Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 5.djvu/419

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Book iv.]
IRENÆUS AGAINST HERESIES.
393

that their own testimony should not be [regarded as] true. He, therefore, who was known, was not a different being from Him who declared, "No man knoweth the Father," but one and the same, the Father making all things subject to Him; while He received testimony from all that He was very man, and that He was very God, from the Father, from the Spirit, from angels, from the creation itself, from men, from apostate spirits and demons, from the enemy, and last of all, from death itself. But the Son, administering all things for the Father, works from the beginning even to the end, and without Him no man can attain the knowledge of God. For the Son is the knowledge of the Father; but the knowledge of the Son is in the Father, and has been revealed through the Son; and this was the reason why the Lord declared: "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; nor the Father, save the Son, and those to whomsoever the Son shall reveal [Him]."[1] For "shall reveal" was said not with reference to the future alone, as if then [only] the Word had begun to manifest the Father when He was born of Mary, but it applies indifferently throughout all time. For the Son, being present with His own handiwork from the beginning, reveals the Father to all; to whom He wills, and when He wills, and as the Father wills. Wherefore, then, in all things, and through all things, there is one God, the Father, and one Word, and one Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation to all who believe in Him.


  1. Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22. Harvey observes here, that "it is remarkable that this text, having been correctly quoted a short time previously in accordance with the received Greek text, ᾧ ἐὰν βοὺληται ὁ υἱὸς ἀποκαλύψαι, the trauslator now not only uses the single verb revelaverit, but says pointedly that it was so written by the venerable author. It is probable, therefore, that the previous passage has been made to harmonize with the received text by a later hand; with which, however, the Syriac form agrees."