P. Parvis—Packaging Irenaeus: Adversus haereses and Its Editors 195
patristic texts, arranged article by article—a procedure which on the one hand confirms
the Articles and on the other casts a reassuringly comforting glow over the Fathers.
A Preface to Irenaeus looks briefly—very briefly—at manuscripts and editions.
This is followed by “Preliminary Matter,” consisting of a disquisition on “Sources and
Phenomena of Gnosticism” and an account of “The Life and Writings of S. Irenaeus,
Bishop of Lyons in Gaul.”
The former fills 151 pages (I, i—cli), and, it must be said, takes a broad sweep,
beginning with “the traditions of Paradise” (i)—“that glimpses of truth, of which man
had an unclouded view in Paradise, were still retained in the earliest ages of the world,
is very evident, so far as the Bible has revealed to us the religious history of the various
families of the human race after the deluge”—and moving on to Melchizedek, Abra-
ham (ii), and the Pharaoh of Joseph’s Egypt (iii). We get to the Pre-Socratics by page
xxxv, while Simon Magus comes on stage at page lxv.
“The Life and Writings” (I, cliii—clxxv) is rather more focused. The idiosyncrasies
of the Latin version seem to be partially explained by the fact that it was a “Celt who
made it”—a Celt “in every way inferior to the work that he undertook; independently
of the barbarisms and solecisms with which his style abounds, he frequently is totally
unable to catch his author’s meaning” (I, clxiv).
The authenticity of the Pfaffian fragments is vigorously defended (I, clxxi—clxxii).
Those four forged chunks of Irenaeus “discovered” by Chr. Matt. Pfaff in Turin and
published by him in 1715 are useful to Harvey, above all, in defending the soundness
of Irenaeus’s teaching on the Eucharist, lest it be thought too Romanizing.
For it is there, and there alone, that Irenaeus is in some danger. The author of the
Vindex explains that “with few exceptions, and those not at all dependent upon doc-
trinal discrepancies, the Articles of the Church of England might be illustrated singly
from the statement of Irenaeus.... The subject of the Holy Eucharist alone has given
rise to expressions that need a few words of explanation” (I, clxxiii).
“On the whole, the view of the eucharist put forth by Irenaeus agrees with the
twenty-ninth article of our Church, scarcely perhaps with the latter portion of the
twenty-eighth. In any case it should not be forgotten that an illustration may be very
apt as helping the refutation of any particular heresy, and yet be far from edifying as
an element of instruction. The teaching of the church to her children is excellently
set forth” in one of the Pfaffian fragments (I, clxxiv—clxxv), which clearly shows the
sacrifice to be spiritual and that it is through reception of the sacrament that we obtain
remission of sins and eternal life.
Harvey was not, I think, overly plagued by self-doubt—an impression confirmed
by the notes to his text. They are, on the whole, brief and businesslike and—an innova-
tion in the editions—they are in the vernacular rather than in Latin, even the strictly
textual ones. His churchmanship shows through in a note on the clause “And, among
those who preside in the churches, neither will the one who is most able in word say
other than these things”—a clause that occurs in our I.10.2, Harvey’s I.3—for, yet again,
an editor of Irenaeus renumbered the chapters. “At least here,” Harvey tells us, “there is
no reserve made in favor of any theory of development. If ever we find any trace of this
dangerous delusion in Christian antiquity, it is uniformly the plea of heresy” (I, 94, n. 2).