Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Against those who, for whatever reason, create schism.
We have thus shown, against all who bring forward wicked opinions about our Maker and Fashioner, who also made this world, beyond whom no other god exists, and having overturned by these very demonstrations those who teach falsely about the substance of our Lord and about the dispensation he arranged on behalf of man, his own handiwork — we have made plain that the proclamation of the Church holds together everywhere, remaining constant and unaltered in every place, and has testimony from the prophets and the apostles and from all the disciples, as we have demonstrated, running through its beginnings, its middle course, and its end, and through the whole dispensation of God, and through the sound working which concerns the salvation of man, which working is in our faith. This faith, received from the Church, we guard; and this faith, always growing young again by the Spirit of God as though it were some excellent deposit in a good vessel, causes the very vessel that contains it to grow young as well. For to the Church has been entrusted this gift of God, just as breath was entrusted to the thing fashioned, in order that all the members, receiving it, might be brought to life. And within the Church has been set the fellowship of Christ, namely the Holy Spirit, the pledge of incorruption, the strengthening of our faith, and the stairway by which we climb toward God. For, it says, God has placed in the Church apostles, prophets, teachers, and every other working of the Spirit; and none share in that Spirit unless they attach themselves to the assembly of the Church, but instead cheat themselves out of life through a depraved opinion and the vilest conduct. For wherever the Church stands, the Spirit of God stands also; and wherever God's Spirit dwells, there stands the Church, together with every sort of grace; and this Spirit is truth itself. Those, then, who take no part in him are neither fed at the breasts of the mother unto life, nor do they draw from Christ's body that most brilliant of springs which issues from it; instead they carve out for themselves broken cisterns from pits dug in the ground, and swallow foul water drawn from the mud, fleeing the Church's faith for fear of being exposed, and spurning the Spirit so as to escape correction.
Estranged from the truth, they are — and deservedly — tossed about in every kind of error, driven this way and that, holding at different times different opinions about the same things, and never possessing a settled knowledge, wishing to be sophists of words rather than disciples of the truth. For they are not founded upon the one rock, but upon sand, which in itself contains many stones. For this reason they also invent many gods, and they always have some pretext for seeking, since they are blind, but they are never able to find. For they blaspheme the Maker, that is, him who truly is God, who alone can grant the finding; imagining that they have discovered, above God, another God, or another Fullness, or another dispensation. For this reason the light which comes from God does not shine upon them, since they have dishonored and despised God, judging him to be of small account, because out of his love and his boundless kindness he came to be known by men — not a knowledge according to his greatness, nor according to his substance, for no one has measured that or touched it, but a knowledge according to this: that we might know that he who made us, and fashioned us, and breathed into us the breath of life, and nourishes us through the created order, confirming all things by his Word and framing them together by his Wisdom, is the one who alone is the true God; while they, dreaming up one who is not, imagine that above this true God they have found a great God, whom no one can know, one who has no dealings with the human race and administers no earthly things — plainly discovering an Epicurean God, who provides nothing either for himself or for others, that is, who exercises providence over nothing at all.