Section CXVII

We have given the things which suffice for knowing the mind and opinion of the Spanish Church, and therefore we judge that it is now open to us to proceed to those who are deservedly held to be the most abundant witnesses of that faith which the Gallican Church has professed from the most ancient times. We prefer no one to Irenaeus, who, just as he is highly commended by antiquity, renown of name, and the fact of his martyrdom, so committed to writing those things which contribute marvelously to unraveling and resolving the present question. For, first, inquiring into the cause of the fall of our first parents divinely permitted, he speaks thus¹:

God was magnanimous when man failed, foreseeing that the victory which would be through the Word was to be restored to him. For since power was perfected in weakness, it showed the benignity and most magnificent power of God. For just as he patiently endured Jonah to be swallowed by the whale², not that he might be swallowed and perish altogether, but that, having been vomited forth, he might be subjected the more to God and glorify him the more, who had given him unhoped-for salvation, and that he might bring firm penance to the Ninevites, that they might be converted to the Lord who would free them from death, having been terrified by that sign which had occurred concerning Jonah, as Scripture says of them³: “And each one returned from his evil way and from the injustice which was in their hands, saying: Who knows whether God will repent⁴, turn his wrath away from us, and we shall not perish?”

Thus also from the beginning God patiently endured man to be swallowed by—

—the great whale, which was the author of transgression—not that, having been swallowed, he might perish altogether, but constructing beforehand and preparing the discovery of salvation which was made by the Word through the sign of Jonah for those who held the same opinion concerning the Lord as Jonah and confessed and said⁵: “I am a servant of the Lord, and I worship the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land”—so that man, receiving unhoped-for salvation from God, might rise from the dead and glorify God, and utter that voice which was prophesied by Jonah⁶: “I cried to the Lord my God in my tribulation, and he heard me from the belly of hell”; and might remain always glorifying God and without intermission returning thanks for that salvation which he obtained from him, so that no flesh might glory⁷ in the sight of the Lord, nor man ever receive a contrary opinion concerning God, thinking that incorruption which was about him to be naturally his own, and, not holding the truth, might be tossed about in empty haughtiness as though he were naturally like God. For this would rather make him ungrateful to him who made him, and it obscured the love which God had toward man and blinded his sense so that he would not perceive what is worthy concerning God, comparing himself and judging himself equal to God.

Twin to these are the things which he soon adds⁸, saying:

This, therefore, was⁹ the magnanimity of God: that man, passing through all things and receiving the knowledge of morals, then coming to the resurrection which is from the dead, and learning by experience whence he was liberated, might always exist grateful to the Lord, having obtained from him the gift of incorruption, that he might love him more—for he to whom more is forgiven loves more—and might know himself, because he is mortal and weak; and might understand God, because he is immortal and powerful to such an extent—

—that he gives both immortality to the mortal and eternity to the temporal; and that he might also understand all the other powers of God shown in himself, by which, having been taught, he may perceive concerning God how great God is. For the glory of man is God; but the operations of God¹⁰, and the receptacle of all his wisdom and power, is man. Just as a physician is proved in those who are sick, so God also is manifested in men. Wherefore Paul also says¹¹: “But God concluded all things in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all”—saying this not concerning spiritual aeons, but concerning man, who was disobedient to God and cast out from immortality, and afterward obtained mercy, receiving through the Son of God the adoption which is through him.

Therefore God permitted Adam to sin, having abused his own choice, and, by sinning, to fall from that nobility of body and soul to which he had been advanced by singular benignity; but he did not permit his work to perish altogether, nor did he allow the cause of the human race to appear wholly desperate. Indeed, such is his goodness that he seized from man’s transgression and crime an occasion by which he might declare his mercy and pietas toward him. For he constructed beforehand and prepared for him the discovery of salvation which was made by the Word; and with exquisite wisdom brought it about that the human race should receive unhoped-for salvation, rise from the dead, return thanks without intermission for the reparation offered, and understand by experience itself that the good of human salvation is not from man but from God¹², and that man is indeed the receptacle of the operation and power of God, but in no way their origin and fountain.

The same counsel of pietas and mercy moved God to exclude our first parents, bound by fault, from paradise.

Wherefore, writes Irenaeus¹³, he both cast him out of paradise and transferred him far from the tree of life, not envying him the tree¹⁴—

—of life, as certain men dare to say, but having mercy upon him, that he might not persevere forever as a transgressor, nor sin about him be immortal and the evil endless and incurable. But he prohibited his transgression, interposing death and causing sin to cease, bringing an end to it through the dissolution of the flesh which would occur in the earth, so that man, at some time ceasing to live to sin and dying to it, might begin to live to God.

That the whole human race was called back to this life can also be learned from those things by which God pronounced his sentence upon it.

On this account, says Irenaeus¹⁵, even at the beginning of Adam’s transgression, as Scripture narrates, he did not curse Adam himself¹⁶, but the earth in his works, as one of the ancients says: “Because God transferred the curse to the earth, that it might not persevere in man.” But man received as the condemnation of transgression weariness and earthly labor, and to eat bread in the sweat of his countenance, and to return to the earth from which he was taken; and similarly the woman received weariness and labors and groans and sorrows of childbirth and servitude, that is, that she should serve her husband: so that neither, cursed by God, should they perish altogether, nor, persevering without rebuke, should they contemn God. But the whole curse descended upon the serpent which had seduced them. “And God said,” he says¹⁷, “to the serpent: Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou among¹⁸ all cattle and among all the beasts of the earth.” The Lord says this same thing also in the Gospel to those who are found on the left¹⁹: “Depart, ye accursed, into the eternal—”

—fire which my Father prepared²⁰ for the devil and his angels,” signifying that eternal fire was not principally prepared for man, but for him who seduced man and caused him to offend—and, I say, who is the prince of apostasy, the prince of secession—and for those angels who became apostates with him; which they too shall justly receive who, like them, persevere in works of malice without penance and without return.