Additional source material: See Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der allen Kirche, third ed., Breslau, 1897; cf. Mirbt, n. 16, 16 a.
(a) Irenæus, Adv. Haer., 1, 10. (MSG, 7:549 f.)
For Irenæus, v. supra, [§ 3, a].
The Church, though dispersed through the whole world to the ends of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their disciples the faith: In one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven and the earth and the seas, and all that in them is; And in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was incarnate for our salvation; And in the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets preached the dispensations and [pg 124] the advents, and the birth from the Virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily assumption into the heavens of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and His appearing from the heavens in the glory of the Father, in order to sum up all things under one head [cf. Ephes. 1:10], and to raise up all flesh of all mankind, that to Christ Jesus, our Lord and God and Saviour and King, every knee of those that are in heaven and on earth and under the earth should bow [cf. Phil. 2:11], according to the good pleasure of the Father invisible, and that every tongue should confess Him, and that He may execute righteous judgment on all; sending into eternal fire the spiritual powers of wickedness and the angels who transgressed and apostatized, and the godless and unrighteous and lawless and blasphemous among men, but granting life and immortality and eternal glory to the righteous and holy, who have both kept the commandments and continued in His love, some from the beginning, some from their conversion.
(b) Irenæus, Adv. Hær., III, 4. (MSG, 7:855.)
The following form of the creed more closely resembles the traditional Apostles' Creed. With it compare the paraphrase in Irenæus. op. cit., IV, 33:7.
If the Apostles had not left us the Scriptures, would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition which they handed down to those to whom they committed the churches? To this order many nations of the barbarians gave assent, of those who believe in Christ, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit without paper and ink, and guarding diligently the ancient tradition: Believing in one God, Maker of heaven and earth, and all that is in them; through Jesus Christ, the Son of God; who, because of His astounding love toward His creatures, sustained the birth of the Virgin, Himself uniting man to God, and suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again was received in brightness, and shall come again in glory as the Saviour of those who are saved [pg 125] and the judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire the perverters of the truth and despisers of His Father and His coming.
(c) Tertullian, De Virginibus Velandis, 1. (MSL, 2:937).
Tertullian gives various paraphrases of the creed. The three most important are the following and [d], [e]. The date of the work De Virginibus Velandis is about 211, and belongs to his Montanist period.