Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[Title fragment, corrupt.] How, then, could either the angels or the world's fashioner have remained ignorant of the primal God, given that they stood within his own domain, existed as things he had made, and were held fast by him? Granted, his transcendence may indeed have kept him unseen by them, but his providence made it impossible for him to be altogether unknown to them. For even granting, as they claim, that they were set very far apart from him through their descent, still, since his rule reaches over everything, they should have recognized their own Sovereign, and grasped this much: that their own maker is Lord over everything. For his very invisibility, mighty as it is, grants everyone a deep awareness and sensitivity of mind toward his supremely mighty and almighty transcendence. And so, granted that only the Son truly knows the Father, and only the Father together with those to whom the Son chooses to disclose him truly knows the Son, still everyone grasps this much — because the reasoning planted within their minds stirs them and discloses to them that a single God exists, sovereign over everything.
And on this account every creature bows beneath the name belonging to the Most High and Almighty; and by calling upon this name, in the ages prior to our Lord's arrival, men were rescued from the most wicked spirits, and from every demon, and from falling away — not because earthly spirits or demons had themselves beheld him, but because they understood that there exists one who rules as God above all, at whose bare summons they shuddered, along with the whole of creation, and every principality and power and every subordinate force besides. Do not those living under Roman authority, despite never having set eyes on their Emperor and lying far off from him across land and sea, still acknowledge, by virtue of his rule, the one who wields supreme power of command — while the angels stationed over us, or the one they term the Maker of the world, would somehow fail to acknowledge the Almighty, seeing that even mute beasts shudder and give way before such a summons? Those subjects of Rome have truly never beheld him, and still every creature bows beneath our Lord's name; likewise before the name of him who fashioned and established the universe, since none exists apart from that very one who made the world. And for this cause the Jews, down to the present day, cast out demons through this very address, since everything dreads the summons of him who brought it into being.
If, then, they refuse to grant that the angels are more senseless than mute beasts, they will discover it was needful — even granting that these angels had never beheld the one who rules as God above the universe — that they should still acknowledge his power and dominion. For it would indeed seem absurd if they maintain that earth-dwellers acknowledge the one ruling as God above the universe, though they have laid eyes on him not at all, and yet refuse to grant that he who fashioned them, and the whole world according to their own account, though he dwells in the highest places above the heavens, should recognize the things that they themselves, though dwelling in lowly places, know well. Unless perhaps they say that their Bythos dwells under the earth, in Tartarus, and that for this reason they came to know him before the angels who dwell on high — falling into such madness as to declare the Maker of the world demented. Such men truly deserve pity, since in such madness they say that he did not even recognize his own mother, nor her offspring, nor the Pleroma of the Aeons, nor the Forefather, nor what the things were that he himself had made; and that the images of the things within the Pleroma came to exist secretly, through the Savior's working, in honor of those who are above.