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Updated: June 22, 2025
For they find it neither in Justin Martyr, nor in Irenaeus, nor in Tertullian, nor in Origen, nor in the Fathers of the three first centuries of the church. And as they seldom use the term, so they seldom or never try, when it offers itself to them, either in conversation or in books, to fathom its meaning.
Tertullian and Epiphanius in like manner drew largely from the works of Irenaeus. But this confuses evidence that would otherwise be clear. For instance, in Eph. iv. 8 St. Paul quotes Ps. lxviii. 19, but with a marked variation from all the extant texts of the LXX. Thus: Ps. lxviii. 18 . Eph. iv. 8. It. Vulg. Memph. &c.; ins.
They were looked up to with the same reverence and regarded as possessing the same Divine inspiration. We may trace indeed some of the steps by which this position was attained. So complete had the process been that Irenaeus does not seem to know of a time when the authority of the Gospels had been less than it was to him. Yet the process had been, of course, gradual.
Theophilus accepted the homage as a matter of course, hastily glancing at the child with his large keen eyes; Agne not daring to raise hers, for there was certainly something strangely impressive in his aspect. Then, with a wave of his long thin hand to indicate Agne, he asked: "What does this girl want?" "A freeborn girl parents Christian comes from Antioch..." replied Irenaeus.
The reader must decide for himself or herself whether Irenaeus believed that Jesus was never executed; or that he was executed but survived; or that he was born when we suppose, but executed thirty years or so later than we suppose; or that, though executed when we suppose, he was then an old man, and was born, not at the commencement or middle or end of the year A.C. 1, or B.C. 4, or whenever the orthodox date is, but thirty years or more before what we call our era began.
Though he died a comparatively young man, if we may believe the gospel narrative, which makes him to have lived either to thirty-one or thirty-three years, though Irenaeus emphatically asserts that he lived to fifty years, we may most assuredly proclaim him a priest in the sense of elder, or leader of men.
TERTULLIAN, ARNOBIUS, CLEMENT of ALEXANDRIA, ORIGEN, SAINT JUSTIN, IRENAEUS, have all of them discoursed upon it; but have never spoken of it other than as a corporeal substance as matter.
In the following table the quotations which are merely allusive are included in brackets: On the whole these quotations of Irenaeus seem fairly to deserve the praise given to them by Dr. Tregelles. Most of the free quotations, it will be seen, belong not so much to Irenaeus himself, as to the writers he is criticising.
Porphyry, Ἀφορμαί, 28. She becomes Helen in the beautiful myth of the Simonian Gnostics a Helen who has forgotten her name and race, and is a slave in a brothel in Tyre. Simon discovers her, gradually brings back her memory and redeems her. Irenaeus, i. 23, 2. Plut., Vit. Pomp. 24. See Epicurus's Second Letter, especially Usener, pp. 36-47 = Diog. La. x. 86-104.
We now come to the conclusion of the second century. Between the years 180 and 200 or 210 A.D., there flourished three writers of whom we possess somewhat voluminous remains. Irenaeus, who was born about 140 at the latest, who was in youth the disciple of Polycarp, who was himself the disciple of St. John.
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