mand to be realised,
because it is only in it that he can come to himself. The fact that
Christian teachers like Theophilus, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus expressly
declared this to be a legitimate Christian hope and held out a sure
prospect of its fulfilment through Christ, must have given the greatest
impulse to the spread and adoption of this ecclesiastical Christianity.
But, when the Christian religion was represented as the belief in the
incarnation of God and as the sure hope of the deification of man, a
speculation that had originally never got beyond the fringe of religious
knowledge was made the central point of the system and the simple
content of the Gospel was obscured.[655]

Footnotes:

[Footnote 460: Authorities: The works of Irenaeus (Stieren's and Harvey's
editions), Melito (Otto, Corp. Apol. IX.), Tertullian (Oehler's and
Reiflerscheid's editions), Hippolytus (Fabricius', Lagarde's, Duncker's
and Schneidewin's editions), Cyprian (Hartel's edition), Novatian
(Jackson). Biographies of Bohringer, Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen,
1873 ff. Werner, Der Paulinismus des Irenaeus, 1889. Noeldechen,
Tertullian, 1890. Doellinger, "Hippolytus und Kallistus," 1853. Many
monographs on Irenaeus and Tertullian.]

[Footnote 461: The following exposition will show how much Irenaeus and
the later old Catholic teachers learned from the Gnostics. As a matter
of fact the theology of Irenaeus remains a riddle so long as we try to
explain it merely from the Apologists and only consider its antithetical
relations to Gnosis. Little as we can understand modern orthodox
theology from a historical point of view--if the comparison be here
allowed--without keeping in mind what it has adopted from Schleiermacher
and Hegel, we can just as little understand the theology of Irenaeus
without taking into account the schools of Valentinus and Marcion.]

[Footnote 462: That Melito is to be named here follows both from
Eusebius, H. E. V. 28. 5, and still more plainly from what we know of
the writings of this bishop; see Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte
der altchristlichen Litteratur, I. 1, 2, p. 24 ff. The polemic
writings of Justin and the Antignostic treatise of that "ancient" quoted
by Irenaeus (see Patr. App. Opp. ed. Gebhardt etc. I. 2, p. 105 sq.) may
in a certain sense be viewed as the precursors of Catholic literature.
We have no material for judging of them with certainty. The New
Testament was not yet at the disposal of t