Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Against those who reject the Apostle Paul.
We say the same thing again to those who do not acknowledge the Apostle Paul: either they must renounce the rest of the Gospel's words, which have come to our knowledge through Luke alone, and not use them; or, if they accept all of that, they are bound to accept also that testimony which concerns Paul, where he himself tells how the Lord first spoke to him from heaven: 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? I am Jesus Christ, whom you are persecuting'; and then how he says of him: 'Go, for he is a chosen vessel to me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will make clear to him what great things he is destined to endure on behalf of my name.' As for those who refuse the one chosen by God for this purpose, that he might confidently bear his name, sent as he was to the Gentiles we have spoken of, despise the Lord's own choice and cut themselves off from the company of the Apostles. For they cannot argue that Paul is not an Apostle, when he was chosen precisely for this; nor can they show Luke to be a liar, since he announces the truth to us with all diligence. Perhaps indeed it was for this very reason that God brought it about that many things of the Gospel should be shown through Luke, which all would need to use, so that by following his subsequent testimony concerning the acts and teaching of the Apostles, all who follow it, holding the rule of truth unadulterated, might be saved. His testimony, then, is true, and the teaching of the Apostles is open and firm, withholding nothing, and teaching nothing secretly that differs from what they teach openly.
For this is the contrivance of impostors and wicked seducers and hypocrites, as those who belong to Valentinus do. For before the crowd, for the sake of those who belong to the Church, whom in their own vocabulary they term 'common' and 'ecclesiastical', they put forward statements by which they ensnare the more simple and entice them, imitating our own manner of teaching, so that these people may hear them more often; and indeed they already complain of us, that though they hold views similar to ours, we needlessly hold ourselves back from communion with them, and even though their statements resemble ours and their teaching matches ours, we brand them heretics. And when, through the questions they raise, they have cast some down from the faith and made their hearers unable to answer them, then, apart from the rest, they recount to them the ineffable mystery of their 'fullness.' But all who suppose they can learn the truth from mere plausibility of words are deceived. For error is persuasive and plausible, and skilled in dressing itself up; but truth is without adornment, and for this reason it was entrusted to little children. And if any of those who hear them should seek solutions or contradict them, such a one they declare, straightaway, not to have grasped the truth, and not to have within him the seed from his mother that comes from the higher realms; of him they say nothing further at all, calling him one of the 'middle,' that is, one of the 'psychic' or soul-bound sort. But if someone, like a little sheep, hands himself over to them, having attained their initiation and their redemption, such a one becomes puffed up, and supposes himself to be neither in heaven nor on earth, but to have already entered into the Pleroma and to have already embraced his own angel—while among those who say that the man who comes from above ought to live a good life, they for this reason also affect a certain solemn gravity. But most of them, having become scornful, as if already perfect, live without reverence and in contempt of others, calling themselves 'spiritual,' and claiming already to know that place of refreshment which is within their Pleroma.
But let us return to the same discussion. For since it has been clearly shown that those who were preachers of the truth and Apostles of freedom called no other being God, nor named any other Lord, than the single true God, the Father, together with his Word, which governs all things, it will be plainly demonstrated that they confess the maker of heaven and earth, who spoke with Moses and gave him the ordinance of the law, who called the fathers, to be the Lord God, and that they know no other. The judgment, then, both of the Apostles and of their disciples concerning God is made clear from their own words.