“To which course many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having…”
To which course many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without paper or ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition
Irenaeus · Against Heresies · ANF I, Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter IV, 2
Irenaeus’ answer to the question of what would have happened if the apostles had left no writings: whole nations already hold the faith without them. He is describing churches beyond the Greek and Latin world whose members could not read the letters this project catalogues, and saying the tradition reached them anyway.
How this is known
These words were matched, word for word, against this project’s own copy of the volume cited.
Book III, chapter iv, section 2 of Against Heresies, immediately after the question of what the church would do had the apostles left no writings, in the region of ANF vol. 1 that carries the third book. The volume's own footnote 2654, printed in its introductory matter to Against Heresies, records that Roberts englished the first two books and that the groundwork of the third and of the part of the fourth carried here was furnished by W. H. Rambaut, which is why this row names them and not Donaldson.
Read in Roberts & Rambaut, ANF vol. 1 (1885) · Alexander Roberts and W. H. Rambaut, revised by A. Cleveland Coxe
Also by
- Irenaeus every saying recorded of this person, and their page