Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Chapter 25. Demonstration that it is so. But if someone should say to us in response to these things: What then? Are the placement of names, the choice of the apostles, the Lord's activity, and the arrangement of the things that were made, all pointless and merely as it happened? We will say to them: Not at all; rather, all things, both the ancient things and whatever the Word has worked in these latest times, have been made by God fittingly and adorned with great wisdom and diligence for a clear purpose, and they ought to be connected not to a numerical scheme but to the underlying argument, or else received merely as literal texts (for this is a weak approach, since it is manifold and variable, and since any argument today might equally be contrived by someone to draw from these same things testimonies contrary to the truth, because they can be applied to many different things). Rather, they ought to fit the numbers themselves and the things that were made to the underlying argument of the truth. For the rule does not come from the things made, but the things made come from God. For all things are from one and the same God.
Now because the things that have been made are various and many, and each is well fitted and consonant with the whole work, yet when one looks at each of them individually, they are opposed to one another and do not agree — just as the sound of a lyre, through the consonant interval of each string, produces a single melody arising out of many contrary sounds. The lover of truth, then, ought not to be led astray by the difference between one sound and another, nor should he suppose that one craftsman made this string and a different one that, or that one man tuned the sharper strings, another the deeper, and another the middle ones; but rather that it is one and the same craftsman, for the demonstration of the whole work and of his wisdom, justice, goodness, and generosity. Those who hear the melody ought to praise and glorify the craftsman, and should perceive the blending between the various sounds, and consider the character proper to each, and what each contributes, and seek out its cause — never departing from the rule, nor straying from the craftsman, nor casting aside the faith in the one God who made all things, nor blaspheming our creator.
But if someone does not find the cause of everything that is sought after, let him consider that he is a man, infinitely inferior to God, one who has received grace only in part, who is by no means yet the equal or the likeness of his own maker, and who cannot have experience and understanding of all things as God does; but insofar as he who was fashioned and who took his beginning of formation only today falls short of him who is without beginning and everlastingly unchanging, so too in understanding and in tracing out the reasons of all things does he lag behind him. For you, O man, are not uncreated, nor did you always coexist with God as his own Word does; but on account of his surpassing goodness, now that you have received a beginning of your existence, you learn little by little from the Word the dispositions of God who made you. (Here Irenaeus points to where the Scriptures direct us.) Demonstration that the Demiurge is not divinity itself. Keep, then, the order proper to your knowledge, and do not, out of ignorance of good things, overstep God himself — for he is not to be transcended — nor inquire beyond the Demiurge as to what he is, for you will not find it. For your maker is beyond determining; and do not measure him as though you had come through the whole of his workmanship and considered all the depth and height and length that is in it, and then imagine some other Father above him. For you will not succeed in imagining this, but, thinking contrary to nature, you will become foolish; and if you persist in this, you will fall into madness, considering yourself more exalted and better than your maker, and supposing that you have passed beyond his kingdom.