Adversus Haereses (Book V, Chapter 19)
BY ST. IRENAEUS OF LYONS, Bishop of Lyons
(ca. 180 CE)
A comparison is instituted between the disobedient and sinning Eve and the Virgin Mary, her patroness. Various and discordant heresies are mentioned.
1. That the Lord then was manifestly coming to His own things, and was
sustaining them by means of that creation which is supported by Himself, and
was making a recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in
connection with a tree, through the obedience which was [exhibited by Himself
when He hung] upon a tree, [the effects] also of that deception being done
away with, by which that virgin Eve, who was already espoused to a man, was
unhappily misled -- was happily announced, through means of the truth [spoken]
by the angel to the Virgin Mary, who was [also espoused] to a man. For just
as the former was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from
God when she had transgressed His word; so did the latter, by an angelic
communication, receive the glad tidings that she
should sustain (portaret)
God, being obedient to His word. And if the former disobeyed God, the
latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary
might become the patroness (advocata)
of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the
human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued
by a virgin; virginal disobedience having been balanced in the opposite scale
by virginal obedience. For in the same way the sin of the first created man
(protoplasti) receives amendment by the
correction of the First-begotten, and
the coming of the serpent is conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, those
bonds being unloosed by which we had been fast bound to death.
2. The heretics being all unlearned and ignorant of God's arrangements,
and not acquainted with that dispensation by which He took upon Him human
nature (inscii ejus quoe est secundum hominem dispensationis),
inasmuch as
they blind themselves with regard to the truth, do in fact speak against their
own salvation. Some of them introduce another Father besides the Creator;
some, again, say that the world and its substance was made by certain angels;
certain others [maintain] that it was widely separated by Horos from him
whom they represent as being the Father -- that it sprang forth (floruisse)
of itself, and from itself was born.
Then, again, others [of them assert] that it
obtained substance in those things which are contained by the Father, from
defect and ignorance; others still, despise the advent of the Lord manifest
[to the senses], for they do not admit His incarnation; while others, ignoring
the arrangement [that He should be born] of a virgin, maintain that He was
begotten by Joseph. And still further, some affirm that neither their soul nor
their body can receive eternal life, but merely the inner man. Moreover, they
will have it that this [inner man] is that which is
the understanding (sensum)
in them, and which they decree as being the only thing to ascend to "the
perfect." Others [maintain], as I have said in the first book, that while the
soul is saved, their body does not participate in the salvation which comes
from God; in which [book] I have also set forward the hypotheses of all these
men, and in the second have pointed out their weakness and inconsistency.
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