" […] For this reason were four principal covenants given to the human race:
- one, prior to the deluge, under Adam;
- the second, that after the deluge, under Noah;
- the third, the giving of the law, under Moses;
- the fourth, that which renovates man, and sums up all things in itself by means of the Gospel, raising and bearing men upon its wings into the heavenly kingdom (Against heresies, III, 11, 8).
Author
Irenaeus of Lyon was born in the first half of the second century. Irenaeus had seen and heard the holy Bishop Polycarp (d. 155). During the persecution was a priest of the Church of Lyon in Gaul (France). Irenaeus succeeded the martyr Saint Pothinus as Bishop of Lyon. The new bishop divided his activities between the duties of a pastor and of a missionary and his writings, almost all of which were directed against heresies. Irenaeus wrote in Greek many works which have secured for him an exceptional place in Christian literature, because in controverted religious questions of capital importance they exhibit the testimony of a contemporary of the heroic age of the Church, of one who had heard St. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John.
The Church is for him the guardian of the truth and of the apostolic faith received in the Holy Scriptures.
