“Where, therefore, the gifts of the Lord have been placed, there it behoves us to learn…”
Where, therefore, the gifts of the Lord have been placed, there it behoves us to learn the truth, [namely,] from those who possess that succession of the Church which is from the apostles, and among whom exists that which is sound and blameless in conduct, as well as that which is unadulterated and incorrupt in speech.
Irenaeus · Against Heresies · ANF I, Against Heresies, Book IV, Chapter XXVI, 2
The rule Irenaeus gives a reader who wants to know which teacher to believe: go to the churches that can show an unbroken line from the apostles, and look at how the men in them live and speak. It is the succession argument of the third book stated as practical advice, and it is why this dataset records lines of bishops rather than lists of doctrines.
How this is known
These words were matched, word for word, against this project’s own copy of the volume cited.
Book IV, chapter xxvi, section 2, in the region of ANF vol. 1 that carries the fourth book. The sentence follows immediately on his quotation of 1 Corinthians xii. 28. The volume's own footnote 2654 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