Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The Blessed Virgin Mary is compared to the disobedient and transgressing Eve, as her advocate; and the various and dissenting heresies are recounted. For the Lord came manifestly to what was his own, and was borne about by that creation of his own which he himself bears up, and he brought about the recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred at a tree by means of the obedience which was accomplished upon a tree, and the seduction was undone by which that evil-doer had been seduced, she who was already betrothed to a man, the virgin Eve; for through the truth she was well evangelized by the angel, she who was, already under a man, the Virgin Mary. For just as the former, through an angel's utterance, was led astray into fleeing from God, having overstepped his word, so the latter too, through an angel's utterance, received the glad tidings that she would carry God within her, in submission to his word. And if the former was disobedient toward God, yet the latter was persuaded to obey God, so that the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. And just as the human race was bound over to death through a virgin, so it is saved through a virgin, the disobedience of a virgin being balanced in the opposite scale by the obedience of a virgin. For indeed the sin of the first-formed man received amendment through the correction wrought by the Firstborn, and the serpent's cunning was overcome by the simplicity of the dove, and those chains were loosed by which we had been bound over to death.
All heretics are unlearned, and ignorant of the dispensations of God, and unacquainted with his economy that accords with humanity; and being blind as to the truth, they work against the salvation that is their own. A number of them bring in a different Father apart from the Demiurge. Others say the world and its substance were made by certain angels. Others again say it flourished by itself, quite apart from him who according to them is the Father, and was born of itself. Others say that among those things contained by the Father, its substance came from a Defect and from Ignorance. Others despise the manifest coming of the Lord, not accepting his incarnation. Others again, ignorant of the dispensation of the Virgin, say he was begotten from Joseph. And some say that neither soul nor body can receive eternal life, but only the inner man; and they hold that this is the intellect that is in them, and that this alone, they decree, ascends to perfection. Others hold that the soul is saved, but that their body does not share in the salvation that comes from God, as we said in the first book, in which we also set out all their arguments, and in the second we showed how weak and unstable they are.