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Irenæus
Inasmuch[4853] as certain men, impelled by what considerations I know not, remove from God the half of His creative power, by asserting that He is merely the cause of quality resident in matter, and by maintaining that matter itself is uncreated, come now let us put the question, What is at any time … is immutable. Matter, then, is immutable. But if matter be immutable, and the immutable suffers no change in regard to quality, it does not form the substance of the world. For which reason it seems to them superfluous, that God has annexed qualities to matter, since indeed matter admits of no possible alteration, it being in itself an uncreated thing. But further, if matter be uncreated, it has been made altogether according to a certain<page 574> quality, and this immutable, so that it cannot be receptive of more qualities, nor can it be the thing of which the world is made. But if the world be not made from it, [this theory] entirely excludes God from exercising power on the creation [of the world].
“And[4854] dipped himself,” says [the Scripture], “seven times in Jordan.”[4855] It was not for nothing that Naaman of old, when suffering from leprosy, was purified upon his being baptized, but [it served] as an indication to us. For as we are lepers in sin, we are made clean, by means of the sacred water and the invocation of the Lord, from our old transgressions; being spiritually regenerated as new-born babes, even as the Lord has declared: “Except a man be born again through water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”[4856]
If the corpse of Elisha raised a dead man,[4857] how much more shall God, when He has quickened men’s dead bodies, bring them up for judgment?
True[4858] knowledge, then, consists in the understanding of Christ, which Paul terms the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery, which “the natural man receiveth not,”[4859] the doctrine of the cross; of which if any man “taste,”[4860] he will not accede to the disputations and quibbles of proud and puffed-up men,[4861] who go into matters of which they have no perception.[4862] For the truth is unsophisticated (ἀσχημάτιστος); and “the word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart,”[4863] as the same apostle declares, being easy of comprehension to those who are obedient. For it renders us like to Christ, if we experience “the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.”[4864] For this is the affinity[4865] of the apostolical teaching and the most holy “faith delivered unto us,”[4866] which the unlearned receive, and those of slender knowledge have taught, not “giving heed to endless genealogies,”[4867] but studying rather [to observe] a straightforward course of life; lest, having been deprived of the Divine Spirit, they fail to attain to the kingdom of heaven. For truly the first thing is to deny one’s self and to follow Christ; and those who do this are borne onward to perfection, having fulfilled all their Teacher’s will, becoming sons of God by spiritual regeneration, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven; those who seek which first shall not be forsaken.
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