Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
A demonstration that the God of the Fathers and of others is one and the same.
The senior disciple of the Apostles likewise argued concerning the two Testaments, showing that both come from one and the same God. For there is no other God besides the one who made and formed us, nor does the word of those have any firmness who say that this world which is around us was made either by angels, or by some other power, or by another god. For if one is once moved away from the Maker of all things, and concedes that the creation which is around us was made by some other, or through another, he necessarily falls into much incongruity and very many contradictions, for which he will be able to give no account, either in likelihood or in truth. And for this reason those who introduce foreign teachings conceal, in dealing with us, the view they themselves privately hold about God, aware how feeble and empty their doctrine is, and afraid that, once shown to be wrong, they would risk forfeiting their own salvation. [The statue of salt remains forever. So too Clement of Rome writes... and Josephus, in the Antiquities, in the chapter on the same matter. Compare the poem on Sodom among the works of Tertullian and Cyprian. It is said also that, still living, in another body, she distinguishes the customary courses of women with her own blood.]
But if anyone puts faith in the single God, the one who fashioned everything through his own Word — as Moses states: God spoke, let light come to be, and light came to be; and as the Gospel tells us: through him everything came to be, and apart from him nothing came to be; and as the Apostle Paul likewise declares: a single Lord, a single faith, a single baptism, a single God and Father, who reigns above all, works through all, and dwells in us all — that person will grasp the head above everything else, the one from whom the entire body, fitted together and bound by every connecting ligament, in proportion to each member, brings about the body's growth, so as to build itself up in love. After that, every word will hold firm for him, if he reads the Scriptures diligently among those who are presbyters in the Church, with whom is the apostolic teaching, as we have demonstrated. For all the Apostles taught that the two Testaments existed among two peoples, yet a single identical God set both in place for men's benefit, according to how the Testaments were given to those who were beginning to believe God — as we have demonstrated from the very teaching of the Apostles in the third book; and that the first Testament was given not idly, nor in vain, nor as it happened to fall out, but bending those to whom it was given into servitude to God for their own benefit — for God does not need servitude from men — while showing the pattern of heavenly things, because man was not yet able to see with his own sight the things of God; and prefiguring the images of the things that are in the Church, so that the faith which is ours might be made firm; and containing a prophecy of the things to come, so that man might learn that God is the foreknower of all things.