Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
What is meant by the prophet's saying: You shall walk upon the asp and the basilisk. For this reason he set hostility between the serpent, on one side, and the woman together with her offspring, on the other, each watching the other — the one being bitten in the heel, yet able to trample the enemy's head, the other biting, and killing, and obstructing man's path, until the predestined seed came to trample his head, which seed was the offspring of Mary, of whom the prophet says: You shall walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample the lion and the dragon underfoot — signifying that the sin which was rearing up and spreading itself against man, and which made him cold toward God, would be abolished together with the reign of death, and would be trampled down by him in the last times when the lion, that is, the Antichrist, springs upon the human race; and that he would bind that old serpent, the dragon, and subject him to the power of the man who had been conquered, so that he might trample down all his strength. For Adam was the one overcome, stripped entirely of life; hence, once the foe was in his turn overcome, Adam had life restored to him; and last of all the last enemy, death, which had first taken possession of man, is abolished. Wherefore, when man is set free, it stands written: Death has been consumed by victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? Which could not justly be said unless that one had been set free who had first been dominated by death. For his salvation is the abolition of death. Since the Lord, then, gives life to man, that is, to Adam...