Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Because John and Daniel together foretold the breakup and ruin of Rome's empire, an event that must come before the world's close and before Christ's unending reign; a chapter that answers other interpreters.
Moreover John, the disciple of the Lord, in the Apocalypse further pointed to the final age and to those ten kings not yet in existence, among whom the currently ruling power shall one day be parceled out, thereby explaining the ten horns that Daniel had seen; for it was told him in these words: "The ten horns you observed are ten kings who have not yet taken up a kingdom, but who will receive royal authority for a single hour, jointly with the beast. These share a single purpose, and they will hand over their might and dominion to the beast; these will wage battle against the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, since he is Lord over lords and King over kings." So it is plain that among these ten, the one still to come will destroy three, the remainder will submit to him, and he himself will stand as the eighth; and this group will reduce Babylon to ruin, consume her by fire, hand their realm over to the beast, and drive the Church into flight — after which they in turn will be brought down at our Lord's arrival. For since a kingdom split against its own self is bound to fall, the Lord declares: "A kingdom torn by internal division comes to ruin, and no city or household split against itself can endure." Kingdom, city, and household, then, must undergo this tenfold splitting; and he had already foreshadowed such a partition beforehand. Daniel, moreover, states plainly that the fourth kingdom terminates in the toes of the statue's feet, seen broken apart "apart from any hand," as he himself puts it: "The feet were partly iron, partly clay, until a stone was hewn free without a hand touching it, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay, feet that were partly iron, partly clay." These ten toes of the feet, then, represent the ten kings among whom the realm will be split; some of them will be forceful and capable, others feeble and worthless, unable to hold together — just as Daniel likewise says: "Part of the realm will be firm, part of it fragile. Since you saw iron blended with clay, there will be mixtures within the human line, and they will fail to cohere with one another, exactly as iron does not fuse with clay." And regarding the coming end, he states: "In the era of those kings, the God of the heavens will raise up a realm that will never fall, a dominion that passes to no other nation. It will crush and bring to nothing every one of these kingdoms, while itself standing forever. Even as you saw the stone hewn free from the mountainside without a hand touching it, and how it crushed the iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold — so the great God has revealed to the king the events yet to unfold; the dream is certain, and its meaning trustworthy.
If, then, the great God made known future things through Daniel, and confirmed them through his Son — and Christ is the stone hewn out apart from hands, who shall bring the temporal kingdoms to nothing and usher in the everlasting one, namely the rising of the righteous — then let those who reject the Demiurge be confuted and come to a better mind, since they do not concede that the prophets were sent beforehand by the same Father from whom the Lord also came; instead they assert that the prophecies were made by differing powers. For the things that were foretold by the Demiurge through all the prophets, these Christ brought to their fulfillment, ministering to the will of his own Father. (The text here bears the marks of a later, disordered hand, and what follows cannot be reconstructed with confidence.) Let it be recognized by all who worship God that these are the organs of Satan, through whom Satan is now — and not before — seen to blaspheme God, and who has prepared eternal fire for the whole apostasy. For he himself, of himself, openly, did not dare to blaspheme his own Lord; just as at the beginning also, through the serpent, he seduced man, as if hiding from God.
Justin rightly said that, before the coming of the Lord, Satan never dared to blaspheme God, since he did not yet know his own condemnation, because it had been spoken of him by the prophets only in parables and allegories. But after the coming of the Lord, learning plainly from the words of Christ and of his apostles that eternal fire has been prepared for him by his own will, in that he departed from God, and for all who without repentance persist in the apostasy — through such men he blasphemes that God who brings judgment, as one already condemned, and imputes the sin of his own apostasy to his Maker, and not to his own will and choice; just as those who transgress the laws, and are afterward punished, complain against the lawgivers and not against themselves. So too these men, filled with a diabolical spirit, bring countless accusations against our Maker, who has both granted us the life-giving Spirit and set in place a law suited to all; and they will not concede that God's judgment is righteous. For this reason they also devise a certain other father, who neither cares for nor exercises providence over the things that concern us, nor even over all sins whatsoever. For if the father does not judge, either it does not pertain to him, or he consents to everything that is done by everyone; and if he does not judge, all will be on equal footing, and reckoned in the same condition. The coming of Christ, then, will be superfluous, and indeed contrary to reason, if he does not judge.