“For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God. For…”
For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God. For if the manifestation of God which is made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God.
Irenaeus · Against Heresies · ANF I, Against Heresies, Book IV, Chapter XX, 7
The most quoted sentence Irenaeus ever wrote, and the one most often quoted without its second half. It is not a saying about human flourishing on its own terms: the clause that follows says what the life in question consists of, and the two halves were written to be read together.
How this is known
These words were matched, word for word, against this project’s own copy of the volume cited.
Book IV, chapter xx, section 7 of Against Heresies, in the region of ANF vol. 1 that carries the fourth 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