Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
DEMONSTRATION THAT [ACCORDING TO THEM] A FATHER IS FOUND ABOVE THIS ONE. That God is the Maker of the world is agreed even by those who contradict him in many ways and who confess him, calling him Maker and calling him an angel — not to mention that all the Scriptures cry it out, and the Lord teaches that this Father who is in the heavens, and no other, is God, as we shall show as the discourse proceeds. For now it is enough to bring forward, as testimony, what comes even from those who speak against us — all men agreeing on this point in the end: the ancients, who from the very beginning kept this persuasion by the tradition of the first-formed man, and hymned the one God, Maker of heaven and earth; those who came after them, receiving from the prophets of this God the remembrance of this truth; and the Gentiles, who learned it from creation itself. For creation itself shows the one who founded it, and the work itself suggests the one who made it, and the world manifests the one who arranged it. The whole Church, moreover, throughout the whole world, has taken up this teaching handed down from the apostles.
Since, then, this God stands firm, as we have said, and receives testimony from all that he is, that other one whom, according to them, is found to be a Father, is without foundation and without witness — Simon Magus being the first to say that he himself was the god above all, and that the world was made by his angels; and after him, those who succeeded him, as we showed in the first book, brought around various opinions, impious and irreligious doctrines against the Maker. Their disciples, being what they are, make those who agree with them worse than the Gentiles. For the Gentiles, though they render service to what is created instead of to the Maker, and to things that are not gods at all, nevertheless assign the first rank of deity to the Maker of this universe, as to God. These men, however, call this very God the fruit of a defect, name him 'animal,' and say he does not know the power that is above him; and when he declares, 'I am God, and apart from me there exists no other,' they say he is lying — while they themselves lie, heaping every wickedness upon him, and inventing one who is not, as being above him who is. By their own reckoning they are exposed: blaspheming the one who is God, and inventing one who is not God, to their own condemnation. And those who say they themselves are perfect and possess the knowledge of all things are found worse than the Gentiles, and more blasphemous in their very reasoning, even against their own maker.