192 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, LegacyIn any event, we can see why peace in and between the churches mattered so much
to him, both theologically and existentially, and how he had come to think that in the
Anglican Church he had found a large and calm harbor. What was important was not
the particularities of inter-confessional and intra-confessional doctrinal conflict, but
the pattern disclosed by “the writings of the most ancient Fathers” that would show
“what sort of doctrine, celebration of the sacred mysteries, ecclesiastical society, and,
finally, discipline flourished among the Christ-faithful of primitive times.”^25
The edition shows a substantial improvement in the text, and Grabe is often happy
in his conjectures—on a number of occasions confirmed by the discovery of the Arme-
nian, first published in 1910 and first seriously utilized in Rousseau.^26 The printing is
sumptuous, but the layout confusing—as Massuet was to complain: “the Greek frag-
ments are indeed inserted opportunely in their own places, but so unfittingly arranged
that the eyes of the reader are obliged to wander, as in a perpetual circuit, through the
pages, often uncertain whither they ought to go.”^27
The notes are learned and extensive, but—hardly surprisingly—have much to say
by implication at least about Grabe himself. In I.10.1, for example, Irenaeus says that
at the end of the age the Lord will give life and eternal glory to those who have perse-
vered in his love, “some from the beginning, but others from repentance.” To the arch-
Catholic Feuardent the former meant either newly baptized infants, who die before
committing sin, or martyrs, for “by the privilege of martyrdom there is a direct passage
to heaven without more laborious satisfaction either here or elsewhere, a thing not
granted to others who sin after baptism.”^28 Grabe replies tartly, “Note that eternal life
is given by grace to the just and the penitent and that incorruption is granted to them.
See the last verse of Rom. 6 and Apoc. 2:6”^29 —no room for purgatory or penitential
machinery there.
Again, in the important discussion of the tradition of the apostles and the Roman
church in III.3.1-2, Grabe tackles both Erasmus and Feuardent. “It is most apparent
that Erasmus of Rotterdam was completely wrong when in that letter which is to this
very day prefixed to these books he writes that Irenaeus himself fought against the mob
of heretics with the help of the scriptures alone.” On the contrary, from this passage as
a whole, “it is plain and evident to all that Irenaeus overcame the Gnostics, not merely
with the help of the scriptures, but also by the traditions and by the words and writings
of the Fathers” (200).
Grabe there speaks unconsciously, as his contemporaries habitually did, of tradi-
tions in the plural, as if they were numerable items in a list, whereas Irenaeus always
uses “tradition” in the singular, except when he is picking up the Gospel saying about
the traditions of the (Jewish) elders (IV.12.1), which are a bad thing. Tradition is for
Irenaeus an organic, indivisible whole, not a basket of discrete propositions.
Grabe is sure that the “ancient tradition,” the vetus traditio, of III.4.2 is the Sym-
bol—that is, the Apostles Creed—though he declines to enter into controversy over
whether the Apostles had actually drafted it themselves.^30
Massuet’s verdict was harsh. “Imitating Gallasius, though it is for the Anglican
Church, to which he had attached himself, that he is most zealous, he seems to have
been more concerned to attach even an unwilling and resisting Irenaeus to the Anglican