Irenaeus Writes to Florinus

Against those at Rome who were debasing the sound order of the Church, Irenaeus composed various letters. One he titled To Blastus, On Schism; another, To Florinus, On Sole Rule, or That God Is Not the Maker of Evil, since Florinus seemed to be defending this opinion. And because Florinus was being drawn away in turn by the error of Valentinus, Irenaeus also composed his treatise On the Ogdoad, in which he also indicates that he himself had reached back to the first succession of the apostles. [a]

At the end of that treatise we found a most charming note of his, and we must enter it here in this work. It runs like this: “I adjure you who copy this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by his glorious coming, when he comes to judge the living and the dead, to compare what you have copied and correct it carefully against this copy from which you are copying; and you will copy this oath likewise and put it in your copy.” Let these words, so usefully spoken by him, be recorded by us as well, so that we may have those ancient and truly holy men as the best example of the most painstaking care.

In the letter to Florinus we spoke of, Irenaeus again recalls his time with Polycarp, saying: “These doctrines, Florinus, to put it mildly, are not of sound judgment. These doctrines disagree with the Church and plunge those who are persuaded by them into the greatest impiety. These doctrines not even the heretics outside the Church ever dared to declare. These doctrines the presbyters before us, who were companions of the apostles, did not hand down to you. For when I was still a boy, I saw you in lower Asia with Polycarp, cutting a brilliant figure at the royal court and trying to win his approval. [b] I remember the events of that time more clearly than what has happened recently, for what we learn as children grows up with the soul and becomes one with it. So I can tell even the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and talk, his goings out and his comings in, the character of his life, the look of his body, the discourses he gave to the crowd, how he told of his company with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered their words, and what the things were that he had heard from them about the Lord, about his miracles and about his teaching. Having received them from eyewitnesses of the life of the Word, Polycarp reported everything in agreement with the Scriptures. [c] These things, through the mercy of God that was given me, I listened to eagerly even then, noting them down not on paper but in my heart, and by the grace of God I chew them over faithfully again and again. And I can bear witness before God that if that blessed and apostolic presbyter had heard anything like this, he would have cried out and stopped his ears, and, as was his habit, he would have said, ‘O good God, to what times have you kept me, that I should put up with these things?’ and he would have fled from the very place where he was sitting or standing when he heard such words. This can also be made plain from the letters he sent, either to the neighboring churches to strengthen them, or to some of the brothers, admonishing and encouraging them.” So much from Irenaeus. [d]