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Updated: June 22, 2025
Probably he would have thought that it meant that the gift of the Spirit changed men's nature; so that, as Irenaeus said, two generations later, they were no longer mortal men but the children of the immortal God. To the Greek the gift of the Spirit was the gift of divine nature, immortal and incorruptible.
From Justin to Irenaeus the Christian writings are fragmentary and few, but with Irenaeus a whole body of literature seems suddenly to start into being. Irenaeus is succeeded closely by Clement of Alexandria, Clement by Tertullian, Tertullian by Hippolytus and Origen, and the testimony which these writers bear to the Gospel is marvellously abundant and unanimous.
On the contrary, that Heracleon should have written a commentary on the fourth Gospel falls in entirely with what Irenaeus says as to the large use that was made of that Gospel by the Valentinians. As we approach the end of the third and beginning of the fourth quarter of the second century the evidence for the fourth Gospel becomes widespread and abundant.
I proceed to give a few examples which serve to bring out the antiquity of the text. And first from Irenaeus. Irenaeus himself was not in doubt that the latter was the true reading. Here we have opened out a kind of vista extending back almost to the person of St. John himself. The method by which the correct reading had to be determined was as much historical as it is with us at the present day.
In the midst of universal misery there came tidings of something better than the gods of Parnassus, when in A.D. 160 Irenaeus came to Lyons and there established the first Church of Christ; and here it was that Marcus Aurelius ordered the persecution which was intended to stamp out the new and fanatical heresy.
In the second century a man by the name of Irenaeus seized upon the word "ransom" in the sentence, "The Son of man is come to give his life a ransom for many," and found in that word "ransom" the key-word of the whole problem. The explanation of Irenaeus was taken up in the third century by a distinguished preacher, Origen.
The letter of Polycarp, the works of Justin Martyr, the treatise of Irenaeus Against Heresies, and other writings of the second century, have long sustained an honest character; but now they must all take rank below the Ignatian Epistles. According to the Bishop of Durham, they are not "so well authenticated." In his eagerness to exalt the credit of these Ignatian letters, Dr.
There can be little doubt indeed that they are the same as those whom he describes three sentences later and with only a momentary break in the oblique narration into which the passage is thrown, as 'the Presbyters, disciples of the Apostles. It may be well to give the language of Irenaeus in full as it has been the subject of some controversy.
Irenaeus, it is to be remembered, died at the end of the second century, and his birth is placed within the first quarter of it, so that, in all probability, he had known numbers of Christians who had conversed with Clement. According to the author of "Supernatural Religion," the great mass of critics assign the Epistle of Clement to between the years A.D. 95-100.
"Immediately, my lord I am at your service in a moment. Now, my child," he added, rising, "you know what your duty is. And if your master looks you up and insists on your assisting at the sacrifice or what ever it may be, you will find shelter with us. My name is Irenaeus."
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