2. This distinction A of the habitation of those who have brought forth a hundredfold, and those who have brought forth sixty, and those who have brought forth thirty: of whom some shall be assumed into the heavens, others shall pass their time in paradise, others shall inhabit the city; and for this reason the Lord has said, "In my Father's house there are many mansions": for all things are of God, who provides a suitable habitation for all, even as His Word says, that it is distributed by the Father as each is worthy, or shall be. And this is the triclinium, in which those who are invited to the wedding guests recline. This, the presbyters, the disciples of the apostles, say is the gradation and disposition of those who are saved, and that they advance through steps of this kind, and ascend through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father; B the Son in turn yielding His work to the Father, even as it was said by the Apostle: "For he must reign, until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy shall be destroyed, death." For in the times of the kingdom, the righteous man existing upon the earth will [forget] C death. When he shall say, "all things are subjected"; it is manifest, except him who subjected all things. But when all things shall be subjected to him, then shall the Son himself be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.
3. John, therefore, B clearly foresaw the first resurrection of the righteous, and the inheritance in the kingdom of the earth: and the prophets prophesied harmoniously concerning it. For the Lord also taught this, promising that He would partake of the new cup in the kingdom with His disciples. And the Apostle also confessed that the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. And in all these things, and through all things, the same God the Father is manifested, who fashioned man, and promised the inheritance of the earth to the fathers, who brought it forth in the resurrection of the just, and fulfills the promises in the kingdom of His Son: afterwards bestowing paternal gifts, which neither eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it ascended into the heart of man. For truly the one Son, who fulfilled the will of the Father; and the one human race, in which the mysteries of God are fulfilled, which angels desire to look into, and are not able to investigate the wisdom of God, through which His handiwork, fashioned and corporified to the Son, is perfected: that His offspring, the first-begotten Word, might descend into the handiwork, that is, into the fashioned form, and be contained by it; and that the handiwork might again contain the Word, and ascend to Him, passing beyond the angels, and be made according to the image and likeness of God.
ADMONITION CONCERNING THE FOLLOWING FRAGMENTS.
338 Concerning those fragments of Irenaeus which we here bring to light, since we have already dealt with them in the second Dissertation, prefixed to the work, art. 3, little remains to be said. It is worth observing only this, that fragments of a double nature are here exhibited: some are those which Eusebius, or other ancient writers of the same authority, extracted from the works of Irenaeus then existing, and which they cited by name and inserted into their own; others, however, are either attributed to certain more recent writers, or are read in Catenae or other manuscript codices under the name of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons. That the former are the undoubted offspring of Irenaeus, cannot be denied. The reliability of the latter is not so secure. For they are usually cited in such a way that the works of Irenaeus themselves, from which they are excerpted, are either not designated by name; or if any are designated, they are those of which Eusebius, Jerome, and others, to whom the genuine works of the holy doctor should have been better known, made no mention whatever. Such is that fragment which Maximus the Abbot and Confessor says he copied from the Sermon on Faith of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, to Demetrius, deacon of Vienne: as also that which Feuardentius edited in Latin as if from the same sermon. Indeed, these sermons on faith seem to have been entirely unknown to Eusebius and Jerome.