TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
RECORDS OF THE CHURCH.
No. XIV.
THE HOLY CHURCH THROUGHOUT ALL THE WORLD DOTH ACKNOWLEDGE THEE.
IRENÆUS.
Irenæus was Bishop of Lyons in France. He is supposed to have been a native of Asia; he was born, at latest, about forty years after St. John's death, and died A.D. 202. The following is his account of the faith of Christians, and of the Church as the pillar and ground, the appointed witness of that faith.
The Church, although extended through the whole world, even unto the ends of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their Disciples the belief in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, the seas, and all that is in them;—and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Ghost, who by the Prophets proclaimed the merciful dispensation, and the coming, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection, and the ascension into heaven, in our flesh, of the Beloved, Christ Jesus our Lord, and His appearing from heaven in the glory of the Father, to gather together all things in one, and to raise from the dead all flesh of human kind; that to Christ Jesus our Lord and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the good pleasure of the Invisible Father, every knee may bow, of things
