Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
How he who founded this creation of ours is shown to be beyond investigation and comprehension.
Against these people one may justly say, as the word itself suggests: "Since you exalt your thoughts above God, why are you so thoughtlessly puffed up? You have heard that the heavens are measured with a span; tell me their measure, and declare the countless number of cubits; explain to me the fullness, breadth, length, and height, the beginning and end of their circumference -- which the heart of man does not understand and does not grasp. Vast beyond telling are the heavenly stores; God cannot be measured by the heart, nor grasped by the mind -- he who holds the whole earth within the curve of his palm. Who has weighed the span of his right hand? Who has taken the measure of his finger? Or who has fathomed his hand, which spans the vastness, the depth lying below, and, above, the reach of all creation, whether it be visible, or perceived by hearing and thought, or altogether hidden from sight?" And on this account God stands above every principality, power, and dominion, and above every title that can be given, over all things fashioned and set in place. He fills up the heavens and gazes into the depths, and stands near to each one of us as well: "For I am a God close at hand," says he, "not a distant God. Should a man conceal himself in some hidden place, would I fail to see him?" For his hand grasps all things, and it is that same hand which illumines the heavens, and also illumines the things beneath heaven, and searches the hearts and minds, and is present in hidden and secret things, while in what is manifest he nourishes and sustains us.
But if man does not comprehend the fullness and greatness of his hand, how could anyone understand or conceive in his heart so great a God -- one who cannot even be seen, who is clearer than sight itself; who cannot be grasped, who is purer than touch; who is greater than sense itself? And so, as though they had already measured him and looked him through and surveyed him entirely, they fabricate above him another Pleroma and another Father -- not looking up to the things of heaven, but truly descending into the depth of a Bythos of madness: saying that their own Father is bounded at the point where the things outside the Pleroma begin, while the Demiurge, in turn, does not reach as far as the Pleroma; and so they make neither of the two to be perfect and to contain all things. For the one will lack the whole fabric of the world that is outside the Pleroma, while the other will lack the fabric of the world that is within the Pleroma, and neither of them will be God of all. Now it is plain to everyone that no one can fully declare the greatness of God from the things he has made; and it is likewise plain that his greatness does not fail, but contains all things, and reaches even to us, and is with us -- as everyone who thinks worthily of God will confess.