ST IRENÆUS

THE DEMONSTRATION OF THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING

BY

ARMITAGE ROBINSON, D.D.

DEAN OF WELLS

PREFACE

Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History tells us that in addition to his great work Against Heresies St Irenæus wrote A Discourse in Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. This work was entirely lost sight of: no one seems ever to have quoted a word of it. But it has quite recently reappeared in an Armenian manuscript together with Books IV and V of the greater work. The Armenian translation proves to be a fairly close rendering of the original Greek.

What Irenæus meant by the Apostolic Preaching can be seen from his larger work. Although the exact expression does not seem to occur there, we have its equivalent, “the Preaching of the Apostles” (III, iii. 2), and also the parallel phrases, “the Tradition of the Apostles” (III, iii. 4) and “the Preaching of the Truth” (I, iii. 1; III, iii. 4). Moreover, in I, i. 20 we read that “he who holds the canon (or rule) of the truth without deviation, which he received through his baptism,” will be able to escape all the snares of heresy: and in the Demonstration (c. 3.) we have closely parallel words which also refer to the baptismal faith. Although it was not until much later that the baptismal confession came to be called the Apostles’ Creed, viit was already regarded as a summary of the essential elements of the Apostolic message. Its form varied in some details in different Churches, but its structure was everywhere the same, for it had grown up on the basis of the baptismal formula.

What Irenæus undertakes in the present work is to set out the main points of this Apostolic message, which, as he has explained in his greater work (III, iii. i ff.), has been handed down in the Church by the successions of the bishops and is the same in substance in all parts of the world, and to demonstrate its truth more especially from the sacred scriptures of the Old Testament. This argument from prophecy was the earliest form of Christian evidence; and though it does not appeal to us with equal force to-day, and we find it hard to be patient with some of the proofs which seemed to be convincing in the earliest times, we must yet recognize that it was a true instinct which claimed the Jewish scriptures as the heritage of the Christian Church, and surmounted by means of allegorical interpretations those serious difficulties which led many Christians to wish to cast them aside altogether.

The words of Bishop Westcott in reference to the methods of the schoolmen of the Middle Ages, are applicable also to these earlier teachers: “Many of the arguments which they use appear to us frivolous and pointless. It requires a serious effort to enter into them with a sympathetic intelligence. But the effort is worth making. Conclusions which rest upon arbitrary assumptions viias to the symmetries of things witness in an imperfect fashion to a deep sense of a divine order in creation; and we do injustice to those who draw them if we allow even the greatest errors of expression and form to blind us to the nobility of the conception which they embody most inadequately” (Ep. of St John, “The Gospel of Creation,” pp. 276 f.).

The wonder of Irenæus is the largeness of his outlook. No theologian had arisen since St Paul and St John who had grasped so much of the purpose of God for His world. “The Making of Man,” to borrow Tennyson’s great phrase, is his constant theme. Even though he was, forced to be controversial, he was never merely negative; and the last of his books Against Heresies ends on the keynote of the whole—that man shall at length be made “after the image and likeness of God.” This is to him the meaning of all history; and for that reason the center point of history is the Incarnation. So Christ came “to link up the end with the beginning,” or in St Paul’s words, (which Irenæus never tires of repeating,) “to gather up into one all things” in Himself.

I have retained the chapter divisions of the first editors and translators of the Armenian text. The references to the work Against Heresies are to Harvey’s edition (Cambridge, 1857). Though I have not everywhere reproduced the double renderings which are so frequent in the Armenian, I have made the translation sufficiently literal to serve the general needs of the patristic student, viiieven at the cost of some clumsiness of expression. In the Introduction and Notes I have been at some pains to bring out the indebtedness of Irenæus to Justin Martyr; and in pursuance of the same end I have devoted a section of the Introduction to the teaching of both these writers in regard to the Holy Spirit.

J. ARMITAGE ROBINSON.

The Deanery,

Wells, Somerset, Oct. 1879.

ST IRENÆUS

INTRODUCTION

I

THE DOCUMENT AND ITS VALUE

IT is a remarkable fact, and much to be regretted, that none of the works of St Irenæus, the greatest theologian of the second century, have come down to us in the language in which they were written. Of his chief work, the five books Against Heresies, we have a very early Latin translation, and a few fragments of the original Greek preserved through quotation by other writers.¹¹The Armenian translation of Bks. IV and V, found in the same MS. with our treatise, is a valuable aid for the criticism of these books. The work now before us, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, has recently been found in an Armenian translation, and no portion of it seems to have survived in any other language.

This new treatise does not come upon us entirely as a surprise; for Eusebius²²Eccl. Hist., v. 26. had mentioned its title, Εἰς ἐπίδειξιν τοῦ ἀποστολικοῦ κηρύγματος, and had said that it was addressed to “a brother named 2Marcianus.” This is all he tells us; but we can now add from the book itself that it was written after the completion of the greater work, and therefore somewhere about A.D. 180; and that Marcianus was on intimate terms with the writer, but absent from him at the time of writing.³³See chapters 1 and 99. The work Against Heresies is, of course, controversial from first to last: but the present treatise is a sort of Vade mecum for an intelligent Christian, explaining his faith, placing it in its historical setting in relation to Judaism, and confirming it by the citation and exposition of a great number of Old Testament passages. It is in no sense a manual for catechumens: it is a handbook of Christian Evidence, though its form is not controversial.

A tract of this kind from the pen of a great teacher in any age must needs be of interest. How was Christianity presented as a whole to an educated believer? What were the main points of doctrine and of life on which stress was laid? What were the grounds of belief. which appeared to be most convincing then? These are the things which the historian of religious development wants to know in each of the Christian centuries, and which he finds it exceptionally difficult to get at. The great events and the leading personalities have left their mark on the records of the time: the development of doctrine and the growth of ecclesiastical institutions can be traced with increasing clearness as the documents are tested and studied and compared: but the religious sense 3of an age, the beliefs which affected life, and the grounds of those beliefs, the ruling motives of conduct, the things that to the best minds seemed to matter most—these escape us unless we are insistent in our search for them; and often, search as we will, we find little to reward our pains. We have special reason to be grateful for a plain statement of the Christian religion as it presented itself to a master mind at the end of the second century. A long and varied experience had qualified Irenæus for such a task. As a boy he had listened to St Polycarp at Smyrna, and he may have conversed with others—the Elders, as he calls “Gnosticism,” in all its divergent forms, with the Christian truth as he had come to conceive it in a long life of patient study and practical ministry. He had given to the Church his five books of The Exposure and Overthrow of Knowledge (Gnosis) falsely so called. When such a man lays controversy aside and takes up his pen to talk, as he says, to his absent friend, and furnish him with a summary statement of the Apostolic message and the reasons for believing it in terms of his own day, he deserves our close attention. We shall make little of him if we insist on judging him by modern standards: we shall miss the definiteness of post-Nicene doctrine; we shall be disappointed at finding nothing about ecclesiastical 4organization; we shall be distressed at the quaint conceits of his exposition of Old Testament prophecies. But if we come to him fresh from the study of Justin Martyr’s First Apology, written some thirty-five years before, we shall appreciate the atmosphere in which he had grown up and shall recognize the advance which he had made in the thoughtful interpretation of the Faith.

The manuscript which contains our treatise was found in December 1904, in the Church of the Blessed Virgin at Eriwan in Armenia, by Dr Karapet Ter-Mekerttshian, one of the most learned of the Armenian clergy. It was edited by him with a translation into German, in conjunction with Dr Erwand Ter-Minassiantz, in 1907, in the Texte and Untersuchungen (xxxi. 1); and Dr Harnack added a brief dissertation and some notes. Then in 1912 Dr Simon Weber, of the Faculty of Catholic Theology in the University of Freiburg in Breisgau, being dissatisfied with this presentation of the work, published a fresh translation with the help of some Armenian scholars. Neither of these translations satisfies the needs of English patristic students. The second, though it corrects some errors of the first, is far less close to the original text. And both are vitiated by a want of acquaintance with the textual criticism of the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament, and also with the larger work of St Irenæus himself. The present translation is an attempt to remedy these defects, and at the same time to bring the treatise to the knowledge of those who have hitherto been debarred by linguistic difficulties from reading it. My own 5acquaintance with the Armenian language and literature is so limited that I cannot hope to have altogether avoided mistakes, and I shall be grateful to those who will point them out. I owe very much to the first of the translations into German, and something also to the second: if I am sometimes right where they were wrong, it is mainly because I have sought to read the text in the light of what Irenæus has said elsewhere.

The same manuscript contains an Armenian version of Books IV and V of the great work Against Heresies.⁴⁴Published with a translation by the same editors in Texte u. Untersuchungen, xxxv. 2 These come immediately before our treatise, and are embraced with them under the single title, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. We cannot say whether this error of title goes back beyond the date of the manuscript, which was probably written between 1270–1289, that is in the time of the learned Archbishop John, the brother of King Hetum of Cilicia. A note at the end states that it was written for this archbishop. The Armenian editors believe that the same translator is responsible for the two books of the larger work and for our treatise, and that the translation was made at some date between 650 and 750. The version of Books IV and V is of high value, as enabling us to check the Latin version, the MSS. of which differ considerably among themselves. It is useful also as illustrating the fondness of the Armenian translator for a double rendering of a single word of the original. When we read the Armenian and the Latin side 6by side, we gain the impression that the Greek text has been very closely followed; and thus we are assured that for our present treatise also the Armenian version is a faithful representative of the lost original.

II

THE DEBT OF IRENÆUS TO JUSTIN MARTYR

If we are to proceed with safety in forming a judgment as to the relation between Justin and Irenæus in respect of the matter which they have in common, it will be necessary not merely to consider a number of selected parallels, but also to examine the treatment of a particular theme in the two writers. Let us set side by side, for example, c. 32 of Justin’s First Apology with c. 57 of the Demonstration. Justin has been explaining to his Roman readers who the Jewish prophets were, and then giving a list of the chief things which they expressly foretold concerning the coming of Christ. Then he proceeds thus:

The points that strike us at once in this passage are these:

(1) The well-known Blessing of Jacob is cited as the prophecy of Moses, who is called the “first of the prophets.”

(2) The quotation is abbreviated, and Justin comments on it in its abbreviated form.

(3) The statement that Judah was the ancestor of the Jews, and that from him they got their name, is on a par with many such explanations which Justin makes for the sake of his Roman readers.

(4) That the Jews had no prince or king of their own after the time of Christ, and that their land was conquered and ruled by the Romans, was a good point of apologetic and one which his readers would fully appreciate.

(5) We are somewhat surprised that “the expectation of the Gentiles” should be referred to the second coming of Christ.

(6) The statement that the ass’s colt was tied to a vine is not found in our Gospels.

(7) Washing his robe in the blood of the grape easily suggested our Lord’s passion; but that His robe should be those who believe on Him seems to us far-fetched.

(8) Equally far-fetched is the explanation of the blood of the grape as pointing to blood made not by man, but by God.

(9) The combination of Balaam’s prophecy with words of Isaiah, and the attribution of the whole to Isaiah, strikes us as a strange piece of carelessness.

Now let us read c. 57 of the Demonstration. After a few prefatory sentences in which he notes certain points regarding Christ which are the subject of prophecy, Irenæus goes on:

We may now take our nine points one by one:

(1) Here again the Blessing of Jacob is cited as the prophecy of Moses; and a little earlier (§ 43) we find the words: “Moses, who was the first that prophesied.”

(2) The text of the quotation is the same as in Justin: but the words about binding the colt to the vine are omitted, and the remainder of the passage is given without abbreviation, as in the LXX.

(3) That Judah is the ancestor of the Jews, who got their name from him, is found in Irenæus; and the actual words would seem to have been taken over from Justin. The statement is somewhat superfluous in a book written for a fairly well 10instructed Christian, whereas it comes quite naturally in Justin’s Apology. Though several parallels between Justin and Irenæus might be explained by the hypothesis of their both having used a book of “Testimonies against the Jews,” such a solution could hardly be advanced in this case; for the statement in question would not be likely to occur in such a book.

(4) Justin’s words are: μεθ᾽ὃν εὐθὺς δοριάλωτος ὑμῖν ἡ γῆ Ἰουδαίων παρεδόθη. The translation of the first part of the parallel in Irenæus is obscure but it is possible that the phrase “the might of the quiver was captured” is no more than the translator’s attempt to make something of δοριάλωτος. If so, it would appear certain that here also Irenæus was practically writing out a sentence of Justin, only changing ὑμῖν into τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις.

(5) The expectation of the Gentiles is here also explained of the Second Advent; and the word “kingdom” is offered, as in Justin, as the unexpressed subject of ᾦ ἀπόκειται.

(6) The passage about the ass’s colt is omitted both from the quotation and from the interpretation. Irenæus has it in IV, xx. 2, where he quotes, again as from Moses, the whole section (Gen. xlix. 10–12), ending with: lætifici oculi ejus a vino, et candidi dentes ejus quam lac. He then goes on: “Let these persons who are said to investigate all things search out the time at which there failed prince and leader from Judah, and who is the expectation of the Gentiles, and what the vine, and what his colt, and what the robe, and what are eyes and teeth and wine; and search out every point; 11and they shall find that none other is foretold, than our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here again Irenæus is very close to the passage in Justin, so far as the general method of putting the argument goes.

(7) and (8) reappear in Irenæus, and it is most natural to suppose that he took them over from Justin. He has a point of his own when he goes on to add to the interpretation of the blood of the grape the gladness produced by the wine. It seems to be introduced without any obvious reason, until we observe that the words which follow in the passage in Genesis tell of the gladness of the eyes produced by wine (lætifici oculi, etc. quoted above).

(9) In c. 58 Irenæus proceeds at once to the quotation of Balaam’s prophecy, as follows: “And again Moses says: There shall rise a star out of Jacob, and a leader shall be raised up out of Israel.” He does not make the combination with Isaiah which we find in Justin; nor does he attribute Balaam’s words to Isaiah. It is however to be noted that in III, ix. 2, where he quotes the passage as here, he does attribute it to Isaiah: “Cujus et stellam Ysaias quidem sic prophetavit: Orietur stella ex Jacob, et surget dux in Israel.” On this coincidence in error Dr Rendel Harris remarks (Testimonies, I. p. ii): “Justin shews us the passage of Isaiah following the one from Numbers, and the error lies in the covering of two passages with a single reference. It is clear, then, that Justin’s mistake was made in a collection of Testimonies from the prophets, and that the same collection, or one that closely agreed with it, was 12in the hands of Irenæus.” In view, however, of the intimate connection which appears to exist between Irenæus and Justin we must not exclude the alternative possibility that the mistake began with Justin, and was at first reproduced by Irenæus, but was afterwards corrected by him in his later work.

Another example of a whole section drawn from Justin Martyr will be found in cc. 44 f. Here it is the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew to which Irenæus is indebted. The whole of these two chapters should be read consecutively: but the chief parts must be given here. Irenæus cites Gen. xviii. 1 ff., to show that it was the Son of God who spake with Abraham. This is Justin’s view also, but the nearest parallels come after the quotation of Gen. xix. 24. At this point Irenæus says:

Justin had said (Dial. 56 ad fin.): “And He is the Lord, who from the Lord who is in heaven, that is, from the Maker of all things, received (power) to bring these things on Sodom and Gomorrah, which the narrative recounts, saying: The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone 13and fire from the Lord out of heaven (καὶ κύριός ἐστι παρὰ κυρίου τοῦ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, τουτέστι τοῦ ποιητοῦ τῶν ὅλων, λαβὼν τὸ ταῦτα ἀπενεγκεῖν Σοδόμοις κ.τ.λ.).” And he then goes on to discuss the question of the eating and drinking with Abraham, but does not treat it as Irenæus does here.

The interpretation of the passage may already have been common Christian apologetic: it is the expression “received power (or authority)” to punish the Sodomites that suggests a direct literary connection; and this expression is found again in Irenæus III, vi. 1, quoted below in the note on this passage.

After this Irenæus goes on at once as follows (Dem. c. 45):

This idea that Jacob’s Ladder was “the tree” (ξύλον), that is to say, the cross, is found in Justin (Dial. 86), among a number of other types equally strange to us: “It says that a ladder was seen by him; and the Scripture has declared that God was supported upon it; and that this was not the Father we have proved from the Scriptures.” Irenæus again expands the comment in his own way, but he recurs to the theme “It was not the Father.”

Now the words “in a very small space” , are clearly reminiscent of Justin. For in Dial. i 27 he says: “Think not that the unbegotten God Himself came down or went up from anywhere. For the unutterable Father and Lord of all has never come any whither,” etc. “How then should He either speak to any one, or be seen by any, or appear in some very small portion of earth (ἐν ἐλαχίστῳ μέρει γῆς)?” Cf. Dial. 60: ἐν ὀλίγῳ γῆς μορίῳ πεφάνθαι.

These repeated coincidences, in large matters and in small, make us feel that Irenæus was very familiar with Justin’s writings. Everywhere he goes beyond him: but again and again he starts from him.

The advantage to be gained by the recognition of the dependence of Irenæus upon Justin may be illustrated from c. 53 of our Treatise. The Armenian text here presents several difficulties, probably from corrupt transcription. The original cannot have been very easy to understand; but when we read with it c. 6 of Justin’s Second Apology some points at any rate are cleared up. Irenæus has just quoted Isa. vii. 14 ff., following the LXX with slight variations:

We must pause here for a moment to quote some parallel words from Irenæus himself (III, xxv. 2). He has quoted the same Scripture, and in commenting upon it he says: “Et manifestat quoniam homo, in eo quod dicit: Butyrum et mel manducabit; et in eo quod infantem nominat eum; et priusquam cognoscat bonum et malum: hæc enim omnia signa sunt hominis infantis.”

In my translation I have written: “this is the custom also for one that is born.” But the Armenian text has: “this is the error also of one that is born.” I have accepted Mr F. C. Conybeare’s simple and attractive emendation sovoruthiun, “custom,” for moloruthiun, “error.”⁵⁵I had at first thought that a comparison of the passage quoted from III, xxv. 2 pointed to the loss of some words from our text, and that we might emend thus: “[and in that he said: Before he knoweth good or evil;] for this is the uncertainty also of one that is born.” But I doubt whether moloruthiun could be toned down to mean “uncertainty.” Moreover in what follows it is the name on which stress is laid.

We now return to our passage:

The Armenian text reads: “in the Hebrew tongue Messiah Christ, and in the Armenian Jesus Saviour.” I have adopted the emendation proposed by the Armenian scholars who made the first translation into German. No doubt Χριστός Σωτήρ was what Irenæus wrote as the rendering of “Messiah Jesus”: compare Just. M. Ap. I, 33, “Now the name Jesus in the Hebrew speech signifies Saviour in the Greek language.”

Having disposed of these preliminary difficulties, we note some curious matters that remain for consideration. What is the point of saying, “names of works actually wrought”? Is there any parallel to the explanation of “Christ” as “He through whom the Father anointed”? And why does our author lay stress on the cure of the sick as the explanation of the name “Jesus”?

Let us now look at the passage of Justin to which we referred at the outset (Ap. II, 6):

Here we see the force of what Irenæus had said about the naming spoken of by Isaiah, as indicating the manhood of the promised Child of the Virgin. The Unbegotten has no name, in the strict sense there was none before Him to impose a name on Him. The Begotten, when begotten as man, has 17a name, though before that He has what is at once an appellation and a name. Justin goes on:

Here Justin is explaining that “Christ” is a name indeed, but more than a name. It is a designation derived from a work, just as the designation God is derived from a work (cf. ἔργων above, and πράγματος). What then is this work? The anointing which made Him the Christ is something which to Justin’s mind occurred before His coming as man. He was anointed that through Him God might order (or adorn) the universe. The sense of the words is fairly plain, if it be somewhat surprising.

But the construction of the Greek at the crucial point is at least awkward. The words are: Χριστὸς μὲν κατὰ τὸ κεχρῖσθαι καὶ κοσμῆσαι τὰ πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ τὸν θεὸν λέγεται. Long ago Scaliger proposed to read καὶ χρῖσαι, instead of κεχρῖσθαι. This would mean: “in respect of God’s both anointing and ordering all things through Him.” The emendation found little favour with the editors of Justin, until the discovery of the Demonstration. Now it seems likely to find a wider acceptance in view of these words of Irenæus: “For He was named Christ because through Him the Father 18anointed and adorned all things.” At any rate it will not be doubted that Irenæus so understood the passage, whatever he may have actually read in his copy of Justin. I have not myself ventured to correct Justin’s text: for it is intelligible as it stands; whereas to say “He was called Christ,” not because He was anointed, but “because the Father anointed all things through Him,” is not very intelligible, even though Irenæus has said it.

Justin continues:

Jesus is a man’s name, familiar enough to Greek readers of the Bible from having been given by Moses to his successor whom we call Joshua. It also has a significance: for it means Saviour. As Σωτήρ to the Greeks suggested specially the giving of health (σωτηρία), Justin finds a connection between Ἰησοῦς and ἴασις, “healing.” You can see this today, he says: for the Christians who use the name of Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate, can heal when no one else can (μὴ ἰαθέντας ἰάσαντο καὶ ἔτι νῦν ἰῶνται).

Turning back to the last words of the passage quoted above from Irenæus, we note that the same interpretation of “Jesus” is in his mind, even 19if he does not play on the word ἴασις. For σωτηοία itself includes “healing” among its meanings: and Irenæus refers to our Lord’s own acts of healing, though he does not at this point follow Justin in instancing the healing of the possessed by Christians in the name of Jesus.⁶⁶He does so in the notable passage II, xlix. 3, of which Eusebius has preserved the original Greek.

We have now to consider a passage in which the help to be gained from Justin is not so clear. In c. 43 we read: “This Jeremiah the prophet also testified, saying thus: Before the morning-star I begat thee; and before the sun (is) thy name; and that is, before the creation of the world; for together with the world the stars were made.”

Here we have a composite quotation, made up from two different Psalms and attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. The words of Ps. cx. 3, which are familiar to us in the form “The dew of thy youth is of the womb of the morning,” were understood by the LXX to mean “From the womb before the morning-star I begat thee” (ἐκ γαστρὸς πρὸ ἑωσφύρου ἐγέννησά σε). In our passage the phrase “from the womb” is dropped; and thus the text can be the more easily applied to the pre-existent Son of God. We feel the difficulty of combining the two phrases when we find Tertullian (Adv. Marcion. V. 9), who applies the passage to our Lord’s human birth, constrained to interpret “before the morning-star” as meaning while it was yet dark, and offering various proofs from the Gospels that Christ was born in the night.

The second half of our quotation is a modification 20of Ps. lxxii. 17: “Before the sun his name remaineth” (πρὸ τοῦ ἡλίου διαμένει τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ), or “shall remain” (διαμενεῖ).

It is obvious that the two texts have been drawn together by a recollection of the parallel phrases “before the morning-star” and “before the sun.” But again, in the neighborhood of the latter, we find “before the moon,” in the difficult verse (Ps. lxxii. 5): καὶ συνπαραμενεῖ τῷ ἡλίῳ, καὶ πρὸ τῆς σελήνης γενεὰς γενεῶν. We shall see that in other writers this phrase also is drawn in.

We may now consider the use made of these texts by Justin Martyr. In his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho (c. 45) he speaks of Christ, as “the Son of God, who was before the morning-star and the moon,” and was incarnate and born of the Virgin. This is not exactly a mixed quotation, but we see how readily phrases from the two Psalms are combined. Then in c. 63 he quotes “that which was spoken by David: In the brightness of thy holy ones, from the womb before the morning-star I begat thee:” and he comments thus: “Does this not show you that from of old (ἄνωθεν) and through a human womb the God and Father of all was to beget Him?” Here there is no combination of texts: but in c. 76 we have the three texts brought together, though “the morning-star” is not mentioned: “And David proclaimed that before sun (Ps. lxxii. 17) and moon (Ps. lxxii. 5) He should be begotten from the womb (Ps. cx. 3), according to the counsel of the Father.”

If, as we may well believe, these passages of Justin were familiar to Irenæus, it is not difficult 21to understand that by a trick of memory he should produce the quotation: “Before the morning-star I begat thee and before the sun is thy name.” It was a more serious lapse to assign the quotation to Jeremiah.

In a book of Testimonies against the Jews, attributed to Gregory of Nyssa,⁷⁷Printed by Zacagni, Monumenta, p. 292 (Rome, 1698). we have the following quotation which combines all three texts: “From the womb before the morning-star I begat thee: and before the sun is his name, and before the moon.” This is not assigned to any particular author; and as we have “his name,” not “thy name,” it may be intended for two separate quotations.⁸⁸We have, “thy name” in Clem. Alex. Exc. ex Theodoto 20: Τὸ γὰρ πρὸ ἑωσφόρου ἐγέννησά σε οὕτως ἐξακούομεν ἐπὶ τοῦ πρωτοκτίστου θεοῦ λόγου, καὶ πρὸ ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης καὶ πρὸ πάσης κτίσεως τὸ ὄνομά σου. It is possible that by this date the words “and before the moon” had got into some MSS. of the LXX. The Old Latin Psalter has: “Ante solem permanebit nomen ejus in sæcula, et ante lunam sedes ejus;” and some cursive MSS. of the LXX have a Greek text which corresponds with this.

Dr Rendel Harris also quotes from the Syriac writer Bar Salibi:⁹⁹Harris, Testimonies, p. 15. See also on p. 45 a quotation from an anti-Mohammedan tract: “His name endures before the sun and moon throughout all ages.” “David said: Before the day-star I begat thee. And before the sun is his name, and before the moon.” From these and other parallels he concludes that Irenæus made use of a common body of proof texts contained in a very ancient book of “Testimonies against the Jews.” 22The existence of such a work has been suggested more than once. Dr Rendel Harris has propounded it in a fresh and attractive form in a book entitled “Testimonies,” of which as yet only the introductory portion has appeared (Cambridge, 1916). The body of evidence on which it rests is promised us in a second volume; and judgment must necessarily be suspended until this is available. So far as the Demonstration of Irenæus is concerned, this is the only passage in which them might conceivably be a gain in calling in such a hypothesis. Direct dependence on Justin, on the other hand, can be demonstrated in various portions of our treatise; and this may be the true explanation here.

Irenæus goes on to attribute to Jeremiah a yet more strange quotation: “Blessed is he who was, before he became man.” The German translations render the last words differently: one of them has “before the coming into being of man (vor dem Werden des Menschen):” the other has: “before through him man was made (bevor durch ihn der Mensch warde).” We have however an exact parallel to the construction in the Armenian rendering of the words “before he knoweth” in c. 53. The Greek there is πρὶν ἢ γνῶναι αὐτόν (Isa. vii. 15); and we may suppose that here it was πρὶν ἢ γενηθῆναι αὐτὸν ἄνθρωπον.

No such text is to be found in any book now known to us which is attributed to Jeremiah. Dr Rendel Harris has been the first to point to its occurrence in a slightly different form, and again as quoted from Jeremiah, in Lactantius (Divin. Inst. 23iv. 8). The whole passage must be given: “First of all we affirm that He was twice born, first in spirit, afterwards in flesh. Wherefore in Jeremiah it is thus spoken: Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee. Also: Blessed is he who was, before he was born: which happened unto none save Christ; who, being from the beginning Son of God, was reborn anew according to the flesh.” The Latin, “Beatus qui erat antequam nasceretur,” may represent a Greek reading, πρὶν ἢ γεννηθῆναι.

The words which follow in Lactantius: “qui, cum esset a principio filius dei, regeneratus est denuo secundum carnem,” appear to be taken from Cyprian’s Testimonia (II, 8), where a section is headed: “Quod, cum a principio filius dei fuisset, generari denuo haberet secundum carnem;” but the only O.T. quotation that there follows is Ps. ii. 7 f.

So far, then, we have no clue to the source from which either Irenæus or Lactantius derived this strange quotation. It is not likely that Lactantius got it, directly at any rate, from the Demonstration of Irenæus, which does not appear to have had a wide circulation. It is possible that this and certain other passages which are attributed to Jeremiah may be derived from some apocryphal work bearing that prophet’s name.

III

THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN JUSTIN AND IRENÆUS

If we are to do justice to the teaching of Irenæus as to the Holy Spirit, it is imperative that we should pay some attention first of all to the view of Justin Martyr, whose First and Second Apologies, as well as the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, were in his hands, and indeed must have been very familiar to him.

1. The Holy Spirit in relation to Prophecy. Justin first mentions the Holy Spirit under the designation of “the prophetic Spirit” (Ap. 1, 6); and this designation frequently recurs. It is noteworthy that prophecy itself is first introduced in answer to the supposed objection, why should not Christ have been a mere man, who by magic performed the miracles attributed to him and so was considered a Son of God? No Christian writer of that day would have been prepared to answer this by denying the power of magic. Justin’s answer is on quite a different line. Many generations before the coming of Christ the main events of His life on earth, including the wonders of healing which He should perform, had been foretold by the Jewish prophets. The verification of these prophecies in the story contained in the Gospels was the surest testimony to the truth of what Christians claimed for Christ.

The expression “the prophetic Spirit,” occurs 25frequently both in the First Apology and in the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. Sometimes Justin says “the holy prophetic Spirit,” and once (Ap. 32) “the divine holy prophetic Spirit.” Now “the prophetic Spirit,” means the Spirit of the prophets. So Athenagoras, who follows Justin, interpreting and sometimes correcting him, says that it is the Spirit “which works in those who make prophetic utterances,” and he adds that it is “an effluence of God,” as the ray is of the sun.¹⁰¹⁰Suppl. 10. The prophets in question are the Jewish prophets: and Justin’s insistence on “the prophetic Spirit” is understood when we remember the attempt that was then being made to distinguish the God of the Old Testament (“the Just God”) from the God of the New Testament (“the Good God”). This was to cut off Christianity from the past, and to destroy its historical background and its function as the fulfillment of the age-long purpose of God. There was, however, a further reason for emphasizing “the prophetic Spirit,” a reason of even greater importance from the standpoint of Christian evidence. The correspondence between the Gospel facts and the prophetic utterances proved two things: namely, that the claim of Jesus to be the Christ was valid, and that the Spirit of the prophets was of God.

We do not in our apologetic today make this use of the exact correspondence of Old Testament texts with facts recorded in the Gospels. But the deeper meaning of the argument—deeper than those who used it knew—the preparation in Jewish 26history for the coming of the Christ, and the continuity of the self-revelation of God—that is of the essence of the Christian argument still. And we must not forget how great a debt we owe to those who, with a narrow and tiresome literalness of exposition, claimed the Old Testament as the sacred book of the early Christian Church. “Who spake by the prophets” represents the primary conception of the Holy Spirit in the writers of the second century: just as the great sentence which precedes it in the Creed—“Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified”—goes beyond what they were able to say, and represents the final pronouncement of the Church after two more centuries of uncertainty and debate.

2. The Holy Spirit in relation to the Father and the Son. The passage above alluded to as the first in which Justin mentions the Holy Spirit will show us how great a distance the Church had to travel before the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity could find adequate expression. Justin has been saying to his Roman readers: You call us atheists and put us to death, being urged thereto by the demons who have contrived to get themselves called gods. Socrates long ago by true Reason (λόγος) exposed them, and they got him slain, just as they get us slain today. For today not only Greeks like Socrates, but mere barbarians have cast them off, being enlightened by the Reason Himself, who has taken form and become man and is called Jesus Christ. Yes, we are atheists—in respect of your pagan gods: but not in respect of the most true God, the Father of justice and temperance and the 27other virtues. “But”—and here we must quote the exact words—“Him, and the Son who came from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels that attend Him and are made like unto Him, and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, honoring them with reason and with truth.”¹¹¹¹Ἀλλ᾽ ἐκεῖνόν τε, καὶ τὸν παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ υἱὸν ἐλθὸντα καὶ διδάξαντα ἡμᾶς ταῦτα, καὶ τὸν τῶν ἄλλων ἑπομένων καὶ ἐξομοιουμένων ἀγαθῶν ἀγγέλων στρατόν, πνεῦμά τε τὸ προφητικὸν σεβόμεθα καὶ προσκυνοῦμεν, λόγῳ καὶ ἀληθείᾳ τιμῶντες, κ.τ.λ. (Just. M. Ap. I, 6). It would not be fair to say that here Justin ranks the Holy Spirit after the angels: other passages, to be quoted later, show that this is not his meaning. It is rather that the angels are brought into prominence as the escort of the Son, to whom Justin again and again insists on applying the title “Angel” in the sense of divine messenger,¹²¹²E. g. Ap. 1, 63: Ὁ λόγος δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, ὡς προέφημεν· καὶ ἄγγελος δὲ καλεῖται καὶ ἀπόστολος· αὐτὸς γὰρ ἀπαγγέλλει κ.τ.λ.; Dial. 93: (He who fulfils the First and Great Commandment) οὐδένα ἄλλον τιμήσει θεόν· καὶ ἄγγελον ἐκεῖνον ἂν τιμήσει, θεοῦ βουλομένου, τὸν ἀγαπώμενον ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ τοῦ κυρίου καὶ θεοῦ. especially when he is explaining various passages in Genesis as manifestations of the divine Son to the patriarchs. Justin’s immediate purpose was to show what a wealth of spiritual powers Christianity could set out in contrast to the “many gods”—the demons—of the heathen world: how absurd therefore it was to call Christians atheists. The same argument is handled thirty years later by Athenagoras with Justin’s language in mind, but with more caution. Father, Son and Spirit he mentions in due order: but he adds: Not that our theology stops here, for it includes a multitude of angels and ministrants to whom the heavenly 28bodies, the heavens themselves, and our world have been entrusted by the Creator.¹³¹³Καὶ οὐδ᾽ ἐπὶ τούτοις τὸ θεολογικὸν ἡμῶν ἵσταται μέρος, ἀλλὰ καὶ πλῆθος ἀγγέλων καὶ λειτουργῶν φαμεν, οὓς ὁ ποιητὴς καὶ δημιουργὸς κόσμου θεὸς διὰ τοῦ παῤ αὐτοῦ λόγου διένειμε καὶ διέταξεν περί τε τὰ ατοιχεῖα εἶναι καὶ τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ τὸν κόσμον καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν τούτων εὐταξίαν (Athenag. Supplic. 10). He has retained Justin’s argument, but he has carefully avoided the imperfections of its expression.

A little later Justin returns to the charge of atheism, and, having described the kind of worship which Christians offer to the Creator of the universe, he goes on to speak of Him who has taught them this, even Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and whom they had learned to know as the Son of the true God; “having Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third rank.”¹⁴¹⁴Ap. 1, 13: (υἱὸν θεοῦ) ἐν δευτἑρα χώρα ἔχοντες πνεῦμά τε προφητικὸν ἐν τρίτῃ τάξει. Such language would have been challenged in later times as unduly subordinating the Son to the Father and the Holy Spirit to the Son; but it is of value as correcting the impression which might have been derived from the earlier passage in which the Holy Spirit was mentioned after the angelic host.

Towards the end of the Apology Justin touches again on this order of the three divine Powers. He finds it in Plato, and gives it as one of several proofs that Plato had read but not understood Moses. Plato had read of the Brazen Serpent which Moses set up “on a sign” (ἐν σημείῳ), but had not understood that the sign was the cross: he had taken it as the form of the Greek letter Χ, a χίασμα (i. e. “St. Andrew’s cross,” or a saltire, as 29we say in heraldry). Moreover he had read in the first chapter of Genesis that the Spirit of God moved upon the waters. Accordingly, says Justin, “he gives the second place to the Word that is from God, whom he declared to have been extended saltire-wise (κεχιάσθαι) in the universe; and the third to the Spirit who was said to move on the water.”¹⁵¹⁵Ap. 1, 60. Athenagoras (Suppl. 23) treats the matter more elaborately as usual. We shall find that Irenæus has been influenced by Justin’s words about the χίασμα: see below, c. 34.

In the closing chapters of his First Apology Justin describes, in language such as his heathen readers might understand, the Christian sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion. He gives a paraphrase only of the baptismal formula, perhaps with a view to lucidity, but possibly also through unwillingness to give the actual words.¹⁶¹⁶On the other hand he shows no unwillingness to give the Words of Institution in describing the Last Supper. But there is no ground for supposing that he attached to them a consecrating effect, nor indeed is it known whether in his day they formed a part of the Eucharistic Prayer. He does not even use the terms “baptism” and “baptize,” but only speaks of “making the washing” or “bath.” “For in the name of the Father of all and Lord God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then make the washing in the water.”¹⁷¹⁷ Ἐπ᾽ ὀνόματος γὰρ τοῦ πατρὸς τῶν ὅλων καὶ δεσπότου θεοῦ, καὶ τοῦ σωτῆρος ἠμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, καὶ πνεύματος ἁγίου, τὸ ἐν τῷ ὕδατι τότε λουτρόν ποιοῦνται (Ap. 1, 61). He uses similar words a little lower down, with some additions: “There is named on him the name of the Father of all, etc. . . . And in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Spirit, who by 30the prophets announced beforehand all the things concerning Jesus.”¹⁸¹⁸καὶ ἐπ᾽ ὀνόματος ἁγίου, ὃ διὰ τῶν προφητῶν προεκήρυξε τὰ κατὰ τὸν Ἰησοῦν πάντα (ibid.). This last addition is of special interest in view of the ultimate inclusion of “Who spake by the prophets” in the Creed.

In describing the Eucharist which followed after Baptism Justin speaks first of the people’s prayers: “We make prayers in common, for ourselves, for the person baptized (lit. enlightened), and for all men everywhere.” These “common prayers” are followed by the kiss of peace. Then he who presides over the brethren (Justin avoids any technical term such as “bishop”) receives the Bread and the Cup, and “he sends up praise and glory to the Father of all through the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and makes thanksgiving (“eucharist”) for being accounted worthy of these gifts from Him;” and this he does “at some length.” “When he has completed the prayers and the thanksgiving, all the people present respond saying Amen.”¹⁹¹⁹Ap. 1, 65.

We note that the Holy Spirit is only mentioned in reference to the offering of praise to the Father “through the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit.” When he goes on to describe the character of “this food, which we call Eucharist,” there is no reference to the Holy Spirit, but only to the Word of God so far are we from that Invocation of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of consecration which came into the liturgies two hundred years later.

Presently Justin says: “And over all our food 31we bless the Maker of all things through His Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit.”²⁰²⁰Ap. 1, 67. Once again we observe that praise is directed to the Father through the Son and Holy Spirit.

3. The Holy Spirit and the Incarnation of the Word. We are so familiar with the part assigned in our Creeds to the Holy Spirit in connection with our Lord’s birth, that the passage now to be quoted from Justin may at first sight seem very surprising. It may be well to approach it by citing some words from the learned and orthodox Waterland, who in 1734, in his book on The Trinity (c. vi: Works, III, 571: Oxford, 1843), wrote as follows in reference to a passage of St Irenæus: “I may remark by the way, that Irenæus here (V, c. 1) seems to understand Spirit of God, and Holy Spirit before, of the second Person, of the Logos himself coming down upon the Virgin. So the earliest Fathers commonly do, interpreting Luke i. 35, to that sense: which I the rather note, because so their asserting Christ’s birth of a virgin, and his preexisting as Spirit of God, and God, amounted to the same thing.” Waterland appends in a note a catena of eight passages, the texts of which he cites in full. Our passage from Justin is among them.

Justin mentions the subject in his First Apology when he is interpreting Jacob’s Blessing in Gen. xlix. The passage is given in full above on p. 7. “The blood of the grape,” he says, “signifies that He who is to appear has blood indeed, but not of human seed, but of divine power. Now the first power after the Father of all and Lord God 32. . . is the Word.”²¹²¹Ap. 1, 32. Later he says: “The power of God came upon the Virgin and overshadowed her.” Then he quotes the angel’s message in a composite form: “Behold, thou shall conceive in the womb, of (the) Holy Spirit, and shalt bear a son, and he shall be called Son of the Most High,” etc. (Luke i. 31, Matt. i. 20): These things, he adds, have been taught us by those who recorded them; and we believe them because “the prophetic Spirit” declared through Isaiah that so it should be. Then he says: “But the Spirit and the Power that is from God, it is not allowable to regard as any other than the Word (the Logos), who also is the first-begotten unto God . . . It was this (Spirit) that came upon the Virgin and overshadowed her,” etc.²²²² Τὸ πνεῦμα οὖν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν τὴν παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ οὐδὲν ἄλλο νοῆσαι θέμις ἢ τὸν λόγον, ὃς καὶ πρωτότοκος τῷ θεῷ ἐστι . . . καὶ τοῦτο ἐλθὸν ἐπὶ τὴν παρθένον καὶ ἐπισκιάσαν οὐ διὰ συνουσίας ἀλλὰ διὰ δυνάμεως ἐγκύμονα κατέστησε (Ap. 1, 33): cf. Dial. 100 ad fin.

This interpretation of the words “Holy Spirit” in Matt. i 20 and Luke i. 35 is all the more striking because it follows immediately upon the reference to the “prophetic Spirit,” whose function it was to announce the birth from the Virgin beforehand. No further comment is necessary here on this passage; but it may be worth while to note that the belief that the Word was Himself the agent of His own Incarnation finds its natural place side by side with the belief that it is through His direct agency, and not through that of the Holy Spirit, that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are made the Body and Blood of the Incarnate Word: see 33the well-known passage in Ap. 1, 66, where however Justin’s intricate constructions make the exact meaning of his words difficult to determine.

While “the prophetic Spirit” is thus expressly excluded from, the part in the mystery of the Incarnation which a later interpretation of the words of the Gospels assigned to Him, it is to be noted that Justin makes much of His descent upon Christ at the Baptism. In Dial. 87 the Jew Trypho is made to quote Isa. xi. 2–3: “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,” etc. Conceding that it is Christ on whom the Spirit is to rest in His sevenfold power, Trypho proceeds to ask how, if Christ be God, He should be in need of this gift. Justin’s answer is that He is in no such need that, when the prophet says that the Spirit shall “rest” upon Him, he means that He will go no further, that He will have reached a termination, so far as His prophetic work among the Jewish people is concerned. This, he says, you yourselves see to be true: you have had no prophet since. The gifts enumerated were divided among your prophets, some had one, some had another. But they all met on Christ. “When He was come, the Spirit rested, paused” (ἀνεπαύσατο οὖν, τουτέστιν ἐπαύσατο, ἐλθόντος ἐκείνου).²³²³It is interesting to compare with this the passage quoted from the Gospel according to the Hebrews by St Jerome in his Commentary on Isaiah (lib. iv. cap. 12): “Now it came to pass, when the Lord had come up from the water, the whole fount of the Holy Spirit came down and rested upon him, and said to him: My Son, in all the prophets was I waiting for thee, that thou mightest come and I might rest in thee. For thou art my rest; thou art my Son, (my) first-born, which reignest for ever.” A new 34era then began, in which Christ “having received gifts,” as was prophesied, “gives them, from the grace of the power of that Spirit, to those who believe on Him, according as He knows each to be worthy.” Today “you can see among us both women and men who have gifts of grace (χαρίσίματα) from the Spirit of God” (c. 88). In an earlier chapter he had said (c. 82: cf. also c. 39): “Among us at the present time there are gifts of prophecy (prophetic charismata); “and he had just before referred to the prophecies of St John’s Apocalypse.

While Justin thus recognizes the existence of special gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Church, he does not expressly connect Him with the ordinary graces of the Christian life. Even when he is dealing with the interpretation of the prophecies inspired by the Holy Spirit, he does not say, as later writers do, that we need the enlightenment of the same Holy Spirit to explain their meaning: he says, again and again, that we need “the grace of God” for this purpose. And just as he stops short of saying that this “grace” is, or proceeds from, the Holy Spirit, so also he stops short of saying that “the living water” given by Christ, the true Rock, is the Holy Spirit (Dial. 114).

We pass now from Justin’s teaching about the Holy Spirit to that of Irenæus in the Demonstration, to which we shall add illustrations taken from his larger work Against Heresies. It will be convenient at first at any rate to consider it under the same headings as before.

1. The Holy Spirit in relation to Prophecy. 35Justin’s favorite term “the prophetic Spirit” does not occur in the Demonstration: but the work of the Holy Spirit in the ancient prophets is frequently mentioned. Thus for Moses in Genesis we have in c. 24: “God bare witness unto [Abraham] by the Holy Spirit, saying in the Scripture: And Abraham believed God,” etc. So in c. 26, with regard to the Tables written with the finger of God, we have the curious explanation: “Now the finger of God is that which is stretched forth from the Father in the Holy Spirit.” We shall see presently that Irenæus elsewhere regards the Holy Spirit as one of the hands of God in the work of creation. Here no doubt he is influenced by the words of our Lord in St Luke, “If I by the finger of God cast out devils,” where in St Matthew’s Gospel the expression is changed to “the Spirit of God.”²⁴²⁴See note on p. 53. Then, again, in c. 30 we are told more generally that the prophets were “sent by God through the Holy Spirit.”

A fuller treatment is found in several passages. Thus in c. 49 we read: “For it is not a man who speaks the prophecies; but the Spirit of God, assimilating and likening Himself to the persons represented, speaks in the prophets and utters the words sometimes from Christ and sometimes from the Father.” The thought is found in Justin (Ap. 1, 36 ff.), where it is fully dealt with and illustrated by examples.

Again, in c. 67: “He took our infirmities,” etc. “that is to say, He shall take, etc. For there are passages in which the Spirit of God through the 36prophets recounts things that are to be as having taken place . . . and the Spirit, regarding and seeing the time in which the issues of the prophecy are fulfilled, utters the words (accordingly).” This again is found in Justin (Dial. 114).

In his description of the third point of the Rule of Faith (c. 6) he begins with the prophetic function: “The Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets prophesied, and the fathers learned the things of God, and the righteous were led forth into the way of righteousness; and who in the end of the times was poured out in a new way upon mankind in all the earth, renewing man unto God.” Here we see the wider conception of the Spirit’s work, which marks the advance upon Justin to which we shall refer presently.

So far all has been plain: but, in view of the fact that “the Word of God” is so frequently mentioned in Holy Scripture as coming to the prophets, it was inevitable that difficulty should be felt in distinguishing the functions of the Word and the Spirit in this connection. In c. 5 we read, “Now the Spirit shows forth the Word, and therefore the prophets announced the Son of God; and the Word utters the Spirit, and therefore is Himself the announcer of the prophets.” A passage in c. 73 illustrates this yet further, “David said not this of himself . . . but the Spirit of Christ, who (spake) also in other prophets concerning Him, says here by David: I laid me down and slept: I awoke, for the Lord received me.”

A few illustrations may be appended from the five books of the great treatise Against Heresies, 37II, xli. 1: Some Scriptures are too hard for us: “but we know that the Scriptures are perfect, seeing that they are spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit; whereas we are minores et novissimi a verbo dei et spiritu ejus.” We are at a great remove from the Word and the Spirit who inspired them. He adds in striking words (§ 3) that “the Scriptures are spiritual: some things we can interpret, others are left with God, and that not only in this world but in that which is to come; that God may for ever be teacher, and man for ever a learner.”

Next we may note that Irenæus extends the work of the Holy Spirit to the evangelists: “The Holy Spirit says by Matthew: Now the birth of Christ was on this wise” (III, xvii. 1). And a curious collocation is found in III, vi. 1: “Neither the Lord nor the Holy Spirit nor the apostles would have definitely called any God, unless He were truly God; nor any Lord save the Ruler of all, the Father, and His Son who received rule from Him.” Here perhaps the Holy Spirit is referred to for the Old Testament, the Lord and the apostles for the New. In III, vii. 2, however, he recognizes the “impetus” of the Spirit in St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, especially in his rapid questions and answers: “as though man asked the question, and the Spirit gave the answer.”

Enough has been said to show that Irenæus goes beyond Justin’s expressions, and widens the function of the Holy Spirit in relation to Scripture. But before we leave the topic we may note that 38the designation “prophetic Spirit” does occur in Irenæus, only with another or a modified connotation. In III, xi. 12 we are told that certain heretics, “in order to frustrate the gift of the Spirit,” which in the last days has been poured forth, reject St John’s Gospel with its account of the Paraclete: “they reject at once the Gospel and the prophetic Spirit”²⁵²⁵Cf. also III, xi. 11.; and, as he says again, “they reject from the Church the grace of prophecy.” So also in IV, xxxiv. 6: “Some of the prophets beheld the prophetic Spirit and His operations in all manner of charismata” or gifts of grace. The context shows that it is the working of the Spirit in the Christian Church which was foreseen by some of the prophets. We may compare two passages from the end of the Demonstration (cc. 99 f.). “Others receive not the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and cast away from themselves the prophetic grace, watered whereby man bears the fruit of life unto God:” and again: “Or else they receive not the Spirit, that is, they reject prophecy.”

2. The Holy Spirit in relation to the Father and the Son. Under this heading we began by considering Justin’s remarkable words, in which he declares that “we worship and adore the Father, and the Son who came from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels that attend Him and are made like unto Him, and the prophetic Spirit.” Hardly less remarkable, though in a very different way, is the following passage from the Demonstration (c. 10); and it has a special 39interest from the fact that here also we have a reference to the functions of angels.

“Now this God is glorified by His Word who is His Son continually, and by the Holy Spirit who is the Wisdom of the Father of all: and the powers of these, (namely) of the Word and Wisdom, which are called Cherubim and Seraphim, with unceasing voices glorify God; and every created thing that is in the heavens offers glory to God the Father of all. He by His Word has created the whole world, and in the world are the angels;” etc.

The liturgical ring of this passage is unmistakable. We saw that Justin spoke of Eucharistic praise as being offered to the Father “through the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit.” But this. hardly prepares us for such a passage as we have just read. Two interesting parallels, however, may prove suggestive. The first is from the Eucharistic Prayer of Bishop Serapion (c. A.D. 350):

“May the Lord Jesus speak in us, and (the) Holy Spirit, and hymn thee through us. For thou art far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come. Beside thee stand thousand thousands and myriad myriads of angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers: beside thee stand the two most honorable six-winged Seraphim, with two wings covering,” etc., leading up to the Ter Sanctus²⁶²⁶Wobbermin's edition, Texte u. Untersuch. xvii, 3b, p. 5: Λαλησάτω ἐν ἡμῖν ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἅγιον πυεῦμα, καὶ ὑμνησάτω σὲ δἰ ἡμῶν. . . .

This Prayer comes to us from Egypt. When we look at the Liturgy of Alexandria, known as that of St Mark, we find that the reference to the praise offered to the Father by the Son and the Spirit is absent. And in the place of “the two most honorable Seraphim” we read: “the two most honorable living creatures (Hab. iii. 2, LXX), the many-eyed Cherubim, and the six winged Seraphim.”²⁷²⁷It is curious to notice that each of these pairs (Living Creatures, Cherubim, Seraphim) is in turn interpreted by the Alexandrian Origen as signifying the Son and the Holy Spirit: see the note to c. 10 below. In the other Greek Liturgies “the two living creatures” are not found, but Cherubim and Seraphim remain; and we in the West are familiar with this combination in the words of the Te Deum: “Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim incessabili voce proclamant: Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus,” etc.²⁸²⁸In the Slavonic Secrets of Enoch (cc. xix f.), in both recensions, Cherubim and Seraphim are mentioned, by themselves and in this order. Where did the combination first arise?

The second parallel is not less remarkable. It comes from the Eucharistic Preface of the so-called Clementine Liturgy contained in the Apostolic Constitutions (viii. 12). But it does not appear in the ordinary texts. Mr C. H. Turner has recently called attention to a MS. in the Vatican (Vat. Gr. 1506), as offering a more original text of this work and presenting Arian features no longer to be found in the current recension. This early text contains the following words towards the close of the Preface:

“Thee every incorporeal and holy order (of beings) worshippeth; [thee the Paraclete worshippeth] 41and, before all, thy holy Servant Jesus the Christ, our Lord and God and thy angel and captain of the host and eternal and unending high priest: thee the well-ordered hosts of angels and archangels worship,” etc.²⁹²⁹Journal of Theological Studies, Oct. 1914, p. 59: Σὲ προσκυνεῖ πᾶν ἀσώματον καὶ ἅγιον τάγμα, [σὲ προσκυνεῖ ὁ παράκλητος,] πρὸ δὲ πάντων ὁ ἅγιός σου παῖς Ἰησοῦς ὁ Χριστός, ὁ κύριος καὶ θεὸς ἡμῶν, σοῦ δὲ ἄγγελος καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως ἀρχιστρατηγὸς καὶ ἀρχιερεὺς αἰώνιος καὶ ἀτελεύτητος, σὲ προσκυνοῦσι εὔρυθμοι στρατιαὶ ἀγγέλων, κ.τ.λ. Mr Turner says: “The bracketed words are by the second hand over an erasure according to Funk: but I do not doubt that it was some close connection in the original of the Holy Spirit with angelic spirits which was the motive of the erasure.”

When now we look back to the passage in the Demonstration, with its reference to Cherubim and Seraphim who “with unceasing voices” glorify God, we feel that there is matter here which deserves the attention of students of the earliest forms of the Liturgy.

But a yet earlier witness must be called before we leave this passage. There are several places in the Demonstration which suggest that Irenæus was acquainted with the splendid vision of the Ascension of Isaiah, a Christian apocryphal writing which probably belongs to the first half of the second century. A brief outline of that vision must be given here.³⁰³⁰I may be allowed to refer to my article (Isaiah, Ascension of) in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible for an account of this document. I have borrowed from it the outline here given. The book has since been edited with much care by Dr Charles.

Now it is to be observed that in c. 9 of the Demonstration Irenæus gives us an account of the Seven Heavens; in c. 10 he speaks of God as being glorified by His Word and by the Holy Spirit; and in c. 84 he says that the Lord in His descent was not recognized by any created beings, and he thus explains the dialogue with the heavenly powers in Ps. xxiv: “Lift up your gates, ye rulers . . . Who is the King of Glory?” and so forth. We cannot therefore reasonably doubt that Irenæus was acquainted with the vision in the Ascension of Isaiah.

The words which immediately concern us here are at the end of the ninth chapter of that book: “I saw that my Lord worshipped, and the angel of the Spirit, and that both of them together glorified God. And immediately all the saints approached and worshipped: and all the saints and angels approached and worshipped, and all the angels glorified.”

We see then that Irenæus by no means stands alone in his statement that the God and Father of all is glorified by the Son and by the Holy Spirit. Strange as the conception is to us it was not strange to the religious mind of the second Christian century. It would appear to have found 44place in an early form of the Liturgy, and to have been retained by the Arian compiler of the so-called Clementine Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions: for the Arians not infrequently could claim to be conservative in points of detail. Possibly we may even trace it, in a form modified into harmony with a later orthodoxy, in the Liturgy of Serapion; but it is cast out altogether in the Greek Liturgies of the subsequent period, and by the orthodox reviser of the Apostolic Constitutions.

As the Demonstration starts from the Rule of Faith—the “three points” of the Creed—it necessarily has something to say of the relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son: but at once we feel that Irenæus finds difficulty in drawing a clear distinction between the functions of the Word and the Spirit. In c. 5 he says: God is rational (λογικός); therefore He creates by the Word (λόγος): God is Spirit; therefore He orders all by the Spirit. Here Ps. xxxiii. 6 comes to his aid: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and by his spirit all their power.” Then, having identified the Word with the Son, he identifies the Spirit with the Wisdom of God. After this he takes refuge in St Paul: “One God, the Father,” etc. But the passage must be given in full.

“Since God is rational, therefore by (the) Word [or Reason] He created the things that were made; and God is Spirit, and by (the) Spirit He adorned all things: as also the prophet says: By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, 45and by his spirit all their power. Since then the Word establishes, that is to say, gives body and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order and form to the diversity of the powers; rightly and fittingly is the Word called the Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God. Well also does Paul His apostle say: One God, the Father, who is over all and through all and in us all. For over all is the Father; and through all is the Son, for by means of Him all things were made by the Father; and in us all is the Spirit, who cries Abba Father, and fashions man into the likeness of God.³¹³¹In V, xviii. 1 he gives a like interpretation, though in a different connection: “Over all is the Father, and He is the head of Christ; and through all the Word, and He is the head of the Church; and in us all the Spirit, and He is the living water which the Lord bestows,” etc. Now the Spirit shows forth the Word,” etc.³²³²As quoted above, p. 36.

Here we have moved a long way from Justin, who does not connect the Holy Spirit with the work of creation, nor quote Ps. xxxiii. 6; and who expressly tells us more than once that it is the Son who is called Wisdom by Solomon (Dial. 62 and 126). It is to other writings of Irenæus himself that we must look for illustration of these words of the Demonstration.

We begin with Isa. xxxiv. 1 ff., a passage which contains so many illustrations of the language of the Demonstration that we must quote it at some length. The translation is made from a comparison of the Latin and Armenian versions: where it does not accord with the Latin, it is to be assumed that the Armenian is followed.

(1) So then according to His greatness it is not possible to know God; for it is impossible that the Father should be measured. But according to His love—for love it is which leads us to God through His Word—as we obey Him we ever learn that He is so great a God, and that it is He who by Himself created and made and adorned and contains all things. Now in all things are both we and this world of ours:³³³³Cf. c. 4: “Now among all things is this world of ours,” etc., and the note there. therefore we also were made together with those things that are contained by Him. And it is this concerning which the Scripture says: And the Lord God formed man, dust of the earth; and breathed in his face the breath of life (Gen. ii. 7). Angels therefore made us not, nor formed us: for neither could angels make the image of God, nor could any other except the true God, nor any power standing remote from the Father of all. For of none of these was God in need to make whatsoever He of Himself had foreordained should be made: as though He Himself had not His own Hands. For ever with Him is the Word and Wisdom—the Son and the Spirit—through whom and in whom freely and of His own power He made all things; unto whom also the Father speaks,³⁴³⁴Cf. c. 55: “The Father speaking to the Son” (the same quotation, Gen. i. 26). saying: Let us make man after our image and likeness: taking from Himself the substance of the things created, and the pattern of those made, and the form of those adorned.

(2) “Well then spake the Scripture which says: First of all believe that there is one God, who 47created and fashioned all things, and made all things to be from that which was not; and containeth all things, and alone is uncontained.³⁵³⁵Cf. c. 4: “And therefore it is right first of all to believe that there is One God, the Father, who created what was not that it should be, and who, containing all things, alone is uncontained.” See note there, where the Greek is given from the Shepherd of Hermas. Well also in the prophets says the Angel:³⁶³⁶The Latin has “Malachias,” both here and in IV, xxix. 5, where again the Armenian has “the Angel”: these are the only places where Irenæus quotes the prophet by name. The name Malachi only occurs as the heading of the prophecy, and in the first verse of it, where the LXX however gives ἀγγέλου αὐτοῦ instead. There was uncertainty about the authorship, which was sometimes attributed to Ezra. In 4 Esdras i. 40 a list of the twelve prophets ends with “Malachias, qui et angelus Domini vocatus est.” Hippolytus (de Antichr. 46) writes: καθὼς διὰ Μαλαχίου τοῦ ἄγγέλου φησίν. Cf. Clem. Al. Strom. I, §§ 122, 127, 129, 135 (ὁ ἐν τοῖς δώδεκα ἄγγελος). In the Latin fragment of the Didascalia (Hauler, p. 68) we find: “per Malachiam loquens, qui nuncupatur et angelus;” so again in the Syriac (ed. Achelis-Flemming, p. 129): “Malachi the Angel.” Jerome says that Origen regarded the writer actually as an angel. Twice Justin assigns quotations from him to Zachariah (Dial. 29 and 49). I have adopted “the Angel” in the translation here to call attention to the reading. I think it not unlikely to be what Irenæus wrote: but it is right to add that the Armenian Bible follows the LXX in reading “his angel” in Mal. i. 1. Hath not one God created its? Is there not one Father of us all (Mal. ii. 10)? And agreeably with this the Apostle says: One God and Father, above all and through all and in us all (Eph. iv. 6). In like manner also the Lord says: All things have been delivered unto me by my Father (Matt. xi. 27); plainly by Him who made all things: for He gave Him not the things of another, but His own.”³⁷³⁷Cf c. 3: “For God is not ruler and Lord over the things of another, but over His own.”

“And in all things there is nothing excepted. And for this cause He is Judge of quick and dead; having the key of David, opening and none shall 48shut, and He shall shut and none shall open (Rev. iii. 7). For none other was able, neither in heaven nor on earth nor beneath the earth to open the Father’s book, nor to look thereon, save the Lamb that was slain and redeemed us by his blood Rev. v. 2); having received all power from Him, who by the Word made and by Wisdom adorned all things, when the Word was made flesh (John i. 14) that as in heaven He had the preeminence,³⁸³⁸Cf. c. 40: “Thus then the Word of God in all things hath the preeminence,” and note there because He was the Word of God, so also on earth He should have the preeminence, because He was a just man,³⁹³⁹Cf. c. 39: “A just and holy man . . . the first begotten of the dead.” who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth (I Pet. ii. 22); and that He should have the preeminence also over those who are beneath the earth, being made the first-begotten from the dead (Rev. i. 5): and that all things should behold, as we have said, their King: and that the Father’s light should come upon the flesh of our Lord, and from His flesh sparkling and flashing back should come to us, and so man should be drawn and caught into the incorruption of the Father’s light.

(3) Now that the Word, that is, the Son, was always with the Father,⁴⁰⁴⁰Cf c. 52: “Christ, being Son of God before all the world, is always with the Father,” etc. we have shown by many proofs. And that Wisdom, which is the Spirit, was with Him before all creation, He says by Solomon, thus: God by wisdom founded the earth, and he prepared the heaven by understanding: by 49His knowledge the depths were broken up, and the clouds dropped down the dew (Prov. iii. 19 f.). And again: The Lord created me (in Arm.) the beginning of his ways, for his works,” etc. (Prov. viii. 22–25).

(4) “There is therefore one God, who by the Word and Wisdom made and fashioned all things . . .”

So the great passage runs on: later portions of it describe the work of the Holy Spirit among men. The footnotes have shown how much of it is repeated in almost the same words in the Demonstration, apart from the particular section which we have called it in to illustrate. To that section we must return; for we are now concerned with the Spirit’s work in connection with Creation.

First we must deal with the quotation, By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and by his spirit all their power. This is quoted more correctly—“by the spirit (or ‘breath’) of his mouth”—in I, xv and also in III, viii. 3. In the latter place he makes no comment; but in the former, after having quoted this text to prove that God made all things by His Word, he presently adds a reference to the Spirit: “By His Word and Spirit making all things, and disposing and governing them, and granting existence to them all.” Here the Word and the Spirit seem to be brought together merely because they have occurred in the quotation, and there is no further reference to the Holy Spirit in the context. It might therefore appear that they are no more distinguished from one another than they are in the parallelism of 50the Hebrew poet, to whom “the word” and “the breath of his mouth” are but one and the same. But Irenæus has no eye for such parallelisms, and the dropping of the phrase “of his mouth” in our present passage makes this only too plain.

Next we note the expression “by the Spirit He adorned them.” This word “adorned” (Lat. adornavit) recurs several times in the passage we have quoted from Bk. IV: “created and made and adorned and contains all things;” “the form of the things adorned,” “who by the Word made and by Wisdom adorned all things.” The Armenian word is the same throughout, and probably represents the Greek ἐκόσμησεν and τῶν κεκοσμημένων.⁴¹⁴¹In Justin (Ap. II, 6) we have (ἔκτισε καὶ ἐκόσμησε, and in Athenagoras (Suppl. ἐποίησε καὶ ἐκόσμησε. At the end of the passage we have a similar phrase: “who by the Word and Wisdom made and fashioned all things (Lat. adaptavit).”⁴²⁴²The Arm. also has here a different word—one which is used to translate καταρτίσας in the quotation from Hermas. Other parallels are II, xlvii. 2: “condens et faciens omnia . . . Verbo virtutis suæ; et omnia aptavit et disposuit Sapientia sua . . . qui fecit ea per semetipsum, hoc est per Verbum et per Sapientiam suam:“ III, xxxviii. 2: “Verbo suo confirmans et Sapientia compingens omnia.”

The passage in the Demonstration goes on to say that “rightly and fittingly is the Word called the Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God.” The proof texts for this latter statement are not given: but we have had them in the long passage from the fourth book Against Heresies. For the purpose of asserting the part of the Holy Spirit in Creation, Irenæus has boldly taken over the texts which speak of Wisdom in this connection—texts 51which Justin before him and Origen⁴³⁴³Origen found the Spirit in Gen. i. 2 and in Ps. xxxiii. 6: but he is quite clear that Wisdom is the Son. after him would have referred to the Son.

This equivalence in creative function of the Son and the Spirit, as the Word and the Wisdom of God, is strangely expressed in Bks. IV and V, by calling them the Hands of God. In IV, pref. 3 we read: “Man is a mingling of soul and flesh,⁴⁴⁴⁴Cf. c. 2: “Man is a living being compounded of soul and flesh,” and note there. fashioned after the likeness of God and formed (plasmatus) by His Hands, that is, by the Son and the Spirit, to whom also He said: Let us make man.” The conception is developed in IV, xiv. 1: “The Father had no need of angels to make the world and to form man for whose sake the world was made; nor again was He in want of ministration for the making of created things and the dispensation of the work that concerned man but He had abundant and unbounded ministration; because there ministers unto Him His own Offspring for all purposes, and His own Hands,⁴⁵⁴⁵For “His own Hands” (Arm.) the Latin has “figuratio sua,” which has troubled the commentators: the Armenian version restores the meaning of the passage. that is, the Son and the Spirit, the Word and Wisdom to whom all the angels render service and are in subjection.” The next occurrence of the metaphor is in the great passage we have quoted above (IV, xxxiv. 1, “as though He had not His own Hands”), where he practically repeats what he has said before.

Then in V, i. 3 we have: “For never at any time has Adam escaped the Hands of God, to whom 52the Father spake, saying: Let us make man after our image and likeness. And for this cause in the end (of the times), not of the will of flesh nor of the will of man (John i. 13), but of the good pleasure of the Father, His Hands made the Living Man, that Adam might become after the image and likeness of God.” Here we see the conception carried on from the Creation to the Incarnation.

In V, v. 1, speaking of Enoch and Elijah, he says: “By those Hands by which they were formed (ἐπλάσθησαν) at the beginning they were translated and taken up: for in Adam the Hands of God were habituated to order and hold and carry their own formation (πλάσμα), and to bear it and set it where they themselves would.” He goes on to say that “the Hand of God was present “with the Three Children in the Furnace—namely “the Son of God.”

Then in V, vi. 1 the continual molding of man is indicated: “God shall be glorified in His own formation (plasmate), conforming and conjoining it to His Son. For by the Hands of the Father, that is, the Son and the Spirit, man is made after the image and likeness of God—but not part of man.” He is arguing for the resurrection of the flesh, not of the soul alone.

In V, xv. 2 f. our Lord’s cures in the Gospels are said to show the Hand of God, which formed man at the beginning: cf. also xvi. 1. This is not at variance with the conception, for the Son is one of the Hands of God.

Lastly, in V, xxviii. 3, he returns to the two Hands: “Wherefore in all this time (viz. the 536000 years) man, formed at the beginning by the Hands of God, that is, the Son and the Spirit, is being made after the image and likeness of God.”

In the Demonstration the same thought is suggested by the phrase in c. 11: “But man He formed with His own Hands;” but it is not further dwelt upon.

The identification of the Spirit with Wisdom was made after a fashion by some of the “Gnostics,” but not in a way that is likely to have influenced Irenæus.⁴⁶⁴⁶In the Clementine Homilies, however, the doctrine of which has much in common with the Helchesaite teachings of the second century, there are some curious parallels to the language of Irenæus on this subject. In Hom. xvi. 12 we read: “There is one God who said to His Wisdom, Let us make man. Now Wisdom, with which, as with His own Spirit, He himself ever rejoiced (cf. Prov. viii. 30), is united as Soul with God, and stretched out from him as Hand, creating the universe (ἐκτείνετα: δὲ ὡς χεὶρ δημιουργοῦσα τὸ πᾶν).” So in Hom. xi. 22, “of the Spirit of God moving on the water,” we are told: “The Spirit has the beginning of extension (τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς ἐκτάσεως) from God who made all things;” and, “when God spake, the Spirit as His Hand created all things.” With this ἔκτασις cf. Dem. c. 26: “Now the finger of God is that which is stretched forth from the Father in the Holy Spirit.” Nor do I know where else to find it at this date except in Theophilus of Antioch. But on his name we must pause for a brief digression. He seems to have written a little earlier than Irenæus, who is generally admitted to have had some acquaintance with his works.

In approaching what Theophilus of Antioch has to say concerning the Holy Spirit, it is of the first importance to bear in mind that his three books addressed to Autolycus represent a systematic attempt to convert a heathen from the worship of a plurality of Gods. A higher faith is set before him, but it is not what we today should speak of 54as distinctively Christian. There is no Christian theology, properly so called, propounded: the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection of our Lord are not mentioned; the very names Christ and Jesus are absent:⁴⁷⁴⁷Even when explaining the word “Christian” he does not mention Christ, but plays with the word εὔχρηστος, and then says, “We are called Christians because we are anointed (χριόμεθα) with the oil of God” (i. 1 and 12). the Gospels are referred to only in passing for certain moral precepts. Much of the work is directly controversial and negative: his positive arguments are concerned with the process of Creation as revealed to Moses and with prophecies of the Old Testament. In these Scriptures and in the Gospels, so far as he touches on them, he finds the inspiring activity of the Spirit of God: but Creation, not less than Inspiration, is for him a function of God’s Wisdom as well as of God’s Word; and, though he does not explicitly identify Wisdom with the Holy Spirit, his language certainly implies that this was his meaning.

Theophilus leads off with a general statement which is perhaps to be explained by his anxiety to keep the Unity of God in the front of his exposition. The form of God, he says, is ineffable: “if I call Him Light, I speak of His handiwork; if Word of His rule”—for he explains later that ἀρχὴ means “rule” (ὅτι ἄρχει) as well as “beginning”; “if I call Him Mind, I speak of His understanding; if Spirit, of His breath; if Wisdom, of His offspring; if Strength, of His might; if Power, of His working; if Providence, of His goodness,” and so on.⁴⁸⁴⁸i. 3.

Here we have “Word,” “Spirit,” “Wisdom ”—as 55it were Names of God: a sort of warning that, if these are hereafter mentioned as active powers, they are not to be thought of as infringing on the Unity of the Deity.

Next, in i. 5, we read: “the whole creation is embraced by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit that embraces it is together with the creation embraced by the hand of God.” This does not encourage us to expect a very clear definition of terms.

In i. 7 we get what is more to our purpose. He is speaking of God as the Physician who can open the eyes of the soul: “God, who heals and quickens by the Word and Wisdom. For God by His Word and Wisdom made all things. For by his word were the heavens established, and by his spirit all their power. Most excellent is His Wisdom: God by wisdom founded the earth, and prepared the heavens by understanding: by (his) knowledge the depths were broken up, and the clouds dropped down the dew.”

This might be Irenæus himself.⁴⁹⁴⁹See above, pp. 44, 48 f. There is the same inexact quotation of Ps. xxxiii. 6, with “his spirit,” instead of “the spirit (or ‘breath’) of his mouth”; and the same full quotation of Prov. iii. 19, 20, where the former verse only might have been expected. Moreover the next sentences of Theophilus give in summary form much which is said with great fullness by Irenæus, touching the vision of God and the resurrection of the flesh as well as of the soul.

In ii. 9 Wisdom and Holy Spirit are found in close conjunction. The prophets being “spirit-bearers 56of holy Spirit” (πνευματοφόροι πνεύματος ἁγίου) were able to take in the Wisdom that is from Him (i. e. from God) and by this Wisdom spoke of creation and of other things, future as well as past. Wisdom is here connected with the Holy Spirit, yet not expressly identified with Him.

We go on (ii. 10) to what the prophets have told us about the creation. Out of what did not exist God made all things. For God has no coeval. Though in need of nought in His existence before the ages, yet He willed to make man, by whom He might be known. So He made the world in preparation for man. And this is how He did it: “God having His own Word existent within His own heart (ἐνδιάθετον), begat Him, together with His own Wisdom, uttering Him forth before all things.⁵⁰⁵⁰Ἔχων οὖν ὁ θεὸς τὸν ἑαυτοῦ λόγον ἐνδιάθετον ἐν τοῖς ἰδίαις σπλάγχνοις, ἐγέννησεν αὐτὸν μετὰ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ σοφίας ἐξερευξάμενος πρὸ τῶν ὅλων. The language is molded on Ps. xlv. 1: Ἐξερεύξατο ἡ καρδία μου λόγον ἀγαθόν. This Word He used as minister for the things brought into being by Him, and through Him He made all things. This (Word) is also called Rule (ἀρχή, ὅτι ἄρχει), because He rules and dominates all that has been created through Him. This (Word) therefore, being Spirit of God and Rule and Wisdom and Power of the Highest, came down upon the prophets and through them spoke of the world’s creation and all other things. For the prophets were not there when the world was made, but (only) the Wisdom of God which is in Him, and His holy Word who is ever present with Him. So Solomon says “When he prepared the heaven I was present with 57him,” and so on. “And long before Solomon Moses, or rather the Word of God through him as an instrument, says: In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” Then follows a mention of the Divine Wisdom “as foreknowing the foolish idolatries of men, and as saying In the beginning God made, that it might be understood that “in His Word God made the heaven and the earth.”

It may be that Theophilus thus passes from the Word of God to the Wisdom of God, and back again, and even calls the Word both Spirit of God and Wisdom, in order to maintain the ruling conception of the Unity of the Deity. He speaks of God as begetting His own Word together with His own Wisdom—and we remember that in an earlier place he spoke of Wisdom as the offspring (γέννημα) of God—but he has not used the word “Son,” though this he will have to do later. He writes so clearly when he chooses, that we are almost forced to conclude that he is withholding the fuller doctrine with intentional reserve from one who still persists in his heathen beliefs.

He now quotes (ii. ii) the whole of the first chapter of Genesis, and begins to comment on it, first noting “the exceeding greatness and riches of the Wisdom of God” displayed in it. Presently (ii. 13) he says that, unlike man, God can begin His building from the roof. Therefore “In the beginning God made the heaven, that is, through the Beginning (διὰ τῆς ἀρχῆς) the heaven was made, as we have explained.” He has already called the Word ἀρχή, though in the sense of Rule. The Spirit appears as the vivifying power 58in connection with the water. Then “the Command (ἡ διάταξις) of God, that is, His Word,” introduces light. Then the Word of God gathers the waters “into one assembly” (εἰς συναγωγήν), a phrase which presently allegorized.⁵¹⁵¹ii. 14: τὰς συναγωγάς, λεγομεν δὲ ἐκκλησίας ἁγίας.

When he comes to the fourth day, on which the luminaries were created, he offers some allegorical interpretations. Man, though not yet created, is in a way anticipated and prefigured. The sun, never waning, is a type of God in His eternal fullness: the moon with her changes is a type of man, his rebirth and resurrection. “In like manner also,” he proceeds, “the three days before the luminaries were made are types of the triad—God and His Word and His Wisdom;⁵²⁵²ii. 15: τύποι εἰσὶ τῆς τριάδος, τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ λόγου αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς σοφίας αὐτοῦ. and to the fourth type (what corresponds) is man, who needs the light: so that there may be God, Word, Wisdom, Man. This is why the luminaries were made on the fourth day.” And he goes on to interpret the stars, bright and less bright, as the prophets and other just men; and the planets as wanderers from God.

Here for a moment we seem to have got the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and the identification of Wisdom with the Spirit. And we have no earlier example of the use of the word Τρίας in this sense. But we are instantly warned off from such a view by his introduction of Man as a fourth member of the series. If he has come too near enunciating the Trinity, he certainly 59escapes, covering his tracks. Is it possible that these were “words to the wise”? At any rate he has said nothing that could raise in the mind of Autolycus any thought of plurality of Gods.

In ii. 18 he comes on to the creation of man. First the high dignity of man is indicated in the words, Let us make man after our image and likeness. “For when God had made all things by word, and counted them all as subsidiary (πάρεργα), the making of man He alone counted work of His own hands. Yea more, as though needing assistance, God is found saying, Let us make . . . But to none other did He say it, save to His own Word and His own Wisdom.”

Here again we almost seem to be listening to Irenæus. Is it possible that it is in view of the indistinctness of this very teaching that Irenæus so often reiterates that the Word and the Wisdom are the Son and the Spirit, and that these are the Hands of God? Theophilus has almost said it himself: but he has stopped short of saying it. And in a later chapter (ii. 22) he will return to the old vagueness, and tell us that it was “not the God and Father of all . . . but His Word, through whom He made all things, who, being His Power and His Wisdom, represented the Father of all,” and conversed in Paradise with Adam. And he adds that the Voice Adam heard is “the Word of God, who is also His Son (υἱός αὐτοῦ): not indeed as poets and mythologers speak of sons of the gods begotten by intercourse; but as truth declares concerning the Word who is ever existent within (ἐνδιάθετον) the heart of God. For before 60anything was made He had Him to His Counselor, as being His own mind and understanding. But when He willed to make what He had counseled, He begat this Word into outwardness (προφορικόν), as first-begotten of all creation: not being Himself emptied of the Word, but having begotten the Word, and for ever conversing with His Word.” He then quotes the first verses of St John’s Gospel; but he does not go on to “the Word made flesh.”

In all this we have much that reminds us of Irenæus, and there are yet closer parallels to be found in later chapters. We cannot but regret that we have none of those works of Theophilus which would have given us his more distinctively Christian teaching, such as Autolycus might have received had he been willing to become a catechumen. We have enough at any rate to make us feel that Irenæus was not on wholly new ground in this particular matter, even if he trod it much more firmly than his predecessor.

We now return to the Demonstration and read a passage in which Irenæus sums up a portion of his argument (c. 47). “So then the Father is Lord and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God and the Son is God: for that which is begotten of God is God.” This surprises us alike by its anticipation of a later formula, and by its silence in regard to the Holy Spirit. It is only at a later point after a quotation from Ps. xlv, that the Spirit is mentioned: “The Son, as being God, receives from the Father, that is, from God, the throne of the everlasting kingdom, and the oil of anointing 61above His fellows. The oil of anointing is the Spirit, wherewith He has been anointed.” This statement is also found in III, xix. 3: and in III, vi. 1 we read: “Since therefore the Father is truly Lord and the Son is truly Lord, the Holy Spirit duly indicated them by the title of Lord;” and, after certain texts have been quoted: “For the Holy Spirit indicated both by the title of Lord—Him who is anointed, even the Son, and Him who anoints, that is, the Father.”⁵³⁵³The earlier part of this chapter has been quoted above (p. 37). In insisting that no other save the Father and the Son is called God or Lord in the full sense, Irenæus is following Justin (Dial. 56). Justin has quoted Ps. xlv. 7, and asks: Εἰ οὖν καὶ ἄλλον τινὰ θεολογεῖν καὶ κυριολογεῖν τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιόν φατε ὑμεῖς παρὰ τὸν πατέρα τῶν ὅλων καὶ τὸν χριστὸν αὐτοῦ. Equally strong are the statements in Dial. 65 and 68.

The concern of Irenæus, as of Justin before him, is with the Father and the Son; and he writes always with the heresy of Marcion in the back of his mind. It would seem as though no question of the Deity of the Holy Spirit occurred to him. The Spirit was the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. It was necessary to insist that “that which is begotten of God is God:” the Godhead of the Son required proof. But to say that “the Spirit of God” is truly God would have been to him a tautology. The thought of the Spirit as God did not as yet involve any such distinction as could seem to conflict with the Unity of the Deity.

To do justice to the teaching of Irenæus so far as it regards the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son, it would be necessary to examine what he has to tell us of the Spirit’s work in the process of man’s restoration. An adequate 62consideration of this would correct the one-sided view which is all that we gain, from treating of the points on which his conceptions are farthest removed from those with which we ourselves are familiar. It has been necessary to consider these points with some fullness, because it is important to observe how much still remained unsettled, and how great a task still lay before the leaders of Christian thought before such definitions could be reached as should adequately guard the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is not possible however to do more within our present limits, and it is fortunate for us that the gap may be filled by a reference to the careful and sympathetic exposition of Dr. Swete in his valuable work on The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church (1912, pp. 89–94). “Irenæus,” he tells us, “enters into the details of the Holy Spirit’s work on the hearts and lives of men with a fullness which is far in advance of other Christian writers of the second century.” And he sums up by saying: “On the whole, the pneumatology of Irenæus is a great advance on all earlier Christian teaching outside the Canon.” With this apology for incompleteness we must pass on to the third and last point of our subject.

3. The Holy Spirit and the Incarnation of the Word. We have seen how Justin declared that it was not permissible to regard “the Spirit” and “the Power” that came upon the Virgin as any other than the Word of God Himself. And we also noted in passing that Theophilus of Antioch spoke of the Word as being “Spirit of God” and “Power of the Highest,” the second of which 63designations comes from Luke i. 35. We have now to ask whether the language of Irenæus corresponds with this interpretation and makes the Word Himself to be the agent of His own Incarnation.

We begin with a strange passage of the Demonstration (c. 71) in which he expounds Lam. iv. 20: The Spirit of our face, the Lord Christ, was taken in their snares; of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the Gentiles. He has used part of this text in III, xi. 2, a passage which must be cited here. Christ, he says, is Salus, Salvator, and Salutare in various Scriptures. “He is Salvator (Saviour), because He is Son and Word of God: Salutare (perhaps as saving-principle), because He is Spirit; for the Spirit of our face, it says, Christ the Lord: and He is Salus (Salvation), because He is flesh.” He has in his mind some “Gnostic” error which he is refuting; but we are only concerned with his use of the text to prove that Christ is Spirit. In the passage in the Demonstration he makes the same use of it. This Scripture, he says, declares “that Christ being (the) Spirit of God was to become a suffering man.” Then he adds: “And by shadow he means His body. For just as a shadow is made by a body, so also Christ’s body was made by His Spirit.” Here again we are not concerned with the general argument, but only with these two statements: Christ was Spirit of God, and Christ’s body was made. by His Spirit. This is as much as to say that the Word of God was the agent of His own Incarnation.

In c. 59 we read: “By flower [of the root of Jesse] he means His flesh (or “body”): for from spirit it budded forth, as we have said before.” The reference would appear to be to c. 51: “that the same God forms Him from the womb, that is, that of the Spirit of God He should be born.”

In V, i. 2, controverting Docetic views, he says “If He were not man and yet appeared to be man, then neither did He remain what He was in truth, (viz.) Spirit of God, since the Spirit is invisible; nor was any truth in Him, since He was not what He appeared to be.”

In c. 97, after quoting from Baruch iii. 38, Afterward did he appear upon earth, and was conversant with men, he says: “mingling and mixing the Spirit of God the Father with the plasma (‘formation’) of God, that man might be after the image and likeness of God.” There is a close parallel in IV, xxxiv 4, a continuation of the great passage cited at length above: “His advent according to flesh, whereby a mingling and communion of God and man was made, according to the good-pleasure of the Father: the Word of God having foretold from the beginning that God should be seen of men and should be conversant with them on the earth . . . that man being intermingled⁵⁴⁵⁴Latin: complexus homo Spiritum Dei. Arm.: “intertwined and mingled with.” Perhaps the Greek was συμπλεκόμενος. with the Spirit of God should be brought to the glory of the Father.”

The general thought here is that the restoration of man takes place after the pattern of the Incarnation—the intermingling of human flesh with 65the Spirit of God. If the Spirit of God in the Incarnation is thought of primarily as Christ Himself, yet there is no sharp distinction drawn between Christ as Spirit and the Spirit that works in believers. The indistinctness is not greater than in St Paul: “if the Spirit of God be in you . . . but if any man have not the Spirit of Christ . . . but if Christ be in you . . . if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you”—all in consecutive verses in Rom. viii. 9 ff.

We have left to the last a phrase, which taken alone might have suggested a later view. If we are not to misinterpret Irenæus, we must bear in mind that the clause “Conceived of the Holy Ghost” does not appear in any credal confession before the Council of Ariminum in 359, and it was not until some years later that it found final acceptance. It belongs to a period of definition long subsequent to the age of Irenæus.

The words in question are these (c. 40): “He from whom all things are, He who spake with Moses, came into Judea; generated from God by (the) Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary.” I have been compelled to use the word “generated,” at the risk of misunderstanding: but the Armenian word means simply “sown.” And we shall do well at once to compare III, xvii. 6: “The Word, … united and sown together with that which He Himself had formed (or, as the Latin has it, unitus et consparsus suo plasmati) according to the good pleasure of the Father, and made flesh.” It is the Word that the Father “sows” by His Spirit. And to show the wide scope of the metaphor, we may 66compare IV, xx. 1: “The Son of God is sown everywhere in the Scriptures; at one time speaking with Abraham and eating with him,” and so forth. And, again, in IV, xlviii. 2 we have: “the seed of the Father of all, that is, the Spirit of God, through whom all things were made, mingled and united with flesh, that is, His plasma (‘formation’).” This is said of the Holy Spirit in His work amongst men.

The whole topic is further illustrated by V, i. 3:

“The Ebionites . . . not willing to understand that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and the power of the Highest overshadowed her; wherefore also that which was born was holy, and Son of the Most High God, the Father of all, who wrought His incarnation, and manifested a new birth; that, as by the former birth we inherited death, so by this birth we should inherit life.” Presently he adds: “and not considering that, just as at the beginning of our formation (plasmatio) in Adam that breath of life which was from God, being united toy the thing formed (plasmata), animated man and manifested a rational animal, so at the end the Word of the Father and the Spirit of God, being united (adunitus, singular) to the original substance of the formation (plasmatio) of Adam, made man living and perfect, capable of receiving the perfect Father; that, as in the animal we all died, so in the spiritual we should all be made alive.”⁵⁵⁵⁵The words which follow have been quoted above: “For never at any time hath Adam escaped the Hands of God,” etc.

It results from this examination that the teaching 67of Irenæus as to the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Incarnation is vague, perhaps even transitional. He does not, like Justin, plainly assert that the Spirit of God who came down upon the Virgin was the Word of God Himself; nor, on the other hand, does he definitely preclude that view. He seems to prefer to think of a cooperation of the Word of God and the Wisdom of God—the Two Hands of God to whom the creation of the first formed man was due.

We may conclude by quoting a striking passage from the Demonstration,⁵⁶⁵⁶Dem. cc. 31 f. the earlier part of which will recall the noble lines of Newman’s hymn:

O wisest love! that flesh and blood,

Which did in Adam fail,

Should strive afresh against the foe,

Should strive and should prevail.

And that a higher gift than grace

Should flesh and blood refine,

God’s presence and his very Self,

And Essence all-divine.

“So the Word was made flesh, that, through that very flesh which sin had ruled and dominated, it should lose its force and be no longer in us. And therefore our Lord took that same original formation as (His) entry into flesh, so that He might draw near and contend on behalf of the fathers, and conquer by Adam that which by Adam had stricken us down. Whence then is the substance of the first-formed (man)? From the Will and the Wisdom of God, and from the virgin earth. For God had not sent rain, the 68Scripture says, upon the earth, before man was made; and there was no man to till the earth. From this, then, whilst it was still virgin, God took dust of the earth and formed the man, the beginning of mankind. So then the Lord, summing up afresh this man, took the same dispensation of entry into flesh, being born from the Virgin by the Will and the Wisdom of God; that He also should show forth the likeness of Adam’s entry into flesh, and there should be that which was written in the beginning, man after the image and likeness of God.”

THE DEMONSTRATION OF THE

APOSTOLIC PREACHING

1. Knowing, my beloved Marcianus, your desire to walk in godliness, which alone leads man to life eternal, I rejoice with you and make my prayer that you may preserve your faith entire and so be pleasing to God who made you. Would that it were possible for us to be always together, to help each other and to lighten the labor of our earthly life by continual discourse together on the things that profit.⁵⁷⁵⁷This opening section is in the manner of the introductions to each of the five books Against Heresies: in the first of these, of which the Greek is preserved, we have parallels to language used here: καθὼς δύναμις ἡμῖν, and ἐπὶ πολὺ καρποφορήσεις τὰ δἰ ὀλίγων ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν εἰρημένα. But, since at this present time we are parted from one another in the body, yet according to our power we will not fail to speak with you a little by writing, and to show forth in brief the preaching of the truth for the confirmation of your faith.⁵⁸⁵⁸“To shew forth the preaching.” This corresponds to the wording of the title: the ἐπίδειξις, ostensio, or “demonstration” of the Apostolic Preaching. We send you as it were a manual of essentials,⁵⁹⁵⁹Lit. “a more essential remembrancer.” that by little you may attain to much, learning in short space all the members of the body of the truth,⁶⁰⁶⁰ Cf. I, i. 20: ἕν ἕκαστον δὲ τῶν εὶρημένων τῇ ἰδίᾳ _αξει, καὶ προσαρμόσας τῷ τῆς ἀληθείας σωματίῳ. and receiving in brief the 70demonstration of the things of God. So shall it be fruitful to your own salvation, and you shall put to shame all who inculcate falsehood, and bring with all confidence our sound and pure teaching to everyone who desires to understand it. For one is the way leading upwards for all who see, lightened with heavenly light: but many and dark and contrary are the ways of them that see not. This way leads to the kingdom of heaven, uniting man to God: but those ways bring down to death, separating man from God. Wherefore it is needful for you and for all who care for their own salvation to make your course unswerving, firm and sure by means of faith, that you falter not, nor be retarded and detained in material desires, nor turn aside and wander from the right.

Now, since man is a living being compounded of soul and flesh,⁶¹⁶¹Cf. IV. pref. 3: “Homo est autem temperatio animæ et carnis:” V, vi. 1, viii. 1, ix. 1. he must needs exist by both of these: and, whereas from both of them offences come, purity of the flesh is the restraining abstinence from all shameful things and all unrighteous deeds, and purity of the soul is the keeping faith towards God entire, neither adding thereto nor diminishing therefrom. For godliness is obscured and dulled by the soiling and the staining of the flesh, and is broken and polluted and no more entire, if falsehood enter into the soul: but it will keep itself in its beauty and its measure, when truth is constant in the soul⁶²⁶²Or, “spirit.” The Armenian word for “spirit” (πνεῦμα is sometimes used also for “soul” (ψυχή): the context shows that it is so used here. and purity in the flesh. For what 71profit is it to know the truth in words, and to pollute the flesh and perform the works of evil? Or what profit can purity of the flesh bring, if truth be not in the soul? For these rejoice with one another, and are united and allied to bring man face to face with God. Wherefore the Holy Spirit says by David: Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly: that is, the counsel of the nations which know not God: for those are ungodly who worship not the God that truly is. And therefore the Word says to Moses: I am He that is;⁶³⁶³Lit., “I am the Existing One,” as in LXX Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὥν. In III, vi. 2 the words are quoted as spoken by the Father but they that worship not the God that is, these are the ungodly. And hath not stood in the way of sinners: but sinners are those who have the knowledge of God and keep not His commandments; that is, disdainful scorners. And hath not sat in the seat of the pestilential:⁶⁴⁶⁴Here, as usual, the LXX is followed (λοιμῶν). now the pestilential are those who by wicked and perverse doctrines corrupt not themselves only, but others also. For the seat is a symbol of teaching. Such then are all heretics: they sit in the seats of the pestilential, and those are corrupted who receive the venom of their doctrine.

3. Now, that we may not suffer ought of this kind, we must needs hold the rule of the faith without deviation,⁶⁵⁶⁵Cf. I, i. 20: ὁ τὸν κανόνα τῆς ἀληθείας ἀκλινῆ ἐν ἑαυτῷ κατέχωη, ὃν διὰ τοῦ βαπτίσματος εἴληφε. The Arm. has taken over the Greek word κανών. and do the commandments of God, believing in God and fearing Him as Lord and loving Him as Father. Now this doing is produced 72by faith: for Isaiah says: If ye believe not, neither shall ye understand. And faith is produced by the truth; for faith rests on things that truly are. For in things that are, as they are, we believe; and believing in things that are, as they ever are, we keep firm our confidence in them. Since then faith is the perpetuation of our salvation, we must needs bestow much pains on the maintenance thereof, in order that we may have a true comprehension of the things that are. Now faith occasions this for us; even as the Elders, the disciples of the Apostles,⁶⁶⁶⁶Cf. V, xxxvi. i: “presbyteri apostolorum discipuli.” have handed down to us. First of all it bids us bear in mind that we have received baptism for the remission of sins, in the name of God the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was incarnate and died and rose again, and in the Holy Spirit of God. And that this baptism is the seal of eternal life, and is the new birth unto God, that we should no longer be the sons of mortal men, but of the eternal and perpetual God; and that what is everlasting and continuing is made God;⁶⁷⁶⁷This passage is obscure, and I cannot feel any confidence in my rendering of it. The Armenian translator has probably misunderstood the construction of the Greek: his verbs are all in the infinitive, which suggests that Irenæus is recording what the faith teaches. The words “made God” represent θεοποιεῖσθαι. This word, if not traceable elsewhere in Irenæus, is found in other early writers: e.g. Hippolytus, Philos. x. 34: γέγονας γὰρ θεός . . . ἐθεοποιήθης ἀθάνατος γεννηθείς· οὐ γὰρ πτωχεύει θεὸς καὶ σὲ θεὸν ποιήσας εἰς δόξαν αὺτοῦ. It is frequent in Athanasius; e. g., De Incarn. 54: αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν. In Irenæus the thought finds expression in various forms: see IV, lxiii. 3: “quoniam non ab initio dii facti sumus, sed primo quidem homines, tunc demum dii:” also III, vi. 1. and is over all things that are made, and all things are put under Him; 73and all the things that are put under Him are made His own; for God is not ruler and Lord over the things of another, but over His own;⁶⁸⁶⁸This is a reminiscence of controversy with the heretics who denied that the Good God of the New Testament was the Creator God of the Old Testament: see IV, xxxiv. 2: “non enim aliena sed sua tradidit ei” (of the Father committing all things to the Son); V, ii. 1: “vani autem qui in aliena dicunt Dominum venisse, velut aliena concupiscentem” (where the Arm. enables us to correct the Latin, which has “Deum”). and all things are God’s; and therefore God is Almighty, and all things are of God.

For it is necessary that, things that are made should have the beginning of their making from some great cause; and the beginning of all things is God. For He Himself was not made by any, and by Him all things were made. And therefore it is right first of all to believe that there is One God, the Father, who made and fashioned all things, and made what was not that it should be, and who, containing all things, alone is uncontained.⁶⁹⁶⁹In IV, xxxiv. 2 he quotes, as “Scripture,” the Shepherd of Hermas, Mand.: Πρῶτον πάντων πίστευσον ὅτι εἷς ἐστὶν ὁ θεός, ὁ τὰ πάντα κτίσας καὶ καταρτίσας, καὶ ποιήσας ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος εἰς τὸ εἶναι τὰ πάντα, καὶ πάντα χωρῶν, μόνος δὲ ἀχώρητος ὤν. Cf. also I, xv. 1. Now among all things is this world of ours,⁷⁰⁷⁰IV, xxxiv. 1: “in omnibus autem et nos, et hunc mundum qui est secundum nos:” I, xv. 1: “etenim mundus ex omnibus:” III, xi. 7: “in omnibus ergo est et hæc quæ secundum nos est conditio.” and in the world is man: so then this world also was formed by God.

5. Thus then there is shown forth⁷¹⁷¹Or “shown to be”: cf. V, xviii. 1: “Et sic unus Deus Pater ostenditur (= δείκνυται).” One God, the Father, not made, invisible, creator of all things; above whom there is no other God, and after whom there is no other God. And, since God is rational, 74therefore by (the) Word He created the things that were made;⁷²⁷²God is λογικός, therefore by λόγος He created the world. The play on the words is given by the Armenian, but cannot be given by the English translation. and God is Spirit, and by (the) Spirit He adorned all things: as also the prophet says: By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and by his spirit all their power. Since then the Word establishes, that is to say, gives body⁷³⁷³“Gives body:” apparently representing σωματοποιεῖ: cf. I. i. 9, of the Demiurge of Valentinus: ἐξ ἀσωμάτων σωμαποποιἠσαντα. and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order and form to the diversity of the powers; rightly and fittingly is the Word called the Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God.⁷⁴⁷⁴III, xxxviii. 2: “Verbo suo confirmans et Sapientia compingens omnia;” IV, xxxii. 2: “qui omnia Verbo fecit et Sapientia adornavit;” 4: “qui Verbo et Sapientia fecit et adaptavit omnia.” On this whole section, see Introd. pp. 44 ff. Well also does Paul His apostle say: One God, the Father, who is over all and through all and in its all. For over all is the Father; and through all is the Son, for through Him all things were made by the Father; and in us all is the Spirit, who cries Abba Father, and fashions man into the likeness of God.⁷⁵⁷⁵V, xviii. i: “Super omnia quidem Pater, et ipse est caput Christi; per omnia autem Verbum, et ipse est caput ecclesiæ; in omnibus autem nobis Spiritus, et ipse est aqua viva quam præstat Dominus,” etc. Cf. Hippol. c. Noet. 14: ὁ ὢν πατὴρ ἐπὶ πάντων, ὁ δὲ υἱὸς διὰ πάντων, τὸ δὲ ἅγιον πνεῦμα ἐν πᾶσιν. Now the Spirit shows forth the Word, and therefore the prophets announced the Son of God; and the Word utters the Spirit, and therefore is Himself the announcer of the prophets, and leads and draws man to the Father.

This then is the order of the rule of our faith, and the foundation of the building, and the 75stability of our conversation: God, the Father, not made, not material, invisible; one God, the creator of all things: this is the first point⁷⁶⁷⁶Lit. “head:” cf. cc. 7, 100. of our faith. The second point is: The Word of God, Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord, who was manifested to the prophets according to the form of their prophesying and according to the method of the dispensation of the Father:⁷⁷⁷⁷This is fully worked out in IV, lv. 1–6: the prophets were “members of Christ,” and so each, according to the “member” that he was, declared his portion of prophecy, all together announcing the whole. through whom all things were made; who also at the end of the times, to complete and gather up⁷⁸⁷⁸The same double rendering of ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι (Eph. i. 10) is found in the Arm. version of V, i. 2. all things, was made man among men, visible and tangible,⁷⁹⁷⁹IV, xi. 4: “visibilem et palpabilem;” cf. IV, xiii. 1, where the Arm. shows that the Latin “passibilis” should be corrected to “palpabilis.” in order to abolish death and show forth life and produce a community of union⁸⁰⁸⁰This double rendering occurs in the Arm. of IV, xxxiv. 4 and V, i. 1, where the Latin has simply “communio.” With the whole of this passage compare IV, xxxiv. 4: “qui novissimis temporibus homo in hominibus factus est, ut finem conjungeret principio, id est, hominem Deo.” between God and man. And the third point is: The Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets prophesied, and the fathers learned the things of God, and the righteous were led forth into the way of righteousness; and who in the end of the times was poured out in a new way⁸¹⁸¹We have the same words in IV, lv. 6: “in novissimis temporibus nove effusus est in nos.” a upon mankind in all the earth, renewing man unto God.

And for this reason the baptism of our 76regeneration proceeds through these three points: God the Father bestowing on us regeneration through His Son by the Holy Spirit. For as many as carry (in them) the Spirit of God⁸²⁸²IV, xxv. 2: “assuescens hominem portare ejus Spiritum;” xxxiv. 6: “qui portant Spiritum ejus.” are led to the Word, that is to the Son; and the Son brings them to the Father; and the Father causes them to possess incorruption.⁸³⁸³IV, xxxiv. 5: “Spiritu quidem præparante hominem in Filium Dei, Filio autem adducente ad Patrem, Patre autem incorruptelam donante;” V, xxxvi. 2: “per Spiritu quidem ad Filium, per Filium autem ascendere ad Patrem.” Without the Spirit it is not possible to behold the Word of God, nor without the Son can any draw near to the Father for the knowledge of the Father is the Son,⁸⁴⁸⁴IV, xi. 5: “Agnitio enim Patris Filius.” and the knowledge of the Son of God is through the Holy Spirit; and, according to the good pleasure of the Father, the Son ministers and dispenses⁸⁵⁸⁵Lit. “ministerially dispenses.” Cf. V, xviii. i: “Verbum . . . præstat Spiritum omnibus quemadmodum vult Pater” the Spirit to whomsoever the Father wills and as He wills.

8. And by the Spirit the Father is called Most High and Almighty and Lord of hosts; that we may learn concerning God that He it is who is creator of heaven and earth and all the world, and maker of angels and men, and Lord of all, through whom all things exist and by whom all things are sustained; merciful, compassionate and very tender, good, just, the God of all, both of Jews and of Gentiles, and of them that believe. To them that believe He is as Father, for in the end of the times He opened up the covenant⁸⁶⁸⁶Cf. c. 91; and III, xi. 5: “testamentum hominibus aperiens;” V, ix. 4: “testamentum evangelii apertum et universo mundo lectum;” xxxiii. i: “apertionem hæreditatis;” cf. III, xviii. 1. of adoption; 77to the Jews as Lord and Lawgiver, for in the intermediate times, when man forgot God and departed and revolted fromh Him, He brought them into subjection by the Law, that they might learn that they had for Lord the maker and creator, who also gives the breath of life, and whom we ought to worship day and night: and to the Gentiles as maker and creator and almighty: and to all alike sustainer and nourisher and king and judge; for none shall escape and be delivered from His judgment, neither Jew nor Gentile, nor believer that has sinned, nor angel: but they who now reject His goodness shall know His power in judgment, according to that which the blessed apostle says: Not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance; but according to thy hardness and penitent heart thou treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who shall render to every man according to his works. This is He who is called in the Law the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of the living; although the sublimity and greatness of this God is unspeakable.

9. Now this world is encompassed by seven heavens,⁸⁷⁸⁷   An account of the late Jewish teaching as to the Seven Heavens is given in Mr. H. St John Thackeray’s valuable book St Paul and Contemporary Jewish Thought, pp. 172–179, where three parallel tables of their descriptions will be found. References to them in Christian apocryphal literature are collected in Dr Charles’s Book of the Secrets of Enoch (from the Sclavonic), pp. xliv-xlvii. Hippolytus in his Commentary on Daniel (ed. Achelis, p. 96), referring to εὐλογεῖτε οὐρανοί in the Benedicite, says: τοὺς ἑπτὰ οὐρανοὺς . . . προσκαλούμενοι. Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iv. 25) says: εἵτε ἑπτὰ οὐρανοί, οὕς τινες ἀριθμοῦσιν κατ᾽ ἐπανάβασιν. Origen (c. Cels. vi. 21) likewise mentions the Seven Heavens, but without committing himself to the exact number.
   Irenæus in I, i. 9 refers to the Valentinian teaching which identified the Seven Heavens with angels of varying degrees of power. In our passage he strangely connects the Seven Heavens with the Seven Gifts of the Spirit. We observe two peculiarities in his description. First, that, numbering from above downwards, he reckons the highest as the First Heaven: secondly, that his Seventh, or lowest, is the firmament. Evil is wholly excluded from these heavens: so it is in the Ascension of Isaiah (for which see Introd. p. 41), where however it is found in the firmament, which is not reckoned as one of the heavens.
   The belief in the Seven Heavens soon came to be discredited; and it is curious to find a survival of it, due apparently to Irish influences, in the invocation of the septens cælos in a book of prayers of the seventh or eighth century (Brit. Mus. Reg. 2. A. xx, f. 47 v.). in which dwell powers and angels and 78and angels and archangels, doing service to God, the Almighty and Maker of all things: not as though He was in need, but that they may not be idle and unprofitable and ineffectual.⁸⁸⁸⁸Compare the reason given by Justin Martyr (Dial. 22) for the worship to the Temple: οὐχ ὡς ἐνδεὴς ὤν . . . ἀλλ᾽ ὅπως κἂν κατὰ τοῦτο πρυσέχοντες αὐτῷ μὴ εἰδωλολατρῆτε.. Wherefore also the Spirit of God is manifold in (His) indwelling,⁸⁹⁸⁹Perhaps the text should be emended so as to give “operation” (ἐνέργεια). and in seven forms of service⁹⁰⁹⁰Or “ministrations” (= διακονιῶν in Arm. version of 1 Cor. xii. 5). is He reckoned by the prophet Isaiah, as resting on the Son of God, that is the Word, in His coming as man. The Spirit of God, he says, shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, (the Spirit of knowledge)⁹¹⁹¹Omitted by oversight: cf. c. 59, and III, x. 1, xviii. 2, where the words are correctly given. and of godliness; the Spirit of the fear of God shall fill him. Now the heaven which is first from above,⁹²⁹²The heavens are enumerated from above, in order to correspond with the prophet’s words and put Wisdom first and Fear of God last. and encompasses the rest, is (that of) wisdom; 79and the second from it, of understanding; and the third, of counsel; and the fourth, reckoned from above, (is that) of might; and the fifth, of knowledge; and the sixth, of godliness; and the seventh, this firmament of ours, is full of the fear of that Spirit which gives light to the heavens. For, as the pattern (of this), Moses received the seven-branched candlestick,⁹³⁹³V, xx. 2: “ecclesia . . . ἑπτάμυχος lucerna.” that shined continually in the holy place; for as a pattern of the heavens he received this service, according to that which the Word spake unto him: Thou shalt make (it) according to all the pattern of the things which thou hast seen in the mount.⁹⁴⁹⁴IV, xxv. 3: “Quoniam facies omnia juxta typum eorum quæ vidisti in monte:” LXX, τὸν δεδειγμένον σοι: the variation may be due to a reminiscence of Acts vii. 44 ὃν ἐωράκει.

10. Now this God is glorified by His Word⁹⁵⁹⁵On the glorification of the Father by the Son and the Holy Spirit, see Introd. p. 39. who is His Son continually,⁹⁶⁹⁶The meaning is uncertain: the word means “daily, continual, perpetual”; but it is also used as an adverb. The German translations take it in the sense of “eternal” (sein ewiger Sohn). It renders διὰ παντὸς in Lev. xxiv. 2; and that may have been the original Greek in this passage. But even so it is not clear whether it is to be taken with “who is His Son,” or with “is glorified”—For the Eternal Sonship we may compare III, xix. 1: “existens semper apud Patrem;” and IV, xxxiv. 3: “semper cum Patre erat.” and by the Holy Spirit who is the Wisdom of the Father of all: and the power(s) of these, (namely) of the Word and Wisdom, which are called Cherubim and Seraphim,⁹⁷⁹⁷Origen in his Commentary on Romans (III, § 8) interprets the two Cherubim over the mercy-seat as the Son and the Holy Spirit. In De Principiis (I, iii. 4, IV, iii. 26) he gives the same interpretation of the two Seraphim of Isa. vi. 3, saying that he received it from his Hebrew teacher: he adds that the same applies to the two living creatures of Hab. iii. 2 (LXX). Philo (Vit. Mos. iii. 8) had interpreted the two Cherabim as τὰς πρεσβυτάτας καὶ ἀνωτάτω δύο τοῦ ὄντος δυνάμεις, τὴν τε ποιητικὴν καὶ βασιλικήν: the former ὀνομάζεαι θεός, the latter κύριος. This probably paved the way for Orign’s interpretation. with unceasing voices glorify God; and 80 every created thing that is in the heavens offers glory to God the Father of all. He by His Word has created the whole world, and in the world are the angels; and to all the world He has given laws wherein each several thing should abide, and according to that which is determined by God should not pass their bounds, each fulfilling his appointed task.

11. But man He formed with His own hands,⁹⁸⁹⁸Elsewhere Irenæus constantly speaks of the Son and the Spirit as the Hands of God: see Introd. p. 51. taking from the earth that which was purest and finest, and mingling in measure His own power with the earth. For He traced His own form on the formation,⁹⁹⁹⁹Equivalent to plasma or plasmatio. that that which should be seen should be of divine form: for (as) the image of God was man formed and set on the earth. And that he might become living, He breathed on his face the breath of life; that both for the breath and for the formation man should be like unto God. Moreover he was free and self-controlled, being made by God for this end, that he might rule all those things that were upon the earth. And this great created world, prepared by God before the formation of man, was given to man as his place, containing all things within itself.¹⁰⁰¹⁰⁰So both the German tanslations; but they transfer the words so as to link them with “this great created world.” What we seem to want is, “to have all as his own,” if the words can bear that meaning. And there were in this place also with (their) tasks the 81servants of that God who formed all things; and the steward, who was set over all his fellow servants received this place. Now the servants were angels, and the steward was the archangel.¹⁰¹¹⁰¹For this function of angels cf. Papias, as quoted by Andreas in Apocal. c. 34, serm. 12: Ἐνίοις δὲ αὐτῶν (δηλαδὴ τῶν πάλαι θείων ἀγγέλων) καὶ τῆς περὶ τὴν γῆν διακοσμήσεως ἔδωκεν ἄρχειν, καὶ καλῶς ἄρχειν παρηγγύησε.

Now, having made man lord of the earth and all things in it, He secretly appointed him lord also of those who were servants in it. They however were in their perfection; but the lord, that is, man, was (but) small; for he was a child;¹⁰²¹⁰²IV. lxii. 1: νήπιος γὰρ ἦν. and it was necessary that he should grow, and so come to (his) perfection. And, that he might have his nourishment and growth with festive and dainty meats, He prepared him a place better than this world,¹⁰³¹⁰³   That Paradise was in a region outside this world is not quite distinctly stated here, but the opening words of c. 17 seem to support this view. The view of Irenæus, however, is clearly given in V, v. 1: Παῦ οὖν ἐτέθη ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος; ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ δηλονότι, καθὼς γέγραπται (Gen. ii. 8) . . . καὶ ἐκεῖθεν ἐξεβλήθη εἰς τάνδε τὸν κόσμον παρακούσας. He goes on to speak of this as the Paradise into which St Paul was caught up (2 Cor. xii. 4). Moreover he identifies it with the resting-place of just men, such as Enoch and Elijah. So in the Apocalypse of Peter the just are dwelling in a μεγιστον χῶρον ἐκτὸς τούτου τοῦ κόσμου. Irenæus is silent as to whether Paradise is in the third heaven. But the Slavonic Secrets of Enoch, referred to above, places it there. In the shorter and apparently more original recension we read as follows (c. 8): “And the men removed me from that place, and brought me to the third heaven, and placed me in the midst of a garden; a place such as was never seen for the goodliness of its appearance. And every tree is beautiful, and every fruit ripe; all kinds of agreeable food springing up with every kind of fragrance. And (there are) four rivers flowing with a sift course; and every kind of thing good, that grows for food,” etc. The Valentinians, according to Irenæus (I, i. 9), placed Paradise ὑπὲρ τρίτον οὐρανόν.
   Comp. the Anaphora in the Liturgy of St Basil (Swainson, p. 80): ἐξώρισας αὐτόν ἐν τῇ δικαιοκρισίᾳ σοῦ, ὁ θεός, ἐκ τοῦ παραδείσου εἰς τόνδε τὸν κόσμον.. excelling in air, beauty, light, food, plants, 82fruit, water, and all other necessaries of life, and its name is Paradise. And so fair and good was this Paradise, that the Word of God continually resorted thither, and walked and talked with the man, figuring beforehand the things that should be in the future, (namely) that He should dwell with him and talk with him, and should be with men, teaching them righteousness. But man was a child, not yet having his understanding perfected; wherefore also he was easily led astray by the deceiver.

13. And, whilst man dwelt in Paradise, God brought before him all living things and commanded him to give names to them all; and whatsoever Adam called a living soul, that was its name. And He determined also to make a helper for the man: for thus God said, It is not good for the man to be alone: let us make for him a helper meet for him.¹⁰⁴¹⁰⁴As LXX, κατ᾽ αὐτόν. For among all the other living things there was not found a helper equal and comparable and like to Adam. But God Himself cast a trance upon Adam and made him sleep; and, that work might be accomplished from work, since there was no sleep in Paradise, this was brought upon Adam by the will of God; and God took one of Adam’s ribs and filled up the flesh in its place, and the rib which He took He builded into a woman;¹⁰⁵¹⁰⁵As LXX, ᾠκοδόμησεν . . . εἰς γυναῖκα. and so He brought her to Adam; and he seeing (her) said: This is now bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken from her husband.

14. And Adam and Eve—for that is the name of the woman— were naked, and were not ashamed;¹⁰⁶¹⁰⁶Cf. III, xxxii. 1. for there was in them an innocent and childlike mind, and it was not possible for them to conceive and understand anything of that which by wickedness through lusts and shameful desires is born in the soul. For they were at that time entire, preserving their own nature; since they had the breath of life which was breathed on their creation: and, while this breath remains in its place and power, it has no comprehension and understanding of things that are base. And therefore they were not ashamed, kissing and embracing each other in purity after the manner of children.

15. But, lest man should conceive thoughts too high, and be exalted and uplifted, as though he had no lord, because of the authority and freedom granted to him, and so should transgress against his maker God, overpassing his measure, and entertain selfish imaginings of pride in opposition to God; a law was given to him by God, in order that he might perceive that he had as lord the Lord of all. And He set him certain limitations, so that, if he should keep the commandment of God, he should ever remain such as he was, that is to say, immortal; but, if he should not keep it, he should become mortal and be dissolved to earth from whence his formation had been taken. Now the commandment was this: Of every tree that is in the Paradise thou shalt freely eat; but of that tree alone from which is the knowledge of good 84and evil, of it thou shalt not eat; for in the day thou eatest, thou shalt surely die.

16. This commandment the man kept not, but was disobedient to God, being led astray by the angel who, for the great gifts of God which He had given to man, was envious and jealous of him,¹⁰⁷¹⁰⁷IV, lxvi. 2; ἔκτοτε γὰρ ἀποστάτης ὁ ἀγγελος οὗτος καὶ ἐχθρός. ἀφ᾽ ὅτε ἐζήλωσε τὸ πλάσμα τοῦ θεοῦ: V, xxiv. 4: “Invidens homini, apostata a divina factus est lege: invidia enim aliena est a Deo.” Cf. Wisd. ii. 24: φθόνῳ δὲ διαβόλου θάνατος εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον. and both brought himself to nought and made man sinful, persuading him to disobey the commandment of God. So the angel, becoming by his falsehood the author and originator of sin, himself was struck down, having offended against God, and man he caused to be cast out from Paradise. And, because through the guidance of his disposition he apostatized and departed from God, he was called Satan, according to the Hebrew word; that is, Apostate:¹⁰⁸¹⁰⁸V, xxi. 2: “Satana enim verbum Hebraicum apostatam significat.” Cf. Just. Mart. Dial. 103. a but he is also called Slanderer. Now God cursed the serpent which carried and conveyed the Slanderer; and this malediction came on the beast himself and on the angel hidden and concealed in him, even on Satan; and man He put away from His presence, removing him and making him to dwell on the way to Paradise¹⁰⁹¹⁰⁹Cf. Gen. iii. 24: κατῴκισεν αὐτὸν ἀπέναντι τοῦ παραδείσου τῆς τρυφῆς. Perhaps “the way” comes from “the way of the tree of life” in the same verse. at that time; because Paradise receiveth not the sinful.

17. And when they were put out of Paradise, Adam and his wife. Eve fell into many troubles of anxious grief, going about with sorrow and toil 85and lamentation in this world. For under the beams of this sun man tilled the earth, and it put forth thorns and thistles, the punishment of sin. Then was fulfilled that which was written: Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain; and after him she bare Abel. Now the apostate angel, who led man into disobedience and made him sinful and caused his expulsion from Paradise, not content with the first evil, wrought a second on the brothers; for filling Cain with his spirit he made him a fratricide. And so Abel died, slain by his brother; signifying thenceforth that certain should be persecuted and oppressed and slain, the unrighteous slaying and persecuting the righteous. And upon this God was angered yet more, and cursed Cain; and it came to pass that everyone of that race in successive generations was made like to the begetter. And God raised up another son to Adam, instead of Abel who was slain.

18. And for a very long while wickedness extended and spread, and reached and laid hold upon the whole race of mankind, until a very small seed of righteousness remained among them and illicit unions took place upon the earth, since angels were united with the daughters of the race of mankind; and they bore to them sons who for their exceeding greatness were called giants. And the angels brought as presents to their wives teachings of wickedness,¹¹⁰¹¹⁰This is from the Book of Enoch, to which Irenæus also refers in IV, xxvii. 2. Enoch vii. 1: καὶ ἐδίδαξαν αὐτὰς φαρμακείας καὶ ἐπαοιδὰς καὶ ῥιζοτυμίας, καὶ τὰς βυτάνας ἐδήλωσαν αὐταῖς: viii. 1: ψέλια καὶ κόσμους καὶ στίβεις καὶ τὸ καλλιβλέφαρον καὶ παντοίους λίθους ἐκλεκτοὺς καὶ τὰ βαφικά. Tertullian makes use of the same passage: De cultu fem. i. 2, ii. 10 (ut Enoch refert). in that they brought 86them the virtues of roots and herbs, dyeing in colors and cosmetics, the discovery of rare substances, love-potions, aversions, amours, concupiscence, constraints of love, spells of bewitchment, and all sorcery and idolatry hateful to God; by the entry of which things into the world evil extended and spread, while righteousness was diminished and enfeebled.

19. Until judgment came upon the world from God by means of a flood, in the tenth generation from the first-formed (man); Noah alone being found righteous. And he for his righteousness was himself delivered, and his wife and his three sons, and the three wives of his sons, being shut up in the ark. And when destruction came upon all, both man and also animals, that were upon the earth, that which was preserved in the ark escaped. Now the three sons of Noah were Shem, Ham and Japheth, from whom again the race was multiplied: for these were the beginning of mankind after the flood.

20. Now of these one fell under a curse, and the two (others) inherited a blessing by reason of their works. For the younger of them,¹¹¹¹¹¹The Armenian corresponds to the Greek ὁ νεώτερος (Gen. ix. 24). As there were three sons of Noah, the comparative causes difficulty. Origen took it as a superlative: for in later Greek (as in French) the comparative with the article is used as a superlative. He went on to argue that as Ham was not the youngest son of Noah, the word “son” was used for grandson, and that “Noah knew what his grandson (Canaan) had done to him”: hence the curse falls on Canaan. This accorded with a tradition given him by his Hebrew teacher (Comm. in Gen. ix. 18; Lomm. viii, p. 65). The trouble arose from the fact that “the curse of Ham” was not pronounced on Ham, but on his son Canaan. Justin Martyr (Dial. 139) says that Noah cursed his son’s son; “for the prophetic Spirit would not curse his son, who had been blessed together with the other sons by God.” who was called Ham, having mocked his father, and having been 87condemned of the sin of impiety because of his outrage and unrighteousness against his father, received a curse; and all the posterity that came of him he involved in the curse; whence it came about that his whole race after him were accursed, and in sins they increased and multiplied. But Shem and Japheth, his brothers, because of their piety towards their father obtained a blessing. Now the curse of Ham, wherewith his father Noah cursed him, is this: Cursed be Ham the child;¹¹²¹¹²Irenæus makes no difficulty about speaking of “the curse of Ham.” It is clear that he had a text of the LXX, which enabled him to do so. The Hebrew of Gen. ix. 25 gives us: “Cursed be Canaan: a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” The LXX has: Ἐπικατάρατος Χανάαν · παῖς οἰκέτης ἔσται τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς αὐτοῦ. But some MSS (E and some cursives) read Χάμ for Χανάαν. When παῖς was taken with the preceding word, Χὰμ παῖς was no doubt intended to mean “the child of Ham,” i.e. Canaan: it might however be understood as “Ham the child.” So here the Armenian translator does not give the genitive case of Ham, but the nominative: and it would seem that he rightly interprets the meaning of Irenæus. a servant shall he be unto his brethren. This having come upon his race, he begat many descendants upon the earth, (even) for fourteen generations, growing up in a wild condition; and then his race was cut off by God, being delivered up to judgment. For the Canaanites and Hittites and Peresites and Hivites and Amorites and Jebusites and Gergasites and Sodomites, the Arabians also and the dwellers in Phœnicia, all the Egyptians and the Libyans,¹¹³¹¹³Irenæus seems to have drawn on Acts ii. 9–11 to amplify his list. are of the posterity of Ham, who have fallen under the curse; for the curse is of long duration over the ungodly.

And even as the curse passed on, so also the blessing passed on to the race of him who was 88blessed, to each in his own order. For first of them was Shem blessed in these words: Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and Ham¹¹⁴¹¹⁴The LXX reads Canaan, but one cursive has Ham. shall be his servant. The power of the blessing lies in this, that the God and Lord of all should be to Shem a peculiar possession of worship. And the blessing extended and reached unto Abraham, who was reckoned as descended in the tenth generation from the race of Shem: and therefore the Father and God of all was pleased to be called the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; because the blessing of Shem reached out and attached itself to Abraham. Now the blessing of Japheth is on this wise: God shall enlarge unto Japheth, and he shall dwell in the house of Shem, and Ham¹¹⁵¹¹⁵Here again the LXX reads Canaan, though E and other MSS. have Ham. The Arm. here has “he shall bless” for “he shall dwell”; but this is a slip, as appears from below. shall be his servant. That is to say: In the end of the ages he blossomed forth, at the appearing of the Lord, through the calling of the Gentiles, when God enlarged unto them the calling; and their sound went out into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. The enlarging, then, is the calling from among the Gentiles, that is to say, the Church.¹¹⁶¹¹⁶“The calling of the Gentiles,” or, as we have it also here, “the calling from among the Gentiles,” recurs in cc. 28, 41 bis, 42, 89, 91. I have noted it in the Armenian version of IV, xxxiv. 12, where however we find in the Greek ἡ ἐξ ἐθνῶν ἐκκλησία, and in the Latin ea quæ ex gentibus est ecclesia. I do not remember to have met with it elsewhere in the writings of Irenæus, or in any earlier writer. In the fragments of Hippolytus on Gen. xlix (ed. Achelis, pp. 59 ff.) ἡ ἐξ ἐθνῶν κλῆσις is found several times, and more than once ἐκκλησία occurs as a various reading. It is not found, however, in the corresponding comments in The Blessings of Jacob (Texte u. Unters. xxxviii. 1). And he dwells in the house 89of Shem; that is, in the inheritance of the fathers, receiving in Christ Jesus the right of the firstborn. So in the rank in which each was blessed, in that same order through his posterity he received the fruit of the blessing.¹¹⁷¹¹⁷With all the above cf. Just. M. Dial. 139.

22. Now after the Flood God made a covenant with all the world, even with every living thing of animals and of men, that He would no more destroy with a flood all that grew upon the earth. And He set them a sign (saying): When the sky shall be covered with a cloud, the bow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember my covenant, and will no more destroy by water every moving thing upon the earth. And He changed the food of men, giving them leave to eat flesh: for from Adam the first-formed until the Flood men ate only of seeds and the fruit of trees, and to eat flesh was not permitted to them. But since the three sons of Noah were the beginning of a race of men, God blessed them for multiplication and increase; saying: Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth and rule it; and the fear and dread of you shall be upon every living thing of animals and upon all the fowls of the air; and they shall be to you for meat, even as the green herb: but the flesh with the blood of life ye shall not eat: for your blood also will I require at the hand of all beasts and at the hand of man. Whoso sheddeth a man’s blood, in return for his blood shall it be shed.¹¹⁸¹¹⁸These last words are so quoted in V, xiv. 1. The LXX continues: ὅτι ἐν εἰκόνι θεοῦ ἐποίησα τὸν ἄνθρωπον. This Irenæus paraphrases; cf. c. 11: “for (as) the image of God was man formed and set on the earth.” That “the image of God is the Son” may be a reminiscence of Col. i. 15. For He made man the 90image of God; and the image of God is the Son, after whose image man was made: and for this cause He appeared in the end of the times that He might show the image (to be) like unto Himself.¹¹⁹¹¹⁹V, xvi. 1: τκὴνεἰόνα ἔδειξεν ἀληθῶς, αὐπός τοῦτο γενόμενος ὅπερ ἦν ἡ εἰκὼν αὐτοῦ: where see the context. According to this covenant the race of man multiplied, springing up from the seed of the three. And upon the earth was one lip, that is to say one language.

23. And they arose and came from the land of the east; and, as they went through the land, they chanced upon the land of Shinar, which was exceeding broad; where they took in hand to build a tower. They sought means thereby to go up to heaven, and be able to leave their work as a memorial to those men who should come after them. And the building was made with burnt bricks and bitumen: and the boldness of their audacity went forward, as they were all of one mind and consent, and by means of one speech they served the purpose of their desires. But that the work should advance no further, God divided their tongues, that they should longer be able to understand one another. And so they were scattered and planted out, and took possession of the world, and dwelt in groups and companies each according to his language: whence came the diverse tribes and various languages upon the earth. So then, whereas three races of men took possession of the earth, and one of them was under the curse, and two under the blessing, the blessing first of all came to Shem, whose 91race dwelt in the east and held the land of the Chaldeans.

24. In process of tithe, that is to say, in the tenth generation after the Flood, Abraham appeared,¹²⁰¹²⁰Lit. “was found” (= εὑρέθη). seeking for the God who by the blessing of his ancestor was due and proper to him.¹²¹¹²¹This is explained by the comment above (c. 21) on the blessing of Shem, which did not say “Blessed be Shem,” but “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem”; meaning that God “should be to Shem a peculiar possession of worship.” And when, urged by the eagerness of his spirit, he went all about the world, searching where God is, and failed to find out; God took pity on him who alone was silently seeking Him; and He appeared unto Abraham, making Himself known by the Word, as by a beam of light. For He spake with him from heaven, and said unto him: Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house; and come into the land that I will show thee, (Acts vii. 3) and there dwell. And he believed the heavenly voice, being then of ripe age, even seventy¹²²¹²²Heb. and LXX: “seventy and five.” years old, and having a wife; and together with her he went forth from Mesopotamia, taking with him Lot, the son of his brother who was dead. And when he came into the land which now is called Judæa, in which at that time dwelt seven tribes descended from Ham, God appeared unto him in a vision and said: To thee will I give this land, and to thy seed after thee, for an everlasting possession, and (He said) that his seed should be a stranger in a land not their own, and should be evil-entreated there, being afflicted and 92in bondage four hundred years; and in the fourth generation should return unto the place that was promised to Abraham; and that God would judge that race which had brought his seed into bondage. And, that Abraham might know as well the multitude as the glory of his seed, God brought him forth abroad by night, and said: Look upon the heaven, and behold the stars of the heaven, if thou be able to number them: so shall thy seed be. And when God saw the undoubting and unwavering certainty of his spirit, He bare witness unto him by the Holy Spirit, saying in the Scripture: (Rom. iv. 3) And Abraham believed, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. And he was uncircumcised when this witness was borne; and, that the excellency of his faith should be made known by a sign, He gave him circumcision, a seal of the righteousness¹²³¹²³The Arm. has “uncircumcision” for “righteousness” by an oversight. of that faith which he had in uncircumcision. And after this there was born to him a son, Isaac, from Sarah who was barren, according to the promise of God; and him he circumcised, according to that which God had covenanted with him. And of Isaac was Jacob born; and on this wise the original blessing of Shem reached to Abraham, and from Abraham to Isaac, and from Isaac to Jacob, the inheritance of the Spirit being imparted to them: for He was called the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. And Jacob begat twelve sons, from whom the twelve tribes of Israel were named.

And when famine had come upon all the 93earth, it chanced that in Egypt alone there was food; and Jacob with all his seed removed and dwelt in Egypt: and the number of all that migrated was threescore and fifteen souls: and in four hundred years, as the oracle had declared beforehand, they became six hundred and sixty thousand. And, because they were grievously afflicted and oppressed through evil bondage, and sighed and groaned unto God, the God of their fathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; He brought them out of Egypt by the hand of Moses and Aaron, smiting the Egyptians with ten plagues, and in the last plague sending a destroying angel and slaying their first-born, both of man and of beast wherefrom He saved the children of Israel, revealing in a mystery the sufferings of Christ by the sacrifice of a lamb without spot, and giving its blood to be smeared on the houses of the Hebrews as a sure precaution. And the name of this mystery is Passion,¹²⁴¹²⁴The same interpretation of Pascha, as if from πάσχειν, is found in IV, xx. i: “cujus et diem passionis non ignoravit, sed figuratim prænuntiavit eum, Pascha nominans. the source of deliverance. And dividing the Red Sea, He brought the children of Israel with all security to the wilderness; and as to the pursuing Egyptians, who followed them and entered into the sea, they were all overwhelmed; this judgment of God coming upon those who had iniquitously oppressed the seed of Abraham.

26. And in the wilderness Moses received the Law from God, the Ten Words on tables of stone, written with the finger of God (now the finger of 94God is that which is stretched forth from the Father in the Holy Spirit);¹²⁵¹²⁵“The finger of God” (Luke xi. 20) appears as “the Spirit of God” in Matt. xii. 28. Cf. Barn. xiv. 3; and Clem. Hom. Xi. 22, xvi. 12, quoted in Introd. p. 53 n. i. and the commandments and ordinances which he delivered to the children of Israel to observe. And the tabernacle of witness he constructed by the command of God, the visible form on earth of those things which are spiritual and invisible in the heavens, and a figure of the form of the Church, and a prophecy of things to come: in which also were the vessels and the altars of sacrifice and the ark in which he placed the tables (of the Law). And he appointed as priests Aaron and his sons, assigning the priesthood to all their tribe: and they were of the seed of Levi. Moreover this whole tribe he summoned by the word of God to accomplish the work of service in the temple of God, and gave them the Levitical law, (to shew) what and what manner of men they ought to be who are continually employed in performing the service of the temple of God.

27. And when they were near to the land, which God had promised to Abraham and his seed, Moses chose a man from every tribe, and sent them to search out the land and the cities therein and the dwellers in the cities. At that time God revealed to him the Name which alone is able to save them that believe thereon; and Moses changed the name of Oshea the son of Nun, one of them that were sent, and named him Jesus:¹²⁶¹²⁶Num. xiii. 16: καὶ ἐπωνόμασεν Μωυσῆς τὸν Αὑσὴ υἱὸν Ναυὴ Ἰησοῦν. Justin Martyr (Dial. 75, 113) has much to say on this change of name. Cf. Barn. xii. 8 f. and so he 95sent them forth with the power of the Name, believing that he should receive them back safe and sound through the guidance of the Name which came to pass.¹²⁷¹²⁷Probably this represents ὃ ἐγένετο. Compare the brief clauses “and this came to pass” (c. 67), and “as indeed they have become” (c. 72); III, vi. 4: “quod et erat.” But it might be rendered, in conjunction with the Name, “which was (given them)”: so the German translations take it. Now when they had gone and searched and enquired, they returned bringing with them a bunch of grapes; and some of the twelve who were sent cast the whole multitude into fear and dismay, saying that the cities were exceeding great and walled, and the sons of the giants dwelt therein, so that it was (not) possible for them to take the land. And thereupon it fell out that all the multitude wept, failing to believe that it was God who should grant them power and subjugate all to them. And they spake evil also of the land, as not being good, and as though it were not worth while to undergo the danger for the sake of such a land. But two of the twelve, Jesus the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, rent their clothes for the evil that was done, and besought the people not to be disheartened nor lose their courage; for God had given all into their hands, and the land was exceeding good. And when they believed not, but the people still continued in the same unbelief, God changed and altered their way, that they should wander desolate and sore smitten in the desert. And according to the days that they were in going and returning who had spied out the land—and these were forty in number—setting a 96year for a day, He kept them in the wilderness for the space of forty years; and none of those who were full grown and had understanding counted He worthy to enter into the land because of their unbelief, save only the two who had testified of the inheritance, Jesus the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and those who were quite young and knew not the right hand and the left. So all the unbelieving multitude perished and were consumed in the wilderness, receiving one by one the due reward of their want of faith: but the children, growing up in the course of forty years, filled up the number of the dead.

28. When the forty years were fulfilled, the people drew near to the Jordan, and were assembled and arrayed over against Jericho. Here Moses gathered the people together, and summed up all afresh, proclaiming the mighty works of God even unto that day, fashioning and preparing those that had grown up in the wilderness to fear God and keep His commandments, imposing on them as it were a new legislation, adding to that which was made before. And this was called Deuteronomy:¹²⁸¹²⁸Cf. the Greek fragment attributed to Irenæus, Harvey II, p. 487, where we have ἀνακεφαλαιούμενος: this fragment, however, is now shown to be from Hippolytus On the Blessings of Moses (Texte u. Unters. N. F. XI, 1a, p. 49). Cf. also IV, ii. 1: “Moyses igitur recapitulationem universæ legis . . . in Deuteronomio faciens.” and in it were written many prophecies concerning our Lord Jesus Christ and concerning the people, and also concerning the calling of the Gentiles and concerning the kingdom.

29. And, when Moses had finished his course, 97it was said to him by God: Get thee up into the mountain, and die: for thou shalt not bring in my people into the land. So he died according to the word of the Lord; and Jesus the son of Nun succeeded him. He divided the Jordan and made the people to pass over into the land; and, when he had overthrown and destroyed the seven races that dwelt therein, he assigned to the people the temporal Jerusalem,¹²⁹¹²⁹Or “this present Jerusalem”: perhaps representing τὴν νῦν Ἰερουσαλήμ (Gal. iv. 25). wherein David was king, and Solomon his son, who builded the temple to the name of God, according to the likeness of the tabernacle which had been made by Moses after the pattern of the heavenly and spiritual things.

Hither were the prophets sent by God through the Holy Spirit; and they instructed the people and turned them to the God of their fathers, the Almighty; and they became heralds of the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, declaring that from the posterity of David His flesh should blossom forth; that after the flesh He might be the son of David, who was the son of Abraham by a long succession; but according to the spirit Son of God, pre-existing¹³⁰¹³⁰Cf. c. 51. with the Father, begotten before all the creation of the world, and at the end of the times appearing to all the world as man, the Word of God gathering up in Himself all things that are in heaven and that are on earth.

So then He united man with God, and established a community of union¹³¹¹³¹For this double rendering see above c. 6. between God 98and man; since we could not in any other way¹³²¹³²III, xx. 1: “Quemadmodum autem adunari possemus incorruptelæ et immortalitati, nisi prius incorruptela et immortalitas facta fuisset id quod et nos?” Cf. III, xix. 6: καὶ εἰ μἡ συνηνώθη ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῷ θεῷ, οὐκ ἂν ἠδυνήθη μετασχεῖν τῆς ἀφθαρσίας. participate in incorruption, save by His coming among us. For so long as incorruption was invisible and unrevealed, it helped us not at all therefore it became visible,¹³³¹³³Cf. 2 Tim. i. 10: φωτίσαντος ζωὴν καὶ ἀφθαρσίαν διὰ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου. that in all respects we might participate in the reception of incorruption. And, because in the original formation¹³⁴¹³⁴V, i. 2: τὴν ἀρχαίαν πλάσιντοῦ Ἀδάμ εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἀνεκεφαλαιώσατο of Adam all of us were tied and bound up with death through his disobedience, it was right that through the obedience of Him who was made man for us we should be released from death: and because death reigned over the flesh, it was right that through the flesh it should lose its force and let man go free from its oppression. So the Word was made flesh, that, through that very flesh which sin had ruled and dominated, it should lose its force and be no longer in us. And therefore our Lord took that same original formation as (His) entry into flesh, so that He might draw near and contend on behalf of the fathers,¹³⁵¹³⁵III, xix. 5: “erat enim homo pro patribus certans:” V, xxi. 1: “Omnia ergo recapitulans, recapitulatus est et adversus inimicum nostrum hellum, provocans et elidens eum qui in initio in Adam captivos duxerat nos” (the Arm. version of this passage suggests the true punctuation). With “pro patribus” comp. Barn. V. 7: ἵνα καὶ τοῖς πατράσιν τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν ἀποδῷ. and conquer by Adam that which by Adam had stricken us down.

32. Whence then is the substance of the first formed (man)? From the Will and the Wisdom 99of God, and from the virgin earth.¹³⁶¹³⁶Almost the same words are here used as in III, xxx. 1.: “Et quemadmodum protoplastus ille Adam de rudi terra et de adhuc virgine—nondum enim pluerat Deus, et homo non erat operatus terram—habuit substantiam et plasmatus est manu Dei, id est, Verbo Dei—omnia enim per ipsum facta sunt—et sumpsit Dominus limum a terra et plasmavit hominem: ita recapitulans in se Adam ipse Verbum existens ex Maria, quæ adhuc erat virgo, recte accipiebat generationem Adæ recapitulationis.” Cf. III, xix. 6: also Ephraim’s Commentary on the Diatessaron (Mœsinger, p. 21): “In Virginis conceptione disce quod qui sine conjugio Adamum ex virginea terra protulit, is etiam Adamum secundum in utero virginis formaverit.” Cf. also Tertullian, De carne Christi, 17; Firmicus Maternus, De errore prof. relig., 25. For God had not sent rain, the Scripture says, upon the earth, before man was made; and there was no man to till the earth. From this, then, whilst it was still virgin, God took dust of the earth and formed the man, the beginning of mankind. So then the Lord, summing up afresh this man, took the same dispensation of entry into flesh, being born from the Virgin by the Will and the Wisdom of God; that He also should show forth the likeness of Adam’s entry into flesh¹³⁷¹³⁷III, xxxi. 1: τὴν αὐτὴν ἐκείνῳ τῆς γεννήσεως ἔχειν ὁμοιότητα. and there should be that which was written in the beginning,¹³⁸¹³⁸V, ii. 1: “restaurans suo plasmati quod dictum est in principio, factum esse hominem secundum imaginem et similitudinem Dei:” and below, c. 97. man after the image and likeness of God.

33. And just as through a disobedient virgin man was stricken down and fell into death, so through the Virgin who was obedient to the Word of God man was reanimated and received life.¹³⁹¹³⁹The same parallel is worked out in III, xxxii. 1, and V, xix. 1. It is found earlier in Justin Martyr (Dial. 100), and later in Tertullian (De carne Chr. 17). For the Lord came to seek again the sheep that 100was lost;¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰Irenæus is fond of referring to the sheep that was lost: see III, xx. 3, xxxii. 2, xxxvii. 1; V, xii. 3, xv. 2 and man it was that was lost: and for this cause there was not made some other formation,¹⁴¹¹⁴¹V, xiv. 2: “Nunc autem quod fuit qui perierat homo, hoc salutare factum est Verbum . . . non alteram quandam, sed illam principalem Patris plasmationem in se recapitulans, exquirens id quod perierat.” but in that same which had its descent from Adam He preserved the likeness of the (first) formation.¹⁴²¹⁴²See above, c. 32. For it was necessary that Adam should be summed up in Christ, that mortality might be swallowed up and overwhelmed by immortality; and Eve summed up in Mary, that a virgin should be a virgin’s intercessor,¹⁴³¹⁴³III, xxxii. I: “eam quæ est a Maria in Evam recirculationem significans;” V, xix. 1: “uti virginis Evæ virgo Maria fieret advocata.” Cf Just. M. Dial. 100. and by a virgin’s obedience undo and put away the disobedience of a virgin.

34. And the trespass which came by the tree was undone by the tree of obedience,¹⁴⁴¹⁴⁴V, xvi. 2: “Dissolvens enim eam quæ in initio in ligno facta fuerat hominis inobedientiam, obediens factus est usque ad mortens, mortem autem crucis, eam quæ ligno facta fuerat inobedientiam per eam quæ in ligno fuerat obedientiam sanans.” when, hearkening unto God, the Son of man was nailed to the tree; thereby putting away the knowledge of evil and bringing in and establishing the knowledge of good: now evil it is to disobey God, even as hearkening unto God is good. And for this cause the Word spake by Isaiah the prophet, announcing beforehand that which was to come—for therefore are they prophets, because they proclaim what is to come¹⁴⁵¹⁴⁵IV, xxxiv. 5: “Nam prophetia est prædicatio futurorum.”: by him then spake the Word thus: 101 I refuse not, nor gainsay: I gave my back to scourging, and my cheeks to smiting;¹⁴⁶¹⁴⁶Cf. c. 68. and my face I turned not away from the shame of spitting. So then by the obedience wherewith He obeyed even unto death, hanging on the tree, He put away the old disobedience which was wrought in the tree. Now seeing that He is the Word of God Almighty, who in unseen wise in our midst is universally extended in all the world, and encompasses its length and breadth and height and depth¹⁴⁷¹⁴⁷V, xvii. 4: Ἐπεὶ γὰρ διὰ ξύλου ἀπεβάλομεν αὐτόν (sc. τὸν λόγον Κυρίου), διὰ ξὐλου πάλιν φανερὸς τοῖς πᾶσιν ἐγένετο, ἐπιδεικνύων τὸ ὕψος καὶ μῆκος καῖ πλάτος ἐν ἑαυτῷ·καὶ, ὡς ἔφη τις τῶν προβεβηκότων πρεσβυτέρων, διὰ τῆς ἐκτάσεως τῶν χειρῶν τοὺς δὐο λαοὺς εἰς ἓνα θεὸν συνάγων. The Greek, preserved in a Catena, is here emended from the Latin and Armenian versions, both of which omit καὶ βάθος.—for by the Word of God the whole universe is ordered and disposed—in it is crucified the Son of God, inscribed crosswise upon it all:¹⁴⁸¹⁴⁸V, xviii. 2: “in hoc mundo existens, et secundum invisibilitatem continet quæ facta sunt omnia, et in universa conditione infixus (Arm. “and in all this world in-crucified ”), quoniam Verbum Dei gubernans et disponens omnia.” The thought is taken from Justin (Ap. 1. 60), who attributes to Plato the words: Ἐχίασεν αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ παντί (cf. Timæus 36 B.C.). See above, Introd. p. 29. Justin says that Plato misunderstanding the story of the Brazen Serpent, μηδὲ νοήσας τύπον εἶναι σταυροῦ, ἀλλὰ χίασμα γοήσας, τὴν μετὰ τὸν πρῶτον θεὸν δύναμιν κεχίασθαι ἐν τῷ παντὶ εἶπε. for it is right that He being made visible, should set upon all things visible the sharing of His cross, that He might show His operation on visible things through a visible form. For He it is who illuminates the height, that is the heavens; and encompasses the deep which is beneath the earth; and stretches and spreads out the length from east to west; and steers across the breadth of north and south; 102summoning all that are scattered in every quarter to the knowledge of the Father.

35. Moreover He fulfilled the promise made to Abraham, which God had promised him, to make his seed as the stars of heaven. For this Christ did, who was born of the Virgin who was of Abraham’s seed, and constituted those who have faith in Him lights in the world,¹⁴⁹¹⁴⁹IV, x. 1: ὅτι ποιήσει τὸ σπέρμα ὡσ τὰ ἄστρα τοῦ οὐρανοῦ. τουτέστι τὸ ὑπὸ Παύλου εἰρημέναν· Ὡς φωστῆρει ἐν κόσμῳ: Cf. IV, xiii. 1. and by the same faith with Abraham justified the Gentiles. For Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. (cf. Rom. iv. 3) In like manner we also are justified by faith in God: for the just shall live by faith. Now not by the law is the promise to Abraham, but by faith: for Abraham was justified by faith: and for a righteous man the law is not made. In like manner we also are justified not by the law, but by faith, which is witnessed to in the law and in the prophets, whom the Word of God presents to us.

36. And He fulfilled the promise to David; for to him God had promised that of the fruit of his body He would raise up an eternal King,¹⁵⁰¹⁵⁰III, xxvi. 1: ἐκ καρποῦ τῆς κυιλίας αὐτοῦ αἰώνιον ἀναστήσειν βασιλέα: III, xi, 4, xvii. 1, xxix. 1. In all these places the phrase “eternal King” is used in connection with this particular promise. The phrase also occurs in III, xx. 2, and below in cc. 56, 66, 95. Justin uses it several times (Dial. 34, 36, 118, 135), but not in this connection. whose kingdom should have no end. And this King is Christ, the Son of God, who became the Son of man; that is, who became the fruit of that Virgin who had her descent from David. And for this cause 103the promise was, Of the fruit of thy body¹⁵¹¹⁵¹Here and above I have used “body” as in A. V. for κοιλία: but the strange argument is thus somewhat obscured. The words which immediately follow in the Armenian text may be more easily rendered in Latin: “de fructu ventris tui, quod est proprium feminæ prægnantis: non de fructu lumborum, nec de fructu renum, quod est proprium viri generantis: ut declararet,” etc. Almost the same words are found in III, xxvi. 1: cf. also III, ix. 2: “ext fructu ventris David, id est, ex David virgine.” The argument is used by Tertullian, Adv. Marcion, III, 20.—that He might declare the peculiar uniqueness of Him, who was the fruit of the virgin body that was of David, (even of Him) who was King over the house of David, (and) of whose kingdom there shall be no end.

37. Thus then He gloriously achieved our redemption, and fulfilled the promise of the fathers, and abolished the old disobedience. The Son of God became Son of David and Son of Abraham; perfecting and summing up this in Himself, that He might make us to possess life. The Word of God was made flesh by the dispensation of the Virgin, to abolish death and make man live. For we were imprisoned by sin, being born in sinfulness and living under death.

38. But God the Father was very merciful: He sent His creative¹⁵²¹⁵²The same word corresponds to “artifex” in the Arm. version of V, xv. 2, xxiv. 4: cf. III, xi. 11: ὁ τῶν ἁπάντων τεχνίτης Λόγος. Word, who in coming to deliver us came to the very place and spot in which we had lost life, and brake the bonds of our fetters. And His light appeared and made the darkness of the prison disappear, and hallowed our birth and destroyed death, loosing those same fetters in which we were enchained. And He manifested 104the resurrection,¹⁵³¹⁵³Cf. c. 39: Barn. V. 6: ἵνα καταργήσῃ τὸν θάνατον καὶ τὴν ἐκ νεκρῶν ἀνάστασιν δείξῃ: and Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition, in the Eucharistic Prayer: “ut resurrectionem manifestet”; and Philos. x. 33 (Connolly, Texts and Studies, VIII, 4. 166). Himself becoming the first begotten of the dead, and in Himself raising up man that was fallen, lifting him up far above the heaven to the right hand of the glory of the Father: even as God promised by the prophet, saying: And I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen; that is, the flesh¹⁵⁴¹⁵⁴Or “body”: cf. c. 62. a that was from David. And his our Lord Jesus Christ truly fulfilled, when He gloriously achieved our redemption, that He might truly raise us up, setting us free unto the Father. And if any man will not receive His birth from a virgin, how shall he receive His resurrection from the dead? For it is nothing wonderful and astonishing and extraordinary, if one who was not born rose from the dead: nay indeed we cannot speak of a resurrection of him who came unto being without birth. For one who is unborn and immortal, and has not undergone birth, will also not undergo death. For he who took not the beginning of man, how could he receive his end?

Now, if He was not born, neither did He die; and, if He died not, neither did He rise from the dead; and, if He rose not from the dead, neither did He vanquish death and bring its reign to nought; and if death be not vanquished, how can we ascend to life, who from the beginning have fallen under death? So then those who take away redemption from man, and believe not God that He will raise them from the dead, these also despise 105the birth of our Lord,¹⁵⁵¹⁵⁵V, xix. 2: “Alii autem manifestum adventum Domini contemnunt, incarnationem ejus non recipientes.” which He underwent on our behalf, that the Word of God should be made flesh in order that He might manifest the resurrection of the flesh, and might have pre-eminence over all things in the heavens, as the first-born and eldest offspring of the thought of the Father, the Word, fulfilling all things, and Himself guiding and ruling upon earth. For He was the Virgin’s first-born, a just and holy man,¹⁵⁶¹⁵⁶IV, xxxiv. 2: “homo justus:” the whole context is parallel to our passage: cf. also III, xvii.,6. god fearing, good, well-pleasing to God, perfect in all ways, and delivering from hell all who follow after Him: for He Himself was the first-begotten of the dead, the Prince and Author of life unto God.

40. Thus then the Word of God in all things hath the pre-eminence;¹⁵⁷¹⁵⁷IV, xxxiv. 2, lxiii. 2. for that He is true man and Wonderful Counselor and Mighty God;¹⁵⁸¹⁵⁸Cf. cc. 54 f. calling men anew to fellowship with God, that by fellowship with Him we may partake of incorruption. So then He who was proclaimed by the law through Moses, and by the prophets of the Most High and Almighty God, as Son of the Father of all; He from whom all things are, He who spake with Moses—He came into Judea, generated from God by the Holy Spirit,¹⁵⁹¹⁵⁹The Arm. seems to be a rendering of ἐκ θεοῦ σκαρεὶς διὰ πνεύματος ἀγίου. Cf. III, xvii. 6: “unitus et consparsus suo plasmati secundum placitum Patris, et caro factus.” See Introd. p. 65. and born of the Virgin Mary, even of her who was of the seed of David and of Abraham, Jesus the Anointed of God, showing 106Himself to be the One who was proclaimed beforehand by the prophets.

41. And His forerunner was John the Baptist, who prepared and made ready the people beforehand for the reception of the Word of life; declaring that He was the Christ, on whom the Spirit of God rested, mingling with His flesh.¹⁶⁰¹⁶⁰Cf. c. 97 (where however the Incarnation is in question), and the references there given. His disciples, the witnesses of all His good deeds, and of His teachings and His sufferings and death and resurrection, and of His ascension into heaven after His bodily¹⁶¹¹⁶¹Or “fleshly”: cf. I, ii. 1: καὶ τὴν ἔγερσιν ἐκ νεκρῶν καὶ τὴν ἔνσαρκον εἰς τοὺς οὐρανοὺς ἀνάληψιν. resurrection—these were the apostles, who after (receiving) the power of the Holy Spirit were sent forth by Him into all the world, and wrought the calling of the Gentiles, showing to mankind the way of life, to turn them from idols and fornication and covetousness, cleansing their souls and bodies by the baptism of water and of the Holy Spirit; which Holy Spirit they had received of the Lord, and they distributed and imparted It to them that believed; and thus they ordered and established the Churches. By faith and love and hope they established that which was foretold by the prophets, the calling of the Gentiles, according to the mercy of God which was extended to them; bringing it to light through the ministration of their service, and admitting them to the promise of the fathers: to wit, that to those who thus believed in and loved the Lord, and continued in holiness and righteousness and patient endurance, the God of all had promised to grant 107eternal life by the resurrection of the dead; through Him who died and rose again, Jesus Christ, to whom He has delivered over the kingdom of all existing things, and, the rule of quick and dead, and also the judgment. And they counseled them by the word of truth to keep their flesh undefiled unto the resurrection and their soul unstained.

42. For such is the state¹⁶²¹⁶²The Arm. is a literal rendering of οὕτως ἔχειν, as in the Arm. version of IV, Xi. 2 (“sic se habere”). of those who have believed, since in them continually abides the Holy Spirit, who was given by Him in baptism, and is retained by the receiver, if he walks in truth and holiness and righteousness and patient endurance. For this soul has a resurrection in them that believe, the body receiving the soul again, and along with it, by the power of the Holy Spirit, being raised up and entering into the kingdom of God. This is the fruit of the blessing of Japheth, in the calling of the Gentiles, made manifest through the Church, standing in readiness¹⁶³¹⁶³Cf. c. 21. The Arm. is obscure, perhaps corrupt. to receive its dwelling in the house of Shem according to the promise of God. That all these things would so come to pass, the Spirit of God declared beforehand by the prophets; that in respect of them the faith of those who worship God in truth should be confirmed. For what was an impossibility to our nature, and therefore ready to cause incredibility to mankind, this God caused to be made known beforehand by the prophets; in order that, through its having been foretold in times long before, and then at last finding 108effect in this way, even as it was foretold, we might know that it was God who (thus) proclaimed to us beforehand our redemption.

43. So then we must believe God in all things, for in all things God is true. Now that there was a Son of God, and that He existed not only before He appeared in the world, but also before the world was made, Moses, who was the first that prophesied¹⁶⁴¹⁶⁴Cf. Just. M. Ap. 1. 32: Μωυσῆς . . . πρῶτος τῶν προφητῶν γενόμενος. says in Hebrew: Baresith bara Elowin basan benuam samenthares. And this, translated into our language,¹⁶⁵¹⁶⁵Lit. “the Armenian language.” is: “The Son in the beginning: God established then the heaven and the earth.”¹⁶⁶¹⁶⁶The Hebrew text has been corrupted in transmission: but it is plain that Irenæus interpreted the first two words (“In the beginning created”) as “In the beginning the Son.” St Hilary, on Ps. ii. § 2, says that bresith has three meanings, “in principio in capite, in filio”; but be prefers the first as the interpretation given by the LXX. See the note of the learned Dom Coustant, the Benedictine editor of St Hilary. See also Dr Harnack’s notes in Texte u. Unters., I, 1. 117 ff. and xxxi, 1. 60. In Clem. Alex. Ecl. Proph. 4 we find as a comment on Gen. i. 1, ὅτι ἀρχὴ ὁ υἱός. This Jeremiah the prophet also testified, saying thus: Before the morning-star I begat thee: and before the sun> (is) thy name;¹⁶⁷¹⁶⁷For this composite quotation from the Psalms, here attributed to Jeremiah, see Introd. p. 19 ff. and that is, before the creation of the world; for together with the world the stars were made. And again the same says: Blessed is he who was, before he became man.¹⁶⁸¹⁶⁸For this quotation also see Introd. p. 22 f. Because, for God, the Son was (as) the beginning before the creation of the world;¹⁶⁹¹⁶⁹This is probably a reference to Prov. viii. 22: ὁ κύριος ἔκτισέ με ἀιχὴν τῶν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ. but for us (He was) then, when He 109appeared; and before that He was not for us, who knew Him not.¹⁷⁰¹⁷⁰Justin (Dial. 88) quotes the Voice at the Baptism in the form “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee” (Ps. ii. 7, and Luke iii. 22 in Codex Bezæ, etc.). Then he says: τότε γένεσιν αὐτοῦ λέγων γίνεσθαι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ἐξ ὅτου ἡ γνῶσις αὐτοῦ ἔμελλε γίνεσθαι. Wherefore also His disciple John, in teaching us who is the Son of God, who was with the Father before the world was made, and that all the things that were made were made by Him, says thus: In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made: showing with certainty that the Word, who was in the beginning with the Father, and by whom all things were made, this is His Son.

44. And again Moses tells how the Son of God drew near to hold converse with Abraham: And God appeared unto him by the oak of Mamre in the middle of the day. And looking up with his eyes he beheld, and, lo, three men stood over against him. And he bowed himself down to the earth, and said: Lord, if indeed I have found favour in thy sight. And all that which follows he spake with the Lord, and the Lord spake with him. Now two of the three were angels; but one was the Son of God, with whom also Abraham spake, pleading on behalf of the men of Sodom, that they should not perish if at least ten righteous should be found there. And, whilst these were speaking, the two angels entered into Sodom, and Lot received them. And then the Scripture says: And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from 110the Lord out of heaven: that is to say, the Son, who spake with Abraham, being Lord, received power to punish the men of Sodom from the Lord out of heaven, even from the Father who rules over all.¹⁷¹¹⁷¹III, vi. 1: “Filium enim hic significat, qui et Abrahæ collocutus sit, a Patre accepisse potestatem judicandi Sodomitas propter iniquitatem eorum.’ For the indebtedness of Irenæus to Justin in this and the next chapter, see Introd. p. 12. So Abraham was a prophet and saw things to come, which were to take place in human form even the Son of God, that He should speak with men and eat with them, and then should bring in the judgment from the Father, having received from Him who rules over all the power to punish the men of Sodom.

45. And Jacob, when he went into Mesopotamia, saw Him in a dream, standing upon the ladder, that is the tree which was set up from earth to heaven;¹⁷²¹⁷²The Arm. text has “from heaven to heaven” by oversight. That Jacob’s Ladder signified the Cross was said by Justin (Dial. 86). for thereby they that believe on Him go up to the heavens. For His sufferings are our ascension on high. And all such visions point to the Son of God, speaking with men and being in their midst. For it was not the Father of all, who is not seen by the world, the Maker of all who has said: Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me, or what is the place of my rest? (Acts vii. 49) and who comprehendeth the earth with his hand, and with his span the heaven¹⁷³¹⁷³IV, xxxiii. i: “Audistis mensos esse cælos in palma . . . qui comprehendit terram pugillo.”—it was not He that came and stood in a very small space and spake with Abraham; but the Word of God, who was ever with mankind, and made known beforehand 111what should come to pass in the future, and taught men the things of God.

46. He it is who spake with Moses in the bush, and said: Seeing have I seen the affliction of my people that is in Egypt; and I am come down to deliver them. He it is who came forth and came down for the deliverance of the oppressed, bringing us out from the power of the Egyptians, that is, from all idolatry and impiety; and delivering us from the Red Sea, that is, delivering us from the deadly confusion of the Gentiles and the grievous vexation of their blasphemy. For in them the Word of God prepared and rehearsed beforehand the things concerning us. Then He set forth in types beforehand that which was to be; how in very truth He has brought us out from the cruel service of the Gentiles, and a stream of water in the desert has He made to flow forth in abundance from a rock; and that rock is Himself; and has given twelve fountains, that is, the teaching of the twelve apostles. And the obstinate unbelievers He brought to an end and consumed in the wilderness; but those who believed on Him, and in malice were children,¹⁷⁴¹⁷⁴IV, xliv. 3: “Malitia parvuli”: cf. c. 95. He made to enter into the inheritance of the fathers; whom not Moses, but Jesus puts in possession of the heritage:¹⁷⁵¹⁷⁵IV, xlvii. 1: “ecclesiæ . . . quam non Moyses quidem famulus Dei, sed Jesus filius Dei in hæreditatem dabit.” who also delivers us from Amalek by the expansion of His hands,¹⁷⁶¹⁷⁶V, xvii. 4: διὰ τῆς ἐκτάσεως τῶν χειρῶν (where neither Lat. nor Arm. supports the inserted θείας): cf. c. 79. For, this ἔκτασις cf. Barn. XII. 2; Just. M. Dial. 91, 112, 131. and brings us to the kingdom of the Father.

47. So then the Father is Lord and the Son is Lord,¹⁷⁷¹⁷⁷III, vi. i: “Vere igitur cum Pater sit Dominus et Filius vere sit Dominus, merito Spiritus Sanctus Domini appellatione signavit eos.” and the Father is God and the Son is God; for that which is begotten of God is God.¹⁷⁸¹⁷⁸I, i. 18: τὸ γὰρ ἐκ θεοῦ γεννηθὲν θεός ἐστιν. And so in the substance and power of His being there is shown forth one God; but there is also according to the economy of our redemption both Son and Father. Because to created things the Father of all is invisible and unapproachable,¹⁷⁹¹⁷⁹Cf. Athan. Orat. i. 64: καὶ ἔστιν ὁ θεὸς ἀόρατος καὶ ἀπρόσιτος τοῖς γεννητοῖς. therefore those who are to draw near to God must have their access to the Father through the Son. And yet more plainly and evidently does David speak concerning the Father and the Son as follows: Thy throne, O God is for ever and ever: thou hast loved righteousness and hated unrighteousness:¹⁸⁰¹⁸⁰Apparently reading ἀδικίαν. The omission of “thy God” after “God” may be an oversight. therefore God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. (Ps. xlv. 6 f.) For the Son, as being God, receives from the Father, that is, from God,¹⁸¹¹⁸¹III, vi. 1: “Utrosque enim Dei appellatione signavit Spiritus: et eum qui ungitur Filium, et eum qui ungit, id est, Patrem.” the throne of the everlasting kingdom, and the oil of anointing above His fellows. The oil of anointing is the Spirit,¹⁸²¹⁸²III, xix. 3: “Et unxit quidem Pater, unctus est vero Filius, in Spiritu qui est unctio,” etc. For this chapter, see Introd. p. 60. wherewith He has been anointed; and His fellows are prophets and righteous men and apostles, and all who receive the fellowship of His kingdom, that is to say, His disciples.

48. And again David says: The Lord said unto any Lord: Sit on any right hand, until I make thy 113enemies thy footstool. The rod of thy strength shall the Lord send forth from Sion; and rule thou in the midst of thy enemies. With thee in the beginning¹⁸³¹⁸³As though reading ἐν ἀρχῇ for ἀρχή. in the day of thy power, in the brightness of the holy ones: from the womb before the morning-star I begat thee. The Lord sware and will not repent: Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. And the Lord on thy right hand hath broken in pieces kings in the day of wrath: he shall judge among the Gentiles, he shall fill up the ruins, and shall break in pieces the heads of many on the earth.¹⁸⁴¹⁸⁴As though reading πληρώσει πτώματα and ἐπὶ γῆς πολλῶν, with some MSS. of LXX. He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head. Now hereby he proclaimed that He came into being before all, and that He rules over the Gentiles and judges all mankind and the kings who now hate Him and persecute His name; for these are His enemies: and in calling Him God’s priest for ever, he declared His immortality. And therefore he said: He shall drink of the brook in the way; therefore shall he lift up the head; proclaiming the exaltation with glory that followed on His humanity and humiliation and in gloriousness.¹⁸⁵¹⁸⁵This is Justin’s interpretation of the words: see Dial. 33: καὶ ὅτι ταπεινὸς ἔσται πρῶτον ἄνθρωπος, εἶτα ὑψωθήσεται.

49. And again Isaiah the prophet says: Thus saith the Lord God to my Anointed the Lord,¹⁸⁶¹⁸⁶Reading κυρίῳ for Κύρῳ; cf. Barn. XII. 11: so also many later writers. whose right hand I have held, that the Gentiles should hearken before him. And how the Christ is called Son of God and King of the Gentiles, that is, of all 114mankind; and that He not only is called but is Son of God and King of all, David declares thus: The Lord said unto me: Thou art any Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and for a possession the utmost parts of the earth. These things were not said of David; for neither over the Gentiles nor over the utmost parts did he rule, but only over the Jews. So then it is plain that the promise to the Anointed to reign over the utmost parts of the earth is to the Son of God, whom David himself acknowledges as his Lord, saying thus: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit on my right hand, and so forth, as we have said above. For he means that the Father speaks with the Son; as we showed a little before as to Isaiah, that he said thus: God saith to my Anointed the Lord, that the Gentiles should hearken before him. For the promise is the same by the two prophets, that He should be King: so that the speech of God is addressed to one and the same, I mean, to Christ the Son of God. Forasmuch as David says: The Lord said unto me, it is necessary to say that it is not David who speaks, nor any one of the prophets, in his own person: for it is not a man who speaks the prophecies; but the Spirit of God, assimilating and likening Himself to the persons represented, speaks in the prophets, and utters the words sometimes from Christ and sometimes from the Father.¹⁸⁷¹⁸⁷The subject is fully treated by Justin (Ap. l, 36 ff.): cf. especially: πότε δὲ ὡς ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ δεσπότου πάντων καὶ πατρὸς θεοῦ φθέγγεται, πότε δὲ ὡς ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ χριστοῦ.

50. So then right fitly Christ says through David that He converses with the Father; and right worthily does He say the other things concerning Himself through the prophets; as in other instances, so also after this manner by Isaiah: And now thus saith the Lord, who formed me as his servant from the womb, to gather Jacob and to gather Israel unto him: and I shall be glorified before the Lord, and my God shall be a strength unto me. And he said: A great thing shall it be to thee to be called my servant, to stablish and confirm the tribe of Jacob, and to turn again the dispersion of Israel: and I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles,¹⁸⁸¹⁸⁸Here the quotation corresponds with Acts xiii. 47, as in Just. M. Dial. 121. that thou shouldst be for salvation unto the end of the earth.

51. Here, first of all, is seen that the Son of God pre-existed, from the fact that the Father spake with Him,¹⁸⁹¹⁸⁹Cf. c. 30. Justin says (Dial. 62): Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο τὸ τῷ ὄντι ἀπὸ τοῦ τατρὸς προβληθὲν γέννημα πρὸ πάντων τῶν ποιημάτων συνῆν τῷ πατρί, καὶ τούτῳ ὁ πατὴρ προσομιλεῖ. and before He was born revealed Him to men: and, next, that He must needs be born a man among men; and that the same God forms Him from the womb, that is, that of the Spirit of God He should be born; and that He is Lord of all men, and Saviour of them that believe on Him, both Jews and others. For the people of the Jews is called Israel in the Hebrew language, from Jacob their father, who was the first to be called Israel: and Gentiles He calls the whole of mankind. And that the Son of the Father calls Himself servant, (this is) on account of His subjection 116to the Father: for among men also every son is servant of his father.

52. That Christ, then, being Son of God before all the world, is with the Father; and being with the Father¹⁹⁰¹⁹⁰The construction of the Arm. is uncertain, but the general sense is plain. The preposition “with” in the first place seems to represent σύν, in the second place πρός. is also nigh and close and joined unto mankind; and is King of all, because the Father has subjected all things unto Him; and Saviour of them that believe on Him—such things do the Scriptures declare. For it is not feasible and possible to enumerate every scripture in order; and from these you may understand the others also which have been spoken in like manner, believing in Christ, and seeking understanding and comprehension from God, so as to understand what has been spoken by the prophets.

53. And that this Christ, who was with the Father, being the Word of the Father, was thereafter to be made flesh and become man and undergo the process of birth and be born of a virgin and dwell among men, the Father of all bringing about His incarnation¹⁹¹¹⁹¹V, i. 3: “Patris omnium, qui operatus est incarnationem ejus.—Isaiah says thus: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold, the virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a son, and ye shall call him Emmanuel: butter and honey shall he eat; before he knoweth or selecteth the evil, he chooseth the good: for, before the child knoweth good or evil, he rejecteth wickedness to choose the good. So he proclaimed His birth from a virgin; and that He was truly man he declared beforehand by His eating; and also because he called Him the 117child; and further by giving Him a name; for this is the custom also for one that is born.¹⁹²¹⁹²For comments on the rest of this chapter, see Introd. pp. 15 f. And His name is two-fold: in the Hebrew tongue Messiah Jesus, and in ours Christ Saviour. And the two names are names of works actually wrought. For He was named Christ, because through Him the Father anointed and adorned all things; and because on His coming as man He was anointed with the Spirit of God and His Father. As also by Isaiah He says of Himself: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me: wherefore he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. And (He was named) Saviour for this, that He became the cause of salvation to those who at that time were delivered by Him from all sicknesses and from death,¹⁹³¹⁹³After the word “death” the Arm. has again “at that time.” and to those who afterwards believed on Him the author of salvation in the future and for evermore.

54. For this cause then is He Saviour. Now Emmanuel is, being interpreted, With you God;¹⁹⁴¹⁹⁴The translator has read μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν for μεθ᾽ ἔμῶν: there is no distinction in sound in the later Greek pronunciation. or as a yearning cry¹⁹⁵¹⁹⁵Or, perhaps “a cry of augury.” uttered by the prophet, such as this: With us shall be God; according to which it is the explanation and manifestation of the good tidings proclaimed. For Behold, He saith, the virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a son; and He, being God, is to be with us. And, as if altogether astonished¹⁹⁶¹⁹⁶Cf. c. 71; and Just. M. Ap. 1, 47: θαυμαζόντων τὰ γεγενημένα: Dial. 118: τοῦτο θαυμάζων Ἠσαιὰς ἔφη. at these things, he proclaims in regard to these future events that With us shall be God. 118And yet again concerning His birth the same. prophet says in another place: Before she that travailed gave birth, and before the pains of travail came on, she escaped and was delivered of a man-child. Thus he showed that His birth from the virgin was unforeseen and unexpected.¹⁹⁷¹⁹⁷III, xxvi. 2: “In eo autem quod dixerit: Ipse Dominus dabit signum, id quod erat inopinatum generationis ejus significavit. . . . Sed quoniam inopinata salus hominibus inciperet fieri, Deo adjuvante, inopinatus et partus virginis fiebat,” etc. And again the same prophet says: Unto us a son is born, and unto us a child is given:¹⁹⁸¹⁹⁸The transposition of “son” and “child” would seem to be an oversight: see however Just. M. Ap. 1, 35 (παιδίον . . . νεανίσκος]: and note that the whole passage is quoted differently in c. 56 below. and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God.¹⁹⁹¹⁹⁹So in IV, lv. 2: cf. III, xx. 2. So above, c. 40. But in c. 56 we have “Angel of great counsel,” as in III, xvii. 3: cf. Just. M. Dial. 76.

55. He calls Him Wonderful Counselor, meaning of the Father: whereby it is declared that the Father works all things together with Him; as is contained in the first book of Moses which is entitled Genesis: And God said, Let us make man after our image and likeness. For there is seen in this place the Father speaking to the Son,²⁰⁰²⁰⁰V, xv. 4: “Cum quo et loquebatur Pater: Faciamus,” etc. cf. IV, xxxiv. i. Cf. Barn. V, 5. the Wonderful Counselor of the Father. Moreover He is also our Counselor, giving advice; not compelling as God,²⁰¹²⁰¹V, i. 1: “non cum vi . . . sed secundum suadelam . . . suadentem, non vim inferentem:” cf. IV, lix. 1: Βία θεῷ οὐ πρόσεστιν · ἀγαθὴ δὲ γνώμη πάντοτε συμπάρεστιν αὐτῷ: lx. 1: ἀλλὰ μὴ βιαζομένου. Compare Ep. ad Diognetum 7: ὡς πείθων, οὐ βιαζόμενος · βία γὰρ οὐ πρόσεστι τῷ θεῷ. even though He is Mighty God, (as) he says; but giving advice that we should forsake ignorance and acquire knowledge, and 119depart from error and come to the truth, and put away corruption and receive incorruption.

56. And again Isaiah says: And they shall wish that they had been burned with fire: for unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given; whose government is upon his shoulders, and his name is called Angel of great counsel. For I will bring peace upon the rulers, again peace and health unto him. Great is his rule, and of his peace there is no bound, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to prosper and complete, to aid and undertake, ²⁰²²⁰²The Arm. offers double renderings both of κατορθῶσαι and of ἀντιλαεέσθαι. in righteousness and judgment from this time forth and for evermore. For hereby the Son of God is proclaimed both as being born and also as eternal King.²⁰³²⁰³Cf. cc. 36, 66, 95. But they shall wish that they had been burned with fire (is said) of those who believe not on Him, and who have done to Him all that they have done: for they shall say in the judgment, How much better that we had been burned with fire before the Son of God was born, than that, when He was born, we should not have believed on Him. Because for those who died before Christ appeared there is hope that in the judgment of the risen²⁰⁴²⁰⁴The Arm. appears to mean “of the Risen One ”: but the text may be corrupt. they may obtain salvation, even such as feared God and died in righteousness and had in them the Spirit of God, as the patriarchs and prophets and righteous men. But for those who after Christ’s appearing believed not on Him, there is a vengeance without pardon in the judgment. 120Now in this: Whose government is upon his shoulder, the cross is in a figure declared, on which He was nailed back.²⁰⁵²⁰⁵This is Justin’s interpretation in Ap. 1, 35: οὗ ἡ ἀρχὴ ἐπὶ τῶν ὤμων· μηνυτικὸν τῆς δυνάμεως τοῦ σταυροῦ, ῷ προσέθηκε τοὺς ὤμους σταυρωθείς. For that which was and is a reproach to Him, and for His sake to us,²⁰⁶²⁰⁶Cf. Just. M. Dial. 101: Ὄνειδος μὲν γὰρ ἡμῖν τοῖς εἰς αὐτὸν πιστεύουσιν ἀνθρώποις πανταχοῦ ἐστιν. Justin is interpreting ὄνειδος ἀνθρώπων (Ps. xxii. 7). even the cross, this same is, says he, His government, being a sign of His kingdom. And, Angel of great counsel, he says; that is, of the Father²⁰⁷²⁰⁷III, xvii. 3: “magni consilii patris nuntius:” see note to c. 54. whom He hath declared unto us.

57. That the Son of God should be born, and in what way He was to be born, and that He should be shown to be Christ—from what has been said it is plain how this was made known beforehand by the prophets. And in addition to this, in what land and among whom of mankind He was to be born²⁰⁸²⁰⁸Cf. Just. M. Ap. 1, 34: Οπου δὲ καὶ τῆς γῆς γεννᾶσθαι ἔμελλεν, κ.τ.λ., quoting Mic. v. 2, which Irenæus quotes below, c. 63. and to appear, this also was proclaimed beforehand with words such as these. Moses in Genesis says thus: There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until he shall come for whom it remaineth; ²⁰⁹²⁰⁹So in IV, xx. 2: “cui repositum est,” corresponding to ᾧ ἀπόκειται, the reading which Justin defends in I 120. and he shall be the expectation of the Gentiles: washing his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape. Now Judah was the ancestor of the Jews, the son of Jacob; from whom also they obtained the name.²¹⁰²¹⁰Cf. Just. M. Ap. 1, 32: Ἰούδας γὰρ προπάτωρ Ἰουδαίων, ἀφ᾽ οὖ καὶ τὸ Ἰουδαῖοι καλεῖσθαι ἐσχήκασι. See on this whole chapter Introd. pp. 6 ff. 121And there failed not a prince among them and a leader, until the coming of Christ. But from the time of His coming the might of the quiver was captured,²¹¹²¹¹The translation is uncertain. Cf. Justin, ibid.: μεθ᾽ ὅν εὐθὺς δοριάλωτος ὑμῖν ἡ γῆ Ἰουδαίων παρεδόθη. the land of the Jews was given over into subjection to the Romans, and they had no longer a prince or king of their own. For He was come, for whom remaineth in heaven the kingdom;²¹²²¹²Cf. Justin, ibid.: ὧ ἀπόκειται τό βασίλειον. who also washed his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape. His robe as also His garment are those who believe on Him,²¹³²¹³Cf. Justin, ibid.: ἡ γὰρ κεκλημενη . . . στολὴ οἱ πιστεύοντες αὐτῷ εἰσιν ἄνθρωποι. And for what follows: ὃν τρόπον γὰρ τὸ τῆς ἀμπέλου αἷμα οὐκ ἄνθρωπος πεποίηκεν ἀλλ᾽ ὁ θεός, κ.τ.λ. and the similar passage in Dial. 54. whom also He cleansed, redeeming us by His blood. And His blood is said to be blood of the grape: for even as the blood of the grape no man maketh, but God produceth, and maketh glad them that drink thereof, so also His flesh and blood no man wrought, but God made. The Lord Himself gave the sign of the virgin, even that Emmanuel which was from the virgin; who also maketh glad them that drink of Him, that is to say, who receive His Spirit, (even) everlasting gladness. Wherefore also He is the expectation of the Gentiles, of those who hope in Him; because we expect of Him that He will establish again the kingdom.

58. And again Moses says: There shall rise a star out of Jacob; and a leader²¹⁴²¹⁴So in III, ix. 2 (”dux”). The only other evidence for this seems to be Just. M. Dial. 106 (ἡγοὐμενος): LXX, ἄνθρωπος. shall be raised up out of Israel; showing yet more plainly that the dispensation 122of His coming in flesh should be among the Jews. And from Jacob and from the tribe of Judah He who was born, coming down from heaven, took upon Him this economy of dispensation: for the star appeared in heaven. And by leader he means king, because He is the King of all the redeemed. And at His birth the star appeared to the Magi who dwelt in the east; and thereby they learned that Christ was born; and they came to Judea, led by the star; until the star came to Bethlehem where Christ was born, and entered the house wherein was laid the child, wrapped in swaddling clothes; and it stood over His head,²¹⁵²¹⁵Cf. Protevang. Jacobi (cod. D): ἕως οὗ εἰσῆλθεν . . . καὶ ἔστη ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν τοῦ παιδίου: Opus Imperf. in Matth. p. 30: ’venit et stetit super caput pueri.” Codex Bezæ has ἐπάνω τοῦ παιδίου and supra puerum (with vet. lat.). declaring to the Magi the Son of God the Christ.

59. Moreover Isaiah himself yet further says. And there shall come forth a rod out of the roots of Jesse, and a flower from his root shall come forth. And the spirit of God shall rest upon him; the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of knowledge and of godliness: the spirit of the fear of God shall fill him.²¹⁶²¹⁶This passage was quoted in c. 9. Not according to opinion shall he judge, and not according to speech shall he reprove: but he shall judge judgment for the humble, and show mercy to²¹⁷²¹⁷As though reading ἐλεήσει for ἐλέγξει. But in III, x. 1 we find “arguet gloriosos terrae.” The confusion between ἐλέγχειν and ἐλεεῖν is found in the text of Jude 22 the humble of the earth. And he shall smite the earth with the word of his mouth, and with the 123breath of his lips²¹⁸²¹⁸Lit. “with spirit through the lips,” as in LXX. shall he slay the impious man. And he shall be girt about his loins with righteousness, and with truth encompassed about his reins. And the wolf shall feed with the lamb, and the leopard²¹⁹²¹⁹Omitting “shall lie down”: but this is found in V, xxxiii. 4 (lat. and arm.): so too are the other words which are wanting in what follows here. with the kid, and the calf and the lion shall pasture together. And a sucking child shall put his hand on the hole of the asps, and on the lair of the offspring of the asps, and they shall not hurt him. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, and he that riseth up to rule the Gentiles: in him shall the Gentiles hope: and his rising up²²⁰²²⁰As though reading ἀνάστασις instead of ἀνάπανσις. shall be honor. By these words he states that He was born from her who was of the race of David and of Abraham. For Jesse was the descendant of Abraham, and the father of David; (and David’s) descendant the virgin was who conceived Christ. Now (as to) the rod: for this cause also Moses with²²¹²²¹The Arm. means “with,” not “by means of.” Cf. Just. M. Dial. 86: Μωυσῆς μετὰ ῥάβδου ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ λαοῦ ἀπολύτρωσιν ἐπέμφθη: the Rod from Jesse’s root is there said to be Christ a rod showed the mighty works to Pharaoh: and with other men also the rod is a sign of rule. And by flower he means His flesh;²²²²²²Or “body.” for from spirit it budded forth, as we have said before.

60. Now, Not according to opinion shall he judge, and not according to speech shall he reprove: but he shall judge judgment for the humble, and shall show mercy to the humble on the earth—(by this) he the 124more establishes and declares His godhead.²²³²²³III, x. 1: “secundum autem quod Deus erat non secundum gloriam judicabat neque secundum loquelam arguebat.” For to judge without respect of persons and partiality, and not as favoring the illustrious, but affording to the humble worthy and like and equal treatment, accords with the height and summit of the righteousness of God: for God is influenced and moved by none, save only the righteous. And to show mercy is the peculiar attribute of God, who by mercy is able to save. And He shall smite the earth with a word, and slay the impious with a word only: this belongs to God who worketh all things with a word. And in saying: He shall be girt about his loins with righteousness, and with truth encompassed about his reins, he declares His human form and aspect, and His own surpassing righteousness.

61. Now as to the union and concord and peace of the animals of different kinds,²²⁴²²⁴In V, xxxiii. 4 he discusses the same question and, while recognizing that some persons give a symbolical interpretation, he inclines to look for a literal fulfillment. Here also he finds room for both interpretations. The passage of Papias there quoted, as to the marvellous productivity of the millennial period, ends with the statement that the animals will live in peace and concord and in subjection to man. This explains the reference to the Elders in our text. which by nature are opposed and hostile to each other, the Elders say that so it will be in truth at the coming of Christ, when He is to reign over all. For already in a symbol he announces the gathering together in peace and concord, through the name of Christ, of men of unlike races and (yet) of like dispositions. For, when thus united, on the righteous, who are likened to calves and lambs and kids and sucking 125children, those inflict no hurt at all who in the former time were, through their rapacity, like wild beasts in manners and disposition, both men and women; so much so that some of them were like wolves and lions, ravaging the weaker and warring on their equals; while the women (were like) leopards or asps, who slew, it may be, even their loved ones with deadly poisons, or by reason of lustful desire. (But now) coming together in one name²²⁵²²⁵The Arm. text as printed gives “in my name”; but by a different division of the letters we get “in one name.” they have acquired righteous habits by the grace of God, changing their wild and untamed nature. And this has come to pass already. For those who were before exceeding wicked, so that they left no work of ungodliness undone, learning of Christ and believing on Him, have at once believed and been changed, so as to leave no excellency of righteousness undone; so great is the transformation which faith in Christ the Son of God effects for those who believe on Him. And he says: Rising up to rule the Gentiles, because He is to die and rise again, and be confessed and believed as the Son of God (and) King. On this account he says: And His rising up shall be honor: that is, glory; for then was He glorified as God, when He rose.

62.Wherefore again the prophet says:²²⁶²²⁶Cf. c. 38. In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen: that body²²⁷²²⁷Or “flesh”; and so throughout the passage. of Christ, which, as we have said before, is born of David, he plainly declares as after death rising from the dead. For the body is called a 126tabernacle.²²⁸²²⁸Cf. Wisd. ix. 15 (R. V.): “For a corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly frame (τὸ γεῶδες σκῆνος) lieth heavy on a mind that is full of cares:” 2 Cor. v. 1: ἡ ἐπίγειος ἡμῶν εἰκία τοῦ σκήνους: and cf. σκήνωμα in 2 Pet. i. 13 f. For the use of σκῆνος in the sense of “body” in Greek literature, see Field, Notes on N.T. Translation, p. 183; and Stephanus, Thesaurus Gr. Ling., ad vocem For by these words he says that He who according to the flesh is of the race of David will be Christ the Son of God; and that He will die and rise again, and that He is in aspect a man, but in power God; and that He Himself will be as judge of all the world and as the only worker of righteousness and redeemer—all this the Scripture declared.

63. And again the prophet Micah speaks of the place where Christ should be born, that it should be in Bethlehem of Judæa, saying thus: And thou, Bethlehem of Judæa, art thou the least among the princes of Judah? for out of, thee shall come a prince who shall feed my people Israel. ²²⁹²²⁹Irenæus quotes the prophecy in the Matthæan form, which differs much from the LXX rendering. Moreover he agrees with Codex Bezæ in reading τῆς Ἰουδαίας for γῆ Ἰούδα, and μή for οὐδαμῶς. Justin quotes the words twice in the Matthæan form, but with the usual γῆ Ἰούδα and οὐδαμῶς (Ap. 1, 34, Dial. 78). (Micah v. 2) But Bethlehem is the native place²³⁰²³⁰The Arm. word renders πάτρις in Matt. xiii. 54, 57. of David: so that not only in respect of the Virgin who bore Him is He of David’s race, but also in respect of His birth in Bethlehem the native place of David.

64. And again David says that of his race Christ. is to be born, (speaking) after this manner: For David my²³¹²³¹“My” for “thy” (LXX σου) by oversight. Part of the text is quoted in III, ix. 2. See also above, c. 36. servant’s sake turn not away the face of thy Christ. The Lord sware truth unto David, and he will not disappoint him: Of the fruit of thy body 127will I set on thy throne: if thy children shall keep my covenant and my testimonies, which I covenanted with them, their sons for evermore (shall sit upon thy throne).²³²²³²The Arm. has “and their son for evermore,” and nothing further. But none of the sons of David reigned for evermore, nor was their kingdom for evermore; for it was brought to nought. But the king that was born of David, He is Christ. All these testimonies declare in plain terms His descent according to the flesh, and the race and place where He was to be born; so that no man should seek among the Gentiles or elsewhere for the birth of the Son of God, but in Bethlehem of Judea from Abraham and from David’s race.

65. And the manner of His entry into Jerusalem, which was the capital of Judæa, where also was His royal seat and the temple of God, the prophet Isaiah declares: Say ye to the daughter of Sion, Behold a king corneth unto thee meek and sitting upon an ass, a colt the foal of an ass.²³³²³³The passage is quoted in the Matthaean form, and ascribed to Isaiah from whom the first words come. In St Matthew’s Gospel it is ascribed to “the prophet,” though some codices insert “Zachariah.” Justin quotes it differently, Ap. 1, 35, Dial. 53. (Isa. lxii. 11, Zech. ix. 9) For, sitting. on an ass’s colt, so He entered into Jerusalem, the multitudes strewing and putting down for Him their garments. And by the daughter of Sion he means Jerusalem.

66. So then, that the Son of God should be born, and in what manner born, and where He was to be born, and that Christ is the one eternal King²³⁴²³⁴Cf. cc. 36, 56, 95. the prophets thus declared. And again they told beforehand concerning Him how, sprung from mankind, He should heal those whom He healed, 128and raise the dead whom He raised, and be hated and despised and undergo sufferings and be put to death and crucified, even as He was hated and despised and put to death.

67. At this point let us speak of His healings. Isaiah says thus: He took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses: (Isa. liii. 4) that is to say, He shall take, and shall bear. For there are passages in which the Spirit of God through the prophets recounts things that are to be as having taken place.²³⁵²³⁵Cf. Just. M. Dial. 114: ἔσθ᾽ ὅτε γὰρ τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα . . . λόγους ἐφθέγξατο περὶ τῶν ἐποβαίνειν μελλόντων, φθεγγόμενον αὐτοὺς ὡς τότε γινομένων ἢ καὶ γεγενημένων. It is interesting to see that in IV. lv. 2, Irenæus actually had given the future in this passage. “Ipse infirmitates nostras accipiet et languores portabit.” For that which with God is essayed and conceived of as determined to take place, is reckoned as having already taken place: and the Spirit, regarding and seeing the time in which the issues of the prophecy are fulfilled, utters the words (accordingly). And concerning the kind of healing, thus will He make mention, saying: In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and in darkness and in me the eyes of the blind shall see. And the same says again: Be strong, ye weak hands and feeble and trembling knees: be comforted, ye that are of a fearful mind. Be strong, fear not. Behold, our God will recompense judgment: He will come and save us. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear: then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be plain. And concerning the dead, that they shall be raised, he says thus: The dead shall be raised, and they that are in the tombs 129shall be raised. And in bringing these things to pass He shall be believed to be the Son of God.

68. And that He shall be despised and tormented and in the end put to death, Isaiah says thus, Behold, my son shall understand, ²³⁶²³⁶The Arm. text gives the passive (“be understood”); but doubtless the LXX συνήσει was read: the difference is only in the final letter. and shall be exalted and glorified greatly. Even as many shall be astonished at thee, so without glory shall thy form be from men. And many races shall be astonished, and kings shall shut their mouths: for they to whom it was not declared concerning him shall see, and they who have not heard shall consider. Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? We declared before him as a child, as a root in a dry ground: and there is to him no form nor glory: and we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty: and his form was without honor, meaner than that of other seen: a man in chastisement, and acquainted with the bearing of pain; for his face was turned away, he was dishonored and made of no account. He beareth our sins, and for our sakes endureth pain: and we accounted him to be in pain and chastisement and affliction. But he was wounded for our iniquities, and was tormented for our sins. The discipline of our peace (was) upon him; by his stripes we were healed. By these words it is declared that He was tormented; as also David says—And I was tormented.²³⁷²³⁷The repetition in the Arm. of the word here rendered “tormented” suggests that the same Greek verb would underlie the words of the prophet (“was tormented for our sins”) and of the psalmist (“And I was tormented”). But in the former case we and μεμαλάκισται, and this verb does not occur in the LXX of the Psalms. Probably the reference is to Ps. xxxviii. 8 (9), ἐκακώθην, taking up ἐν κακώσει and κεκακῶσθαιof Isa. liii. 4, 7. For the argument cf. Just. M. Ap. 1, 35: ὁ μὲν Δαυεὶδ . . . οὐδὲν ταύτων ἔπαθεν, κ.τ.λ. Now 130David was never tormented, but Christ (was), when the command was given that He should be crucified. And again by Isaiah His Word says: I gave my back to scourging, and my cheeks to smiting: and my face I turned not away from the shame of spitting.²³⁸²³⁸Cf. c. 34. And Jeremiah the prophet says the same, thus: He shall give his cheek to the smiter: he shall be filled with reproaches. All these things Christ suffered.

69. Now what follows in Isaiah is this: By his stripes we were healed. All we like sheep went astray: a man in his way went astray: and the Lord delivered him up to our sins. It is manifest therefore that by the will of the Father these things occurred to Him for the sake of our salvation. Then he says: And he by reason of his suffering opened not (his) mouth: as a sheep to the slaughter was he brought, as a lamb²³⁹²³⁹The Arm. word for “lamb” in this place (amaru) seems to be a Syriac loan-word; see the note in Dr. Weber’s translation. dumb before the shearer. Behold how he declares His voluntary coming to death. And when the prophet says: In the humiliation his judgment was taken away, he signifies the appearance of His humiliation: according to the form of the abasement was the taking away of judgment. And the taking away of judgment is for some unto salvation, and to some unto the torments of perdition. For there is a taking away for a person, and also from a person. 131So also with the judgment—those for whom it is taken away have it unto the torments of their perdition: but those from whom it is taken away are saved by it. Now those took away to themselves the judgment who crucified Him, and when they had done this to Him believed not on Him: for through that judgment which was taken away by them they shall be destroyed with torments. And from them that believe on Him the judgment is taken away, and they are no longer under it. And the judgment is that which by fire will be the destruction of the unbelievers at the end of the world.

70. Then he says: His generation who shall declare? This was said to warn us, lest on account of His enemies and the outrage of His sufferings we should despise Him as a mean and contemptible man. For He who endured all this has an undeclarable generation;²⁴⁰²⁴⁰IV, IV. 2: “et inenarrabile habet genus.” Cf. Just. M. Ap. 1, 51: ὁ ταῦτα τάσχων ἀνεκδιήγητον ἔχει τὸ γένος: Dial. 43 and 76. for by generation He means descent; (for) He who is His Father is undeclarable and unspeakable. Know therefore that such descent was His who endured these sufferings; and despise Him not because of the sufferings which for thy sake He of purpose endured, but fear Him because of His descent.

71. And in another place Jeremiah says: The Spirit of our face, the Lord Christ;²⁴¹²⁴¹III, xi. 2: “Spiritus enim inquit faciei nostræ Christus Dominus.” See for this whole passage Introd. p. 63. and how He was taken in their snares, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the Gentiles. That, being (the) Spirit of God, Christ was to become a 132suffering man the Scripture declares; and is, as it were, amazed and astonished at His sufferings, that in such manner He was to endure sufferings, under whose shadow we said that we should live. And by shadow he means His body.²⁴²²⁴²Or “flesh,” as elsewhere. For just as a shadow is made by a body, so also Christ’s body was made by His Spirit.²⁴³²⁴³Cf. c. 59, ad fin. But, further, the humiliation and contemptibility of His body he indicates by the shadow. For, as the shadow of bodies standing upright is upon the ground and is trodden upon, so also the body of Christ fell upon the ground by His sufferings and was trodden on indeed. And he named Christ’s body a shadow, because the Spirit overshadowed it, as it were, with glory and covered it.²⁴⁴²⁴⁴The words appear to mean literally: “the Spirit becoming as it were a shadow with glory and covering it (or him).” Moreover oftentimes when the Lord passed by, they laid those who were held by divers diseases in the way, and on whomsoever His shadow fell, they were healed.²⁴⁵²⁴⁵This is said of St Peter in Acts v. 15.

72. And again the same prophet (says) thus concerning the sufferings of Christ: Behold how the righteous is destroyed, and no man layeth it to heart; and righteous men are taken away, and no man understandeth. For from the face of iniquity is the taking away of the righteous: peace shall be his burial, he hath been taken away from the midst. And who else is perfectly righteous, but the Son of God, who makes righteous and perfects them that believe on Him, who like unto Him are persecuted 133and put to death?²⁴⁶²⁴⁶The same point about “the Just” and “just men” is made by Justin (Ap. 1, 48; Dial. 110). But in saying: Peace shall be his burial, he declares how on account of our redemption He died: for it is in the peace of redemption: and (also he declares) that by His death those who aforetime were enemies and opposed to one another, believing with one accord upon Him, should have peace with one another, becoming friends and beloved on account of their common faith in Him; as indeed they have become. But in saying: He hath been taken away from the midst, he signifies His resurrection from the dead. Moreover because He appeared no more after His death and burial, the prophet declares that after dying and rising again He was to remain immortal, (saying) thus: He asked life and thou gavest (it) him, and length of days for ever and ever. Now what is this that he says, He asked life, since He was about to die? He proclaims His resurrection from the dead, and that being raised from the dead He is immortal. For He received both life, that He should rise, and length of days for ever and ever, that He should be incorruptible.

73. And again David says thus concerning the death and resurrection of Christ: I laid me down and slept: I awaked, for the Lord received me.²⁴⁷²⁴⁷Cf. IV, xlviii. 2; lv. 4. David said not this of himself, for he was not raised after death: but the Spirit of Christ, who (spake) also in other prophets concerning Him, says here by David: I laid me down and slept: I 134awaked, for the Lord received me. By sleep he means death; for He arose again.

74. And again David (says) thus concerning the sufferings of Christ: Why did the Gentiles rage, and the people imagine vain things? Kings rose up on the earth, and princes were gathered together, against the Lord and his Anointed. (Cf. Acts iv 25 ff.) For Herod the king of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Claudius Caesar,²⁴⁸²⁴⁸Pilate was procurator of Judæa for ten years (27–37). Claudius did not become emperor until A.D. 42. The statement here made is therefore inconsistent with the chronology of history: but it agrees with the view, expressed in II, xxxiii. 2 ff., that our Lord reached ætatem seniorem, that is, an age between 40 and 50: a view which is largely based on John viii. 57: “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” For these words seemed to Irenæus to show that He could not have been much less than fifty at the time when they were spoken. See C. H. Turner’s art. “Chronology” in Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible. came together and condemned Him to be crucified. For Herod feared, as though He were to be an earthly king, lest he should be expelled by Him from the kingdom. But Pilate was constrained by Herod and the Jews that were with him against his will to deliver Him to death: (for they threatened him) if he should not rather do this²⁴⁹²⁴⁹The Armenian is here uncertain. than act contrary to Cæsar, by letting go a man who was called a king.

And further concerning the sufferings of Christ the same prophet says: Thou hast repelled and despised us; and hast cast away thine Anointed. Thou hast broken the covenant of my²⁵⁰²⁵⁰Cf. c. 64 for a similar oversight. servant; thou hast cast his holiness to the ground. Thou hast overthrown all his hedges; thou hast made his 135strongholds to tremble.²⁵¹²⁵¹Lit. “for trembling.” They that pass on the way have ravaged him; he is become a reproach to his neighbors. Thou hast exalted the right hand of his oppressors; thou hast made his enemies to rejoice over him. Thou hast turned away the help of his sword, and gavest him not a hand in the battle. Thou hast removed and thrown him down from purification; thou hast overturned his throne upon the ground. Thou hast shortened the days of his time, and hast poured forth shame upon him. That He should endure these things, and that too by the will of the Father, he manifestly declared: for by the will of the Father He was to endure sufferings.

76. And Zechariah says thus: Sword, awake against my shepherd, and against the man (that is) my companion. Smite²⁵²²⁵²“Smite” is in the singular, as in cod. A of the LXX, which is here followed. the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered. And this came to pass when He was taken by the Jews: for all the disciples forsook Him, fearing lest they should die with Him. For not yet did they steadfastly believe on Him, until they had seen Him risen from the dead.

77. Again He says in the Twelve Prophets,²⁵³²⁵³Cf. c. 93, and IV, xxix. 5; “in duodecim prophetis Malachias.” Often in Justin. And they bound him and brought him as a present to the king. For Pontius Pilate was governor of Judæa, and he had at that time resentful enmity against Herod the king of the Jews.²⁵⁴²⁵⁴The same interpretation is given by Justin (Dial. 103). But then, when Christ was brought to him bound, Pilate sent 136Him to Herod, giving command to enquire of him, that he might know of a certainty what he should desire concerning Him; making Christ a convenient occasion of reconciliation with the king.

78. And in Jeremiah He thus declares His death and descent into hell, saying: And the Lord the Holy One of Israel, remembered his dead, which aforetime fell asleep in the dust of the earth; and he went down unto them, to bring the tidings of his salvation, to deliver them.²⁵⁵²⁵⁵This is one of the prophecies which Justin declared the Jews had erased from their Scriptures (Dial. 72). It is quoted several times by Irenæus: III, xxii. 1 (as from Isaiah); IV, xxxvi. 1 (as from Jeremiah, to whom Justin had attributed it); l. 1 (an allusion only); lv. 3 (“alii autem dicentes: Rememoratus . . . causam reddiderunt propter quam passus est hæc omnia”); V, xxxi. 1 (with variations, and no name of author). In this place He also renders the cause of His death: for His descent into hell was the salvation of them that had passed away.

And, again, concerning His cross Isaiah says thus: I have stretched out my hands all the day long to a disobedient and gainsaying people. For this is an indication of the cross.²⁵⁶²⁵⁶Cf. c. 46: Barn. XII. 4: Just. M. Ap. 1, 35. And yet more manifestly David says: Hunting-dogs encompassed me:²⁵⁷²⁵⁷Justin (Dial. 104) quotes the passage with κόνες πολλοί (as LXX), but in his comment says: οὖς καὶ κύνας καλεῖ καὶ κυνηγούς. Jerome, in his Psalter translated from the Hebrew, has “venatores,” apparently after Symmachus or Theodotion (see Field, Origenis Hexapla, ad. loc.). The Arm. is literally “dogs hunter”; but “hunter” is used adjectivally, and the two words signify “hounds.” Why πολλοί should have disappeared and “hunter” have taken its place does not seem to be explained by these curious parallels. the assembly of evil-doers came about me. They pierced my hands and my feet. And again he says: My heart became even as wax melting in the midst 137of my body;²⁵⁸²⁵⁸Lit. κοιλίας. and they put asunder²⁵⁹²⁵⁹Or “they sent far”: apparently for ἐξηρίθμησαν of Ps. xxii. 17. my bones, and again he says: Spare my soul from the sword and nail my flesh: for the assembly of evil-doers hath risen up against me. ²⁶⁰²⁶⁰“Nail my flesh” comes from the LXX. of Ps. cxix. 120, where A. V. has “My flesh trembleth for fear of thee.” Cf. Barn. V, 13: Φεῖσαί μον τῆς ψυχῆς ὰπὸ ῥομφαίας καὶ καθήλωσόν μου τὰς σάρκας, ὅτι πονηρευομένων συναγωγαὶ ἐπανέστησάν μοι. (Ps. cxix 120; xxii. 16.) In these words with manifest clearness he signifies that He should be crucified. And Moses says this same thing to the people, thus: And thy life shall be hanged up before thine eyes, and thou shalt fear by day and by night, and thou shalt not believe in thy life.

80. And again David says: They looked upon me: they parted my garments among them, and upon any vesture they cast lots. For at His crucifixion the soldiers parted His garments as they were wont; and the garments they parted by tearing; but for the vesture, because it was woven from the top and was not sewn, they cast lots, that to whomsoever it should fall he should take it.

And again Jeremiah the prophet says: And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was sold, whom they bought from the children of Israel; and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me. (Zech. xi. 13) For Judas, being one of Christ’s disciples, agreed with the Jews and covenanted with them, when he saw they desired to kill Him, because he had been reproved by Him: and he took the thirty staters²⁶¹²⁶¹In Matt. xxvi. 15 Cod. Bezae and some other authorities have στετῆρας for ἀργύρια. of the province, and betrayed Christ unto them: and then, repenting of 138what he had done, he gave the silver back again to the rulers of the Jews, and hanged himself. But they, thinking it not right to cast it into their treasury, because it was the price of blood, bought with it the ground that was a certain potter’s for the burial of strangers.

82. And at His crucifixion, when He asked a drink, they gave Him to drink vinegar mingled with gall. (Cf. Joh. xix. 29) And this was declared through David. They gave gall to my meat, and in any thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.²⁶²²⁶²The Arm. probably represents Ἐν δὲ τῷ σταυροθῆναι αὐτόν. The ὄξος μετὰ χολῆς μεμιγμένον in Matt. xxvii. 34 (ὄξος A etc.; οἶνον אBD etc.) was before crucifixion, when “He would not drink.” “when He asked a drink” on the cross (Joh. xix. 29), they gave Him ὄξος: but some MSS. add μετὰ χολῆς. Cf. Barn. VII, 3, 5; Ev. Petr. 5.

83. And that, being raised from the dead, He was to ascend into heaven, (Ps. lxviii 17) David says thus: The chariot of God (is) ten-thousandfold, thousands are the drivers: ²⁶³²⁶³As though reading εὐθυνόντων (as some MSS. of LXX) for εὐθηνούντων: so too in the Arm. Psalter, which in the next verse has after “captive”: “He received booty, he distributed gifts, and gave to the sons of men.” It is possible therefore that here “he received, he gave” is a reminiscence of his own Psalter on the part of the translator. the Lord (is) among then in Sinai in (his) sanctuary. He ascended up on high, he led captivity captive: he received, he gave gifts to men. And by captivity he means the destruction of the rule of the apostate angels.²⁶⁴²⁶⁴Just. M. Dial. 39: προεφητεύθη αἰχμαλωτεῦσαι αὐτὸν ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τῆς πλάνης καὶ δοῦναι ἡμῖν δόματα. He declares also the place where He was to ascend into heaven from the earth. For the Lord, he says, from Sion ascended up on high.²⁶⁵²⁶⁵This is not a fresh quotation, but part of the comment on the passage before quoted: “The Lord . . . in Sinai in his sanctuary: he ascended upon high.” Irenæus seems to have taken it as though it were “in Sion in his sanctuary.” For over against Jerusalem, 139on the mount which is called (the Mount) of Olives, after He was risen from the dead, He assembled His disciples, and expounded to them the things concerning the kingdom of heaven; and they saw that He ascended, and they saw how the heavens were opened and received Him.

84. And the same says David again: Lift up your gates, ye rulers; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall come in. For the everlasting gates are the heavens. But because the Word descended invisible to created things, He was not made known in His descent to them. Because the Word was made flesh, He was visible in His ascension; and, when the powers saw Him, the angels below cried out to those who were on the firmament: Lift up your gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting gates, that the King of glory may come in. And when they marvelled and said: Who is this? those who had already seen Him testified a second time: The Lord strong and mighty, he is the King of glory.²⁶⁶²⁶⁶Justin’s interpretation (Dial. 36) makes the humble form of our Lord’s humanity (ἀειδὴς καὶ ἄτιμος) the reason why He is not at once recognized. The interpretation given by Irenæus corresponds to that of the Ascension of Isaiah: see Introd. p. 43.

85. And being raised from the dead and exalted at the Father’s right hand, He awaits the time appointed by the Father for the judgment, when all enemies shall be put under Him. Now the enemies are all those who were found in apostasy, angels and archangels and powers and thrones, who despised the truth. And the prophet David 140himself says thus: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. And that He ascended thither, whence He had come down, David says: From the end of heaven is his going forth, and his cessation even at the end of heaven. Then he signifies his judgment: And there is none that shall be hid from his heat.²⁶⁷²⁶⁷The same interpretation in IV, lv. 4: “quoniam illuc assumptus est unde et descendit, et non est qui justum judicium ejus effugiat.”

86. If then the prophets prophesied that the Son of God was to appear upon the earth, and prophesied also where on the earth and how and in what manner He should make known His appearance, and all these prophecies the Lord took upon Himself; our faith in Him was well-founded, and the tradition of the preaching (is) true: that is to say, the testimony of the apostles, who being sent forth by the Lord preached in all the world the Son of God, who came to suffer, and endured to the destruction of death and the quickening of the flesh: that by the putting away of the enmity towards God, which is unrighteousness, we should obtain peace with Him, doing that which is pleasing to Him. And this was declared by the prophets in the words: How beautiful are the feet of them that bring tidings of peace, and of them that. bring tidings of good things. ²⁶⁸²⁶⁸Quoted with a small difference in III, xiii. 1. (Isa. lii. 7) And that these were to go forth from Judæa and from Jerusalem, to declare to us the word of God, which is the law²⁶⁹²⁶⁹See the comment on the same text in IV, lvi. 3 f.: “Si autem libertatis lex, id est, verbum Dei ab apostolis qui ab Hierusalem exierunt annuntiatum,” etc. for us, Isaiah says thus: For from Sion shall come 141forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And that in all the earth they were to preach, David says: Into all the earth went forth their speech, and their words to the ends of the world.

And that not by the much speaking of the law, but by the brevity of faith and love, men were to be saved, Isaiah says thus: A word brief and short in righteousness: for a short word will God make in the whole world. (Cf. Isa. x. 23) And therefore the apostle Paul says: Love is the fulfilling of the law: for he who loves God has fulfilled the law. Moreover the Lord, when He was asked which is the first commandment, said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy strength. ²⁷⁰²⁷⁰For the abbreviation of the “First Commandment” cf. Just. M. I 93. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments, He says, all the hangeth and the prophets. So then by our faith in Him He has made our love to God and our neighbour to grow, making us godly and righteous and good. And therefore a short word has God made on the earth in the world.

88. And that after His ascension He was to be exalted above all, and that there shall be none to be compared and equalled unto Him, Isaiah says thus:²⁷¹²⁷¹Almost the same comment is found in IV, lv. 4, where the same combination of texts is made: “Quisquis judicatur, ex adverso adstet; et quisquis justificatur, appropinquet puero Dei (Arm. Domini); et væ vobis . . . in altissimis.” Who is he that entereth into judgment (with me)? Let him stand up against (me). And 142who is he who is justified? Let him draw near to the Lord’s Son. Woe unto you, for ye shall grow old as a garment, and the moth shall devour you. And all flesh shall be humbled and abased, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in the highest. And that in the end by His name they should be saved who served God, Isaiah says: And on those who serve me a new name shall be called, which shall be blessed upon the earth: and they shall bless the true God. And that this blessing He Himself should bring about, and Himself should redeem us by His own blood, Isaiah declared, saying: No mediator, no angel, but the Lord himself saved them; because he loved them and spared them: he himself redeemed them.²⁷²²⁷²Cf. c. 94. In III, xxii. 1 we have; “Neque senior (πρέσβυς LXX) neque angelus.”

89. That He would not send back the redeemed to the legislation of Moses—for the law was fulfilled in Christ—but would have them live²⁷³²⁷³The word means more especially “to live in freedom,” in newness by the Word, through faith in the Son of God and love, Isaiah declared, saying: Remember not the former things, nor bring to mind the things that were in the beginning. Behold I make new (things), which shall now spring up, and ye shall know (them). And I will make in the wilderness a way, and in the waterless place streams, to give drink to my chosen race, and to my people whom I have purchased to declare my virtues.²⁷⁴²⁷⁴Quoted in IV, lv. 5, with a brief comment. Now a wilderness and a waterless place was at first the calling of the Gentiles: for the Word had not passed through 143them,²⁷⁵²⁷⁵IV, xxv. 2.: “per omnes illos transiens Verbum,” in connection with “the voice of many waters.” nor given them the Holy Spirit to drink;²⁷⁶²⁷⁶The Greek doubtless was: οὐδὲ πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἐπὸτισεν αὐτούς: and the context shows that πνεῦμα must be taken as accusative. For the general thought of the passage cf. III, xviii. 1 f. who fashioned the new way of godliness and righteousness, and made copious streams to spring forth, disseminating over the earth the Holy Spirit; even as it had been promised through the prophets, that in the end of the days He should pour out the Spirit upon the face of the earth.

90. Therefore by newness of the spirit is our calling, and not in the oldness of the letter;²⁷⁷²⁷⁷I have followed the simple emendation suggested by the editors: the printed text has “not in our oldness.” even as Jeremiah prophesied: Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will accomplish for the house of Israel and for the house of Judah the covenant: of the testament²⁷⁸²⁷⁸After διαθήκην the words καινήν, οὐ κατὰ τὴν διαθήκην must have been missed by the scribe or translator. “The covenant of the testament” is only a double rendering of διαθήκην: such double renderings occur several times in this quotation, but I have not retained them in every case. which I covenanted with their fathers, in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt: because they continued not in the covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant of the testament that I will covenant with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my laws²⁷⁹²⁷⁹Lit. “giving my laws”; cf. Heb. viii. 10. into their minds, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: and they shall not teach any more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall 144know me, from the least to the greatest of them. For I will pardon and be merciful unto the sins of their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more.

91. And that these promises the calling from among the Gentiles should inherit, to whom also the new testament was opened up,²⁸⁰²⁸⁰Cf. c. 8, and note there. Isaiah says thus: These things saith the God of Israel: In that day a man shall trust²⁸¹²⁸¹Or “hope”: and so twice below. in his Maker, and his eyes shall look to the Holy One of Israel: and they shall not trust in altars, nor in the work of their own hands, which their fingers have made. For very plainly this was said of such as have forsaken idols and believed in God our Maker through the Holy One of Israel. And the Holy One of Israel is Christ: and He became visible to men, and to Him we look eagerly and behold Him; and we trust not in altars, nor in the works of our hands.

92. And that He should become visible²⁸²²⁸²Or “manifest,” as in the quotation below. amongst us—for the Son of God became Son of man—and be found of us who before had no knowledge (of Him), the Word Himself says thus in Isaiah: I became manifest to them that sought me not; I was found of them that asked not for me. I said, Behold, here am I, to a race that called not on my name.

93. And that this race was to become an holy people was declared in the Twelve Prophets²⁸³²⁸³Cf. c. 77. For the quotation cf. I, iv. 1; IV, xxxiv. 12. by Hosea, thus: I will call that which was not (my) 145people, my people; and her that was not beloved, beloved. It shall come to pass that in the place where it was called not my people, there shall they be called sons of the Living God. (Hos. ii. 23, i. 10) This also is that which was said by John the Baptist: That God is able of these stones to raise up sons to Abraham. For our hearts being withdrawn and taken away from the stony worship²⁸⁴²⁸⁴IV, xiii. 1: “a lapidum religione extrahens nos.” by means of faith behold God, and become sons of Abraham, who was justified by faith. And therefore God says by Ezekiel the prophet: And I will give them another heart, and a new spirit will I give them: and I will withdraw and take away the stony heart from their flesh, and I will give them another heart of flesh: so that they shall walk in my precepts, and shall keep my ordinances and do them. And they shall be to me for a people, and I will be to them for a God.

94. So then by the new calling a change of hearts in the Gentiles came to pass through the Word of God, when He was made flesh and tabernacled with men; as also His disciple John says: And his Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Wherefore the Church beareth much fruit of the redeemed: because no longer Moses (as) mediator nor Elijah (as) messenger,²⁸⁵²⁸⁵Rendering the Greek ἄγγελος. Cf. c. 88. but the Lord Himself has redeemed us, granting many more children to the Church than to the first Synagogue;²⁸⁶²⁸⁶Both the German translations take the passage to mean: “granting many children to the Church, the assembly of the first-born.” But it is hard to get this out of the Armenian text, which has “first” and not “first-born.” It seems certain that there is a contrast between “the Church” and “the first Synagogue” (whose husband was the Law, as is said below). The text can easily be amended so as to give the meaning required. Cf. IV, xlviii. 1. f: “duæ synagogæ . . . fructificantes . . . filios vivos vivo Deo”; III, vi. i: “Ecclesia, hæc enim est synagoga Dei.” For the quotation and its interpretation cf. Just. M. Ap. 1, 53. 146as Isaiah declared, saying: Rejoice thou barren, that didst not bear. The barren is the Church, which never at all in former times presented sons to God. Cry out and call, thou that didst not travail: for the children of the desolate are more than of her which hath an husband. Now the first Synagogue had as husband the Law.

95. Moreover Moses in Deuteronomy says that the Gentiles should be the head, and the unbelieving people the tail. And again he says: Ye provoked me to jealousy with those that are no gods, and angered me with your idols: and I will provoke you to jealousy with that which is no nation, and with a foolish nation will I anger you. (Cf. Rom. x. 19) Because they forsook the God who is, and worshipped and served the gods who are not; and they slew the prophets of God, and prophesied for Baal, who was the idol of the Canaanites. And the Son of God, who is,²⁸⁷²⁸⁷In the Arm. “who is” refers to “the Son.” they despised and condemned, but they chose Barabbas the robber who had been taken for murder: and the eternal King²⁸⁸²⁸⁸Cf. 36, 56, 66. they disavowed, and they acknowledged as their king the temporal Cæsar. (So) it pleased God to grant their inheritance to the foolish Gentiles, even to those who were not of the polity of God and knew not what God is. Since, then, by this calling life has been given (us), and God has summed up again for Himself in us the faith of Abraham, we ought 147not to turn back any more—I mean, to the first legislation. For we have received the Lord of the Law, the Son of God; and by faith in Him we learn to love God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves. Now the love of God is far from all sin,²⁸⁹²⁸⁹Dr Rendel Harris (Testimonies I, 66) has pointed out that this is a reminiscence of Polycarp; Ep. ad Phil. 3; Ὁ γὰρ ἔχων ἀγάπην μακράν ἐστιν πάσης ἁμαρτίας. and love to the neighbour worketh no ill to the neighbour. (Cf. Rom xiii. 10)

Wherefore also we need not the Law as a tutor. Behold, with the Father we speak, and in His presence we stand, being children in malice,²⁹⁰²⁹⁰Cf. c. 46. and grown strong in all righteousness and soberness. For no longer shall the Law say, Do not commit adultery, to him who has no desire at all for another’s wife; and Thou shalt not kill, to him who has put away from himself all anger and enmity; (and) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s field or ox or ass, to those who have no care at all for earthly things, but store up the heavenly fruits: nor An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, to him who counts no man his enemy, but all men his neighbors, and therefore cannot stretch out his hand at all for vengeance. It will not require tithes of him who consecrates all his possessions to God,²⁹¹²⁹¹IV, xxxi. 1: “illi quidem decimas suorum habebant consecratas: qui autem perceperunt libertatem, omnia quæ sunt ipsorum ad dominicos decernunt usus.” leaving father and mother and all his kindred, and following the Word of God. And there will be no command to remain idle for one day of rest, to him who perpetually keeps sabbath,²⁹²²⁹²Just. M. Dial. 12: σαββατίζειν ὑμᾶς ὁ καινὸς νόμος διὰ παντὸς εθέλει, καὶ ὑμεῖς μίαν ἀργοῠντες ἡμέραν εὐσεβεῖν δοκεῖτε. that is to 148say, who in the temple of God, which is man’s body, does service to God, and in every hour works righteousness. For I desire mercy, He saith, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. But the wicked that sacrificeth to me a calf is as if he should kill a dog; and that offereth fine flour, as though (he offered) swine’s blood. But whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And there is none other name of the Lord given under heaven whereby men are saved, save that of God, which is Jesus Christ the Son of God, to which also the demons are subject and evil spirits and all apostate energies.

97. By the invocation of the name of Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate,²⁹³²⁹³II, xlix. 3: Ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, τοῦ πταυρωθέντος ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πειλάτον. Cf. Just. M. Ap. ii., 6, Dial. 30, 76, 85. These words should be taken with c. 96: see Add. Note on p. 151. there is a separation and division among mankind; and wheresoever any of those who believe on Him shall invoke and call upon Him and do His will, He is near and present, fulfilling the requests of those who with pure hearts call upon Him. Whereby receiving salvation, we continually give thanks to God, who by His great, inscrutable and unsearchable wisdom delivered us, and proclaimed the salvation from heaven—to wit, the visible coming of our Lord, that is, His living as man²⁹⁴²⁹⁴Suggesting the Greek τὴν ἀνθρωπινὴν αὐτοῦ πολιτείαν. to which we by ourselves could not attain: for the things which are impossible with men are possible with God.²⁹⁵²⁹⁵So quoted in IV, xxxiv. 5. Wherefore also Jeremiah saith concerning her (i. e. wisdom): Who hath gone up into 149heaven, and taken her, and brought her down from the clouds? Who hath gone over the sea, found her, and will bring her for choice gold? There is none that hath found her way, nor any that comprehendeth her path. But he that knoweth all things knoweth her by his understanding: he that prepareth the earth for evermore, path filled it with four- footed beasts:²⁹⁶²⁹⁶The Arm. for “beasts” (κτηνῶν) is here “fat (things).” he that sendeth forth the light and it goeth; he called it, and it obeyed him with fear; and the stars shined in their watches, and were glad; he called them, and they said Here we be; they shined with gladness unto him that made them. This is our God: there shall none other be accounted of in comparison with him. He hath found out every way by knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob his servant, and to Israel that is beloved of him. Afterward did he appear upon earth, and was conversant with men. This is the book of the commandments of God, and of the law which endureth for ever. All they that hold it fast (are appointed) to life: but such as leave it shall die. Now by Jacob and Israel he means the Son of God, who received power from the Father over our life, and after having received this brought it down to us who were far off from Him, when He appeared on earth and was conversant with men, mingling and mixing²⁹⁷²⁹⁷With the whole of this passage compare IV, xxxiv. 4 ff., especially the words “prædicaverunt ejus secundum carnem adventum, per quem commixtio et communio Dei et hominis secundum placitum Patris facta est; ab initio prænuntiante Verbo Dei quoniam videbitur Deus ab hominibus et conversabitur cum eis super terram et colloqueretur et adfuturus esset suo plasmati”; and “præsignificant igitur prophetæ quoniam videbitur Deus ab hominibus,” words which come again a little further on. the Spirit of God the 150Father with the creature formed by God,²⁹⁸²⁹⁸Lit. “with the formation (plasma) of God.” that man might be after the image and likeness of God.²⁹⁹²⁹⁹Cf. c. 32: V, i. 3, ii. 1, xxxvi. 1, and elsewhere.

This, beloved, is the preaching of the truth, and this is the manner of our redemption, and this is the way of life, which the prophets proclaimed, and Christ established, and the apostles delivered, and the Church in all the world hands on to her children.³⁰⁰³⁰⁰The same language is found in the preface to Bk. V: “quod prophetæ quidem præconaverunt . . . perfecit autem Christus; apostoli vero tradiderunt, a quibus ecclesia accipiens, per universum mundum sola bene custodiens, tradidit filiis suis:” and similar language in II. xlvii. 2. This must we keep with all certainty, with a sound will and pleasing to God, with good works and right-willed disposition.

99. So that none should imagine God the Father to be other than our Creator, as the heretics imagine; (for) they despise the God who is, and make gods of that which is not; and they fashion a Father of their own above our Creator, and imagine that they have found out for themselves something greater than the truth. For all these are impious and blasphemers against their Creator and against the Father, as we have shown in the Exposure and Overthrow of Knowledge falsely so-called. And others again reject the coming of the Son of God and the dispensation of His incarnation, which the apostles delivered and the prophets declared beforehand, even such as should be the summing up of mankind, as we have shown you in brief: and such also are reckoned amongst those who are lacking in faith. And others receive not the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and cast away from themselves 151the prophetic grace,³⁰¹³⁰¹III, xi. 12: “propheticam vero gratiam repellunt ab ecclesia.” watered whereby man bears the fruit of life unto God: and these are they of whom Isaiah speaks: For they shall be, saith he, as an oak that is stripped of leaves, and as a garden that hath no water. And such are in no wise serviceable to God, seeing that they cannot bear any fruit.

100. So then in respect of the three points³⁰²³⁰²Lit. “heads ”: cf. cc. 6 f. of our seal error has strayed widely from the truth. For either they reject the Father, or they. accept not the Son and speak against the dispensation of His incarnation; or else they receive not the Spirit, that is, they reject prophecy. And of all such must we beware, and shun their ways, if in very truth we desire to be well-pleasing to God and to attain the redemption that is from Him.

ADDITIONAL NOTE.—A new installment has now appeared of the Patrologia Orientalis (XII. 5: Paris, 1919), containing a reprint of the Armenian text, with a translation into English by the discoverer, Ter-Mekerttschian, and Dr S. G. Wilson. This is followed by a much more accurate translation into French by the late Père Barthoulout, S. J., formerly a missionary in Armenia. Among other valuable notes he points out that the opening words of c. 97 have been wrongly separated from the preceding chapter. The next sentence would then appear to mean: “He is separated and withdrawn from among men, and (yet) wheresoever,” etc.

On p. 78, n. 5. Compare the fragment attributed to Victorinus of Pettau, printed by Routh, Rell. III, 458: “Summum ergo cœlum sapientiæ,” etc. The common source may be “the Elders” or Papias.

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