Irenaeus of Lyons, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
I set down their system from their own writings and from their own followers' mouths, and I did it for the reason that to expose a thing is already to begin its defeat. In the first book I showed the whole scheme of Valentinus's school, the doctrine and the practice of Marcus the magician, the passages they garble from Scripture to fit their fictions, and the way they build truth out of numbers and the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.1
I traced them back through their predecessors to Simon of Samaria and showed that the heirs not only differ among themselves but had long before swerved from the truth. Then in the second book I turned from report to refutation, and the refutation runs on their own premises. If their Pleroma contains all things, this creation is not outside it, and the Maker is no fruit of a defect; if there is something outside it, their Pleroma is not "all things" at all.2
A man who says the Fulness has an outside has made it a part and made something else greater than it. That is not an unfair reading; it is their own claim set beside their own claim. The same turn is made against their handling of the prophets. They say some words came from the height through the seed, some from the middle region through the audacious mother, and many from the Creator.
I answer that it is irrational to bring the Father of the universe to such straits that He has no instruments of His own to proclaim what is in the Pleroma. Whom did He fear, that He could not speak His will freely after His own way? Was He afraid that more would be saved if more heard the unadulterated truth? Or could He not prepare for Himself those who should announce the Saviour's coming?3
If their system makes God either timid or powerless, the fault lies in the system, not in my account of it. As for the Gospels: the argument is first an argument from possession. These Gospels stand on ground so firm that the heretics themselves bear witness to them, and each starts from them to prove his own doctrine. The Ebionites use Matthew alone and are confuted by it.
Marcion mutilates Luke and is convicted of blasphemy against the one God by what he still retains. Those who separate Jesus from Christ prefer Mark and may have their error set right by it if they read with love of truth. The followers of Valentinus make copious use of John, and John refutes them.4 Our opponents testify for us, and a proof drawn from documents they themselves use is firm.
John, moreover, wrote with an aim. He wrote to remove the error of Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans, and to establish the rule of truth in the Church: one Almighty God who made all things by His Word, so that the same Word through whom the creation was made also bestowed salvation on the men within it.5 "All things were made by Him" cannot be turned into talk of what lies inside their Pleroma; it includes this creation of ours.
Then comes the fourfold number, and here I hold both halves. There are four zones of the world and four principal winds; the Church is scattered through all the world, and her pillar and ground is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars breathing immortality on every side. The Word, who sits upon the cherubim, has given the Gospel in four aspects bound by one Spirit, and the cherubim were four-faced, their faces images of the Son's dispensation.6
I do not make the winds the ground of the fact. The Church has these four and no others, and the fittingness is the beauty of a fact already given. A thing may be both the case and fitting. The heretics, each clinging to a single Gospel or to a cut-down one, are the ones who must explain why they chose as they did.
The heretics' systems are set down from their own writings, and the refutation begins from their own premises: a God who is not the whole is not God, a Pleroma that has an outside is contained by something greater, and a Sophia who falls in the Fulness puts the fault in God. Their exegesis takes the stones of the king's mosaic and sets them to the figure of a dog, then says it is the king.
The Gospel is fourfold and cannot be more or fewer, as there are four zones and four winds, and the Church, spread over the earth, has the Gospel as its pillar in four forms with one Spirit; those who add a Gospel of Truth or cut one down to Luke stand convicted by the number itself. Some questions, such as what God did before he made the world, are to be left to God.78910
I showed thee, my very dear friend, that the whole system devised, in many and opposite ways, by those who are of the school of Valentinus, was false and baseless.Against Heresies, Book II
if their Pleroma cannot be 'all things:' therefore this vast creation is not outside [the Pleroma].Against Heresies, Book III
For of whom was He afraid, so that He should not reveal His will after His own way and independently, freely, and without being involved with that spirit which came into being in a state of degeneracy and ignorance?Against Heresies, Book IV
So firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest, that the very heretics themselves bear witness to them, and, starting from these [documents], each one of them endeavours to establish his own peculiar doctrine.Against Heresies, Book III
The disciple of the Lord therefore desiring to put an end to all such doctrines, and to establish the rule of truth in the Church, that there is one Almighty God, who made all things by His Word, both visible and invisibleAgainst Heresies, Book III
It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the worldAgainst Heresies, Book III
He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, until He send forth judgment into contention; and in His name shall the Gentiles trust." 7.Against Heresies, Book III
As also David says, when entreating His manifestation, "Thou that sittest between the cherubim, shine forth." For the cherubim, too, were four-faced, and their faces were images of the dispensation of the Son of God. For, [as the Scripture] says, "The first living creature was like a lion," 9.Against Heresies, Book III
For when did the Christ above have vinegar and gall given him to drink? Or when was his raiment parted? Or when was he pierced, and blood and water came forth? Or when did he sweat great drops of blood? And [the same may be demanded] as to the other particulars which happened to the Lord, of which the prophets have spoken.Against Heresies, Book IV
Was it so, then, that until these things took place among the Greeks, truth had no existence? For, according to thee, Marcus, the body of truth is posterior to Cadmus and those who preceded him-- posterior also to those who added the rest of the letters-- posterior even to thyself! For thou alone hast formed that which is called by thee the truth into an [outward, visible] image. 5.Against Heresies, Book I
The portrait of Gnosticism that stood alone for seventeen centuries and was then tested against the Gnostics' own books; the argument for four Gospels that every reader since has either trusted or called a rationalisation.