Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
From whom, and in what manner, the Church received the Gospel.
For we came to know the plan of our salvation through no others than those through whom the Gospel reached us: this same message they proclaimed at first, and later, through God's own will, committed to writing in the Scriptures, so it might serve as the base and support-pillar of our belief. It is wrong to claim they preached without having full understanding already, as some venture to assert, priding themselves on correcting the Apostles. Once our Lord had risen from among the dead, and once the might of the Holy Spirit descending from above had clothed them, they were made complete in every respect and possessed full understanding; they journeyed to earth's remotest regions, bringing the good news of what comes from God to us, and proclaiming to mankind a peace from heaven, every one of them together and each individually holding the Gospel of God. So Matthew brought out a written Gospel among the Hebrew people in their native tongue, at the very time Peter and Paul were proclaiming the Gospel in Rome and laying the Church's foundation there. Following their deaths, Mark, who was Peter's follower and translator, likewise passed on to us in writing the message Peter had preached. Luke too, Paul's companion, recorded in a volume the Gospel his teacher proclaimed. Later John, that disciple of the Lord who had rested against his breast, brought out his own Gospel while dwelling in Ephesus in Asia. All of these transmitted to us the teaching of a single God, fashioner of heaven and earth, foretold through the law and the prophets, and a single Christ, God's Son: whoever refuses assent to this indeed holds in contempt the Lord's own companions, and holds Christ the Lord himself in contempt, and the Father besides, standing thereby self-condemned, fighting against and rejecting his own deliverance, just as every heretic does.