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Updated: June 22, 2025
John knew or suspected that Cerinthus had a cutaneous disease, there would have been some sense in the refusal, or rather, as I correct myself, some probability of truth in this gossip of Irenaeus. Ib. p. 128. They corrupted the faith of Christ, and in effect subverted the Gospel. That was enough to render them detestable in the eyes of all men who sincerely loved and valued sound faith.
It were better to possess the vulgar with the solid and real foundations of truth. In fine, 'tis a hard matter to reduce divine things to our balance, without waste and losing a great deal of the weight. And, indeed, Irenaeus was involved in the same fortune.
Irenaeus crowned by martyrdom his active and influential life. It was in his episcopate that there began what may be called the swarm of Christian missionaries who, towards the end of the second and during the third centuries, spread over the whole of Gaul, preaching the faith and forming churches. Some went from Lyons at the instigation of St.
Irenaeus, who was personally well known to the author, and who has left behind him the treatise Against Heresies already mentioned, speaks therein of this letter in terms of high approval. But whilst the internal evidence testifies against them, they are not noticed by any writer for considerably more than a century after they are said to have appeared.
Without going into the question of the date at which Irenaeus wrote at present, and assuming with the author of 'Supernatural Religion' that his first three books were published before the death of Eleutherus in A.D. 190 the latest date possible for them, it will be seen that the Gnostic teaching to which Irenaeus refers is supposed to begin at a time when his first book may very well have been concluded, and to end actually five years later than the latest date at which this portion of the work can have been published!
The Philosophumena say nothing on this point, except that Epinoia "throws all the Powers in the World into confusion through her unsurpassable Beauty." Theodoret briefly follows Irenaeus. In these contradictory accounts we have a great confusion between the rôles played by Nous and Epinoia, the Father and Thought, the Spirit and Spiritual Soul.
Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, St. Epiphanius, Theodoret, and others, long before the time of St. Augustine, the last of them. Gnosticism was prevented from any longer imparting a wrong tendency to Christian doctrines, and it died out, until restored during the Crusades to revive in the middle ages in its most malignant form.
Was the first asserter of them, Justin Martyr more pious, cautious, learned, judicious, or less credulous than Epiphanius? Or were those virtues more conspicuous in Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, than in Athanasius, Gregory, Chrysostom, Jerom, Austin? Nobody, I dare say, will venture to affirm it.
Be cautious then to hold back from baptism all those who regard it as a preserving charm or an act of good omen remembering that the same water which, sprinkled on sanctified hearts, leads them to holy living, brings death to the unclean soul. It is your turn to speak, Irenaeus."
I have asserted that the three authors, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus, all flourishing before the close of the second century, quote the four Gospels, if anything, more frequently than most modern Christian authors do. I append, in proof of this, some of the references in these authors to the first two or three chapters of our present Gospels. Matthew, i.
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