Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The gifts of the Holy Spirit that we receive prepare us for incorruption and make us spiritual, and set us apart from carnal men — a distinction signified in the Law by the clean and unclean animals.
For now we receive some part from his Spirit, toward the perfecting and preparing of incorruption, growing gradually accustomed to receive and to bear God; this is what the Apostle called a pledge, that is, a part of the honor that has been promised us by God, in the letter to the Ephesians, where he says: In him you too, after listening to the message of truth — the good news of your salvation — and after coming to believe, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, the down payment on our inheritance. This pledge, then, dwelling in us, already makes us spiritual, and what is mortal is swallowed up by immortality. For, he says, you exist not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit, given that God's Spirit makes its home in you. And this comes about not through any loss of the flesh, but through communion with the Spirit. For those to whom he wrote were not without flesh, but had received the Spirit of God, in whom we cry, Abba, Father. If, then, having the pledge now, we cry, Abba, Father, what will happen when, rising again, we shall see him face to face — when all our members shall pour forth a hymn of exultation, giving glory to the one who brought them back from death and granted them life without end? For if the down payment, taking hold of man from within, already prompts him to cry out, Abba, Father, what will the entire grace of the Spirit accomplish, once it is bestowed on humanity by God? It will conform us to himself, and bring us to completion in accord with the Father's purpose; for it will shape man into the divine image and its likeness. Those, then, who have the pledge of the Spirit, and do not serve the desires of the flesh but subject themselves to the Spirit, will not for that reason be men without the Spirit; rather, our substance — that is, the union of soul and flesh receiving the Spirit of God — makes the spiritual man complete. But those who cast aside the counsel of the Spirit and serve the pleasures of the flesh, living without reason and, unrestrained, plunging into their own desires, having no aspiration at all to the divine Spirit but living after the manner of pigs and dogs — these the Apostle rightly calls carnal, because they perceive nothing but carnal things.
And the prophets, for this same reason, compare such people to irrational animals, because of their irrational way of life, saying: They turned into lust-crazed stallions chasing women, each one whinnying for his fellow's wife. And elsewhere: Man, though set in a place of honor, made himself no better than cattle. This is because he made himself like the beasts, imitating their irrational life. And in our own common speech we too call such men beasts and irrational cattle. The Law foretold all this in the same manner, sketching out man by means of animals: whatever animals, it says, have a cloven hoof and chew the cud, it declares clean; but whatever animals lack one or both of these traits it marks off as unclean. Who, then, count as clean? Those whose faith carries them steadily toward the Father and toward the Son — this is what the split hoof stands for — and who ponder God's sayings continually, so that they come to be clothed in upright deeds; this is what chewing the cud represents. The unclean, on the other hand, are those who neither have the cloven hoof nor chew the cud, that is, who neither have faith in God nor meditate on his words; this is the abomination of the pagans. But those who do chew the cud yet do not have the cloven hoof, and are themselves unclean, are a figure of the Jews: they have the words of God on their lips, but they do not fix the stability of their root in the Father and in the Son; and for this reason their kind is also slippery. For animals with a single, undivided hoof easily slip, while those with the cloven hoof are more stable, since the divided parts of the hoof support one another in succession as they walk. Unclean in the same way are creatures with the split hoof that do not chew the cud; this pictures every heretic, along with all who never ponder God's sayings and are not clothed in righteous deeds — people of whom the Lord likewise said: Why do you address me as Lord, Lord, yet fail to do what I tell you? Such people claim to trust in the Father and the Son, yet they never dwell on God's sayings as they should, nor do they wear the clothing of righteous deeds; instead, as noted earlier, they have adopted the manner of life of pigs and dogs, surrendering themselves to filth, gluttony, and every sort of recklessness. Rightly, then, does the Apostle brand every such person carnal and merely natural, since their disbelief and self-indulgence keep them from the divine Spirit, and through their assorted errors they fling away the life-giving Word from within themselves, wandering senselessly after their own cravings; the prophets called them beasts and wild animals; common speech has understood them as cattle and irrational creatures; and the Law pronounced them unclean.