26. There
is a Babylonian man and a Babylonian infant, and it is necessary to struggle
with them, that is, with either mighty forces or now with ruling passions.
However, Blessed is he who, after he has seized them, will dash the infants
of Babylon to the rock—Christ—before they grow up into men. And it is even more
blessed to destroy the Babylonian seed. In what manifests a Confounded
through, is a seed opposite to that concerning which it has been said, Blessed
is he who has a seed in Sion, and, Blessed are those who sow by every
water where the ox and the ass tread. It is more blessed to destroy not
only a man and a boy, but even if it is only a seed. For what is cultivated can
bear fruit. But what sort of water is it in which it is necessary to sow
the good seed? The baptismal waters of rebirth. (Origen, Homilies
on Jeremiah and 1 Kings 28 [trans. John Clark Smith; The Fathers of the
Church 97; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998], 294,
emphasis in bold added)
