Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
How in the former people, and in the Church, certain precepts were given because of the hardness and disobedience of men.
But when they turned aside into the making of the calf, and turned back in heart toward Egypt, longing to be bondmen rather than freemen, they were given, matched to that longing, a lasting bondage — not one severing them from God, but one placing them beneath the yoke of a legal servitude. So too the prophet Ezekiel, setting forth why such a law was imposed, states: "And their eyes went after the idols of their fathers, and I gave them commandments that were not good, and ordinances by which they would not live." And Luke relates that Stephen, first of those chosen by the Apostles for the diaconate, and first put to death for testifying of Christ, spoke thus concerning Moses: "He took the living oracles of God to hand on to you — whom our forefathers refused to heed, but pushed him away from themselves, and in their hearts turned back toward Egypt, telling Aaron: Fashion for us gods to march ahead of us; as for that Moses who led us out of the Egyptian land, we cannot tell what has befallen him. In those very days they fashioned a calf, brought offerings to the image, and took delight in what their own hands had produced. But God turned from them and abandoned them to serving the armies of heaven," just as stands recorded in the prophetic writings: "House of Israel, did you bring me victims and offerings across forty years in the desert? Yet you carried the shrine of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, the images you fashioned to bow before them" — showing plainly that this law came not from some other god, but from that self-same God, fitted to their servile state. It is for this that he tells Moses also, in Exodus: "I will send my messenger ahead of you; I myself will not go up in your company, for you are a people of stiffened neck."
And not only this, but the Lord also made plain that certain precepts were laid down for them by Moses because of their hardness and because they would not be subject. For when they asked him, "Why, then, did Moses instruct us to hand a wife a certificate of divorce and dismiss her?" his reply to them ran: "It was on account of your hardened hearts that he allowed you this concession; yet such was not the case at the first" — thus clearing Moses as a trustworthy servant, while owning that it was the very one who at the outset fashioned them male and female who was God, even as he charged the people with hardness and refusal to submit. And for this reason they received from Moses the precept of divorce, fitted to their hardness. And why do we speak of these things only from the Old Testament, since in the New Testament also the Apostle is found doing the very same thing, saying: "I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give my counsel, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be faithful." And elsewhere he says: "Lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control." If, then, even in the New Testament certain precepts are found granted by the Apostle out of forbearance, on account of the lack of self-control of some — lest, being hardened, such persons should altogether despair of their salvation and become apostates from God — we ought not to wonder if in the Old Testament also the same God willed something of this sort to be done for the benefit of the people, alluring them by the aforementioned observances, so that by keeping them they might, through these observances of the Decalogue, offer him gifts and, being held fast by him, not turn back to idolatry nor become apostates from God, but might learn with their whole heart to love him. But if certain persons, because the Israelites were perishing and lost, call the giver of the law weak, they will find within the calling proclaimed among us as well that those summoned are numerous while those selected are few; and wolves lurking inside, though outwardly draped in sheep's fleece; and that what was always free and in man's own power God has always preserved, together with his own exhortation — so that those who do not obey him may be justly judged, since they did not obey; and those who obeyed and believed him may be honored with incorruptibility.