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charity, through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, and beg you to give it from the Hebrew to Latin ears, not so much in order to ascertain the wonderful works of Christ as to counteract the guile of heretics, who in order to establish their evil teaching have mingled their own lies with the wholesome nativity of Christ, so to disguise the bitterness of death under the sweetness of life. It will therefore be of the purest charity on your part either to hearken to us as brothers who beseech you, or to pay to us, as bishops who beg for it, that debt of charity which you shall think fit. Farewell in the Lord, and pray for us.

To the holy and most blessed lords Cromatius and Heliodorus, bishops, Jerome the little servant of Christ sends greeting in the Lord.

He who digs in earth which conceals gold does not at once snatch whatever the ragged trench may throw up: but before the stroke of the iron he wields brings up the shining mass, he ever and anon pauses in turning over the turfs, and feeds himself with hope, while as yet he is not enriched with gain. It is a heavy task that you lay upon me when I am ordered by your blessedness to do what not even Saint Matthew the apostle and evangelist would have to be written openly. For had it not been somewhat secret, he would no doubt have added it to the Gospel which he published. But in fact he composed this book to be locked up in Hebrew letters, and so far refrained from publishing it that even now the book, written in Hebrew letters with his own hand, is kept by certain religious men who have received it from their predecessors through a long course of time. Now whereas they have never delivered this book to any one to be translated, but have revealed its contents (text) at various times, it has come about that the book, published by a disciple of Manichaeus named Leucius (who also composed the Acts of the Apostles in false words), has afforded matter not for edification but destruction, and has been proved in a synod to be such that the ears of the church should properly be closed to it.

Now let there be an end to the bites of barking critics, for we are not adding this book to the canonical scriptures, but are translating the writing of an apostle and evangelist to unmask the deceit of heresy: and in so doing we are alike obeying the command of pious bishops and blocking the way of impious heretics. It is, then, the love of Christ to which we are rendering service, in the belief that they will help us with their prayers who by means of our compliance have been able to attain the knowledge of the holy infancy of our Saviour.

A third letter, ostensibly from St. Jerome to the same bishops, is prefixed sometimes to the story of the Birth of Mary.

You ask me to write you my opinion of a book which some have concerning the Birth of Saint Mary. So I would have you