile a more numerous synod at Alexan- dria, after examining his work " On Principles " more in detail, pronounced it heretical and ex- communicated its author. Origen was encour- aged to open a school of Scriptural exegesis in Csesarea (of Palestine), and continued there his exposition of the Gospel of John. The bishops of the eastern churches took up the controversy concerning his ordination and heterodoxy ; and those of Palestine, Phoenicia, and Arabia pro- nounced in his favor. In the western church his writings, being comparatively little known, attracted no great notice during his life, but afterward they were generally condemned. The school in Csesarea continued to flourish, and a large circle of distinguished pupils, among whom was Gregory Thaumaturgus, spread his fame and his principles of inter- pretation far and wide. He prosecuted all his literary undertakings with increased ardor; wrote a treatise on the " Utility of Prayer " and an "Exposition of the Lord's Prayer;" maintained an active correspondence with the most distinguished bishops of Asia, and was often invited to be present at church councils. During the persecution of Maximin in 236 his friend Ambrose, and Protoctetus, a priest of Crasarea, were imprisoned and treated with great cruelty, and Origen wrote for their con- solation a treatise " On Martyrdom." He was himself obliged to fly from Crasarea, and found an asylum with Firmilian, bishop of Ca3sarea in Oappadocia. The persecution having bro- ken out there, Origen lay concealed for two years in the house of Juliana, and while in this retirement completed his collation of the He- brew and Greek texts of Scripture, known as the Hexapla. In 238 he returned to CaBsarea in Palestine and resumed his labors. He was in- vited soon afterward to Athens, and finished there his commentary on Ezekiel and began that on Canticles. On the accession of Phil- ip the Arabian, Origen corresponded with his family, and about the same time wrote his de- fence of the Christian religion against Celsus, his commentary on St. Matthew, and other treatises. In his 60th year (245) he first per- mitted his discourses to be taken down by short-hand writers. He was frequently con- sulted by synods on matters of special diffi- culty; and a numerous council, assembled in Arabia, asked Origen's opinion of the doctrine that the soul dies with the body and is re- stored to life at the resurrection, which was by him pronounced heretical. In the Decian persecution he was imprisoned and subjected to exquisite and gradually increasing tortures. He wrote from his prison a letter of exhorta- tion and encouragement to his fellow suffer- ers, but his health was broken down. Many of his personal friends reported that he died under torture at Ca3sarea; but others with greater probability affirmed that he died at Tyre in 254. His tomb was preserved for many centuries near the high altar of the cathe- dral of Tyre. The writings of Origen were of many kinds, critical, philosophical, polemic, and practical. Most of them are lost. Of those still extant, the principal are parts of the Hexapla and Octapla, commentaries on the Scriptures, treatises "On Principles," "On Prayer," and " On Martyrdom," and his eight books " Against Celsus." The Hexapla was an edition of the Old Testament in six parallel columns, in Hebrew, Hebrew text in Greek letters, and in the four versions of Aquila, Symmachus, the Septuagint, and Theodotion. In some books were added the versions marked 5, 6, 7, whence the name Octapla, the two for- mer said to have been found, one in Jericho, and the other at Nicopolis in Epirus. A smaller Tetrapla contained only the first four of these versions, without the original text. This splen- did work, of such value in the recension and purification of the text of the Old Testament, now exists only in fragments. Many eminent modern scholars have labored to restore the work and edit it from these fragments. The standard edition is that of Montfaucon (2 vols. fol., Paris, 1713). The commentaries of Origen upon the Scriptures cover more ground than those pf any other ancient interpreter. They are remarkable for the constant use of the al- legorical method. The literal sense is always secondary ; and the critic never fails, where it is possible, to find in the simplest fact or the plainest exhortation some hidden meaning. The work " On Principles " remains only in the Latin translation of Rufinus, and in this is not only incomplete, but has been altered by the translator. Editions of this work were published in 1836 by Kedepenning in Leipsic,
