Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

Of these some coupled the word in the doxology by the preposition, others by the conjunction,
but were in no case supposed to be acting divergently,—at least so far as the right sense
of true religion is concerned.
72. There is the famous Irenæus, 1313 and Clement of Rome; 1314 Dionysius of Rome, 1315
and, strange to say, Dionysius of Alexandria, in his second Letter to his namesake, on
“Conviction and Defence,” so concludes. I will give you his very words. “Following all
these, we, too, since we have received from the presbyters who were before us a form and
rule, offering thanksgiving in the same terms with them, thus conclude our Letter to you.
To God the Father and the Son our Lord Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost, glory and might
for ever and ever; amen.” And no one can say that this passage has been altered. He would
not have so persistently stated that he had received a form and rule if he had said “in the
Spirit.” For of this phrase the use is abundant: it was the use of “with” which required defence.
Dionysius moreover in the middle of his treatise thus writes in opposition to the
Sabellians, “If by the hypostases being three they say that they are divided, there are three,
though they like it not. Else let them destroy the divine Trinity altogether.” And again:
“most divine on this account after the Unity is the Trinity.” 1316 Clement, in more primitive
fashion, writes, “God lives, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost.” 1317 And now
let us hear how Irenæus, who lived near the times of the Apostles, mentions the Spirit in
his work “Against the Heresies.” 1318 “The Apostle rightly calls carnal them that are unbridled
and carried away to their own desires, having no desire for the Holy Spirit,” 1319 and in another
passage Irenæus says, “The Apostle exclaimed that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of the heavens lest we, being without share in the divine Spirit, fall short of the
1313 † c. 200.
1314 † 100.
1315 † 269.
1316 Dionysius was Patriarch of Alexandria a.d. 247–265. Basil’s “strange to say” is of a piece with the view
of Dionysius’ heretical tendencies expressed in Letter ix. q.v. Athanasius, however, (De Sent. Dionysii) was sat-
isfied as to the orthodoxy of his predecessor. Bp. Westcott (Dict. C. Biog. i. 851) quotes Lumper (Hist. Pat. xii.
86) as supposing that Basil’s charge against Dionysius of sowing the seeds of the Anomœan heresy was due to
imperfect acquaintance with his writings. In Letter clxxxviii. Basil calls him “the Great,” which implies general
approval.
Enumeration of the illustrious men in the Church who in their writings have…
1317 Clem. Rom., Ep. ad Cor. lviii. Bp. Lightfoot’s Ap. Fathers, Pt. I. ii. 169.
1318 Irenæus is near the Apostles in close connexion, as well as in time, through his personal knowledge of
Polycarp. Videhis Ep. to Florinus quoted in Euseb., Ecc. Hist. v. 20. In his work On the Ogdoad, quoted in the
same chapter, Irenæus says of himself that he τὴν πρωτὴν τῶν ᾽Αποστολῶν κατειληφέναι την διαδοχήν “had
himself had the nearest succession of the Apostles.”
1319 The reference is presumably to 1 Cor. ii. 11 and iii. 1.
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