Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
This shows that the same God made both the present, temporal things and the eternal ones. There is, then, one and the same God, who rolls up the sky as one would a scroll and refreshes the surface of the earth; who made temporal things for man's sake, so that, ripening in them, he might bear the fruit of immortality; and who brings in eternal things because of his own goodness, that he might show, in the ages to come, the inexpressible riches of his goodness. This is he whom the Law and the Prophets foretold, and whom Christ acknowledged as his very own Father. He himself is the Maker; and he himself is the God over all things, as Isaiah says: 'I stand as witness, declares the Lord God, along with the servant I have chosen, so that you may come to know, to trust, and to grasp that I am he. No god existed before me, and none shall come after. I am God, and apart from me there is no deliverer. I have proclaimed it, and I have brought salvation.' And again: 'I am the first God, and I am he who is to come.' He speaks in this way neither inconsistently, nor out of arrogance, nor as a boast, but because God could not be learned apart from God himself, and it is through his own Word that he instructs men in knowledge of God. It was fitting that man, fashioned after God's image and resemblance, should possess freedom of choice and mastery over his own power — for this very freedom and capacity to choose is what constitutes God's image and resemblance within him; and it is through his own Word that God instructs men to know him. To those, then, who remain ignorant of these matters, and who consequently imagine that some different being has come as Father, one may rightly say: You are mistaken, having no grasp of the Scriptures nor of God's power.