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 church as an outward visible institution of prime necessity for human salvation, pave the way for that catholic ideal, which, in contrast to the dreams and aspirations of Montanism, would substitute for a glorious vision of the future the existing church on earth as God's visible kingdom. When the visible church as an outward institution comes to be regarded as the essential medium of saving grace, all its forms and ordinances at once acquire a quasi-legal or sacramental character. The church is for Irenaeus an earthly paradise, of the trees of which every one may eat, while heresy has only the forbidden tree of knowledge, whose fruits are death-bringing (v. 20, 2). As the church's faith is the only faith which is true and saving (iii. praef.), so is he alone a Christian man who conforms to the church's institutions and laws (cf. iii. 15, 2; v. 20, 1). The church's sacrifices, the church's prayers, the church's works alone are holy (iv. 18, 1 sqq.; ii. 32, 5).

This essentially legal conception of Christianity was also that of the generation which followed the apostles. The great Catholic doctors gave to this legal conception of the church a further development. For Tertullian, Clement, and Origen the work of Christ was primarily the promulgation of a new divine law. Irenaeus calls indeed Christianity the N.T. of freedom (iii. 12, 14; iv. 16, 5; 34, 3; cf. iii. 10, 5), but simply in reference to the exemption of Gentile Christians from obedience to the Mosaic ceremonial law. In antithesis to Marcion, who derived the Mosaic law from the Demiurge, the gospel from the good God, Irenaeus maintained the substantial identity of both covenants ("unius et ejusdem substantiae sunt," iv. 9, 1; cf. 9, 2; 13, 3, etc.). When he appropriates the Pauline antithesis of bondage and liberty (cf. also iv. 9, 1 seq.; 13, 2; 16, 5; 18, 2; 34, 1 seq., etc., etc.), the religious premises which led up in St. Paul's mind to that antithesis are perhaps wanting to Irenaeus. The N.T. consists for him in a body of divine prescripts. The bondsman and undisciplined has indeed one law, the free, the justified by faith, another (iv. 9, 1); but inasmuch as the nucleus of both Testaments is one and the same—namely, those natural precepts (naturalia praecepta) (iv. 13, 4; cf. 15, 1) which have from the beginning impressed themselves on the mind of man—it follows that the evangelical law of liberty (iv. 34, 4) differs only quantitatively, not qualitatively, from that of Moses. This difference consists on the one hand in the abolition of the precepts of the ceremonial law, which for the Israelites themselves had but a temporary purpose and validity, to restrain from idol worship, to uphold external discipline, or to serve as precursors and symbols of spiritual precepts (iv. 13, 2; 14, 1 sqq.; 15, 1; 16, 3 sqq.; 19, 1; 23, 1 seq.; 24, 1 seq.), and on the other in the reinforcement of those natural precepts which have come down to us from the beginning (iv. 9, 2; 13, 1; 16, 5). The laws of liberty (decreta libertatis) do not annul the duty of obedience; the difference between sons and servants from this point of view consists in the sons having a larger faith (iv. 32, 2) and exhibiting a more ready obedience (iv. 11, 4). Accordingly, the antithesis between the two Testaments is not an antithesis of fear and love. Love is the greatest commandment under the O.T. (iv. 12, 3). Fear continues as a precept under the New. Christ has even enlarged the precept of fear—the children must fear as well as love more than the servants (iv. 16, 5). On the one side the children indeed are free, on the other they are still servants (iv. 14, 1). The two law-givings differ only in the number and greatness (multitudine et magnitudine) of their commandments. The law of liberty, being the greater, is given not for Jews only, but for all nations (iv. 9, 2); but the precepts of a perfect life (consummatae vitae praecepta) are for both Testaments the same (iv. 12, 3).

The new precepts which characterize Christianity are, in the first place, the ordinances and institutions of the church. Among other distinguishing notes of the new law Irenaeus further emphasizes that Christians believe not in the Father only but also in the Son, that they do as well as say, and that they abstain from evil desires as well as from evil works (iv. 13, 1). Even while largely using Pauline language in speaking of Justification by Faith (iv. 5, 5; 9, 1; 16, 2; 21, 1), his legal conception is still there. Faith is opposed by Irenaeus to the ψευδώνυμος γνῶσις of the heretics, and essentially consists in the reception of the Regula Fidei, the Rule of Faith; it is therefore simply defined as obedience to the will of God (iv. 16, 5), i.e. a moral duty, and not, as for St. Paul, the subjective form in which a new religious life and relation is first constituted.

This legal conception leads Irenaeus further to insist on the freedom of the will, and on salvation as conditioned by a man's own ethical self-determination. All Catholic practical theology tends to limit the free forgiveness of sins to the moment of baptism, and after that to make salvation dependent on a godly life and the performance of good works. In the same spirit Irenaeus quite innocently puts in juxtaposition justification by obedience to the natural precepts and justification by faith "naturalia legis per quae homo justificatur quae etiam ante legislationem custodiebant qui fide justificabantur et placebant Deo" (iv. 13, 1). He is led thus strongly to insist on the moral law by his opposition to the Gnostic teaching that the spiritual man is exempted from it and obtains salvation through his higher gnosis. His energetic assertion of the freedom of the will has also a polemical object—to refute the Valentinian dualistic doctrine, which made the salvation of the spiritual man the result of his original pneumatic nature (cf. esp. iv. 37). But this perfectly justifiable opposition leads Irenaeus to put too much in the background the doctrine of divine grace as the only source of human salvation. He even puts it as a divine requirement that in order to the Spirit's resting upon them, Christians must, beside their baptismal vocation, be also adorned with works of righteousness (iv. 36, 6). This seems inconsistent with the Pauline teaching that it is only by the gift of the Spirit that Christians are enabled to do good works at all. But, on the other hand, he says that the Spirit dwells in men as God's creation, working in them the will of the Father and renovating into the newness of Christ (iii. 17, 1). As dry ground, without dew from heaven, can bear no fruit, so neither can the soul perform good works without the irrigation of the water of life (iii. 17, 2).

If in his legal conception Irenaeus may be said to anticipate the mode of thought which characterizes the Catholicism of a later time, the same cannot be said of his teaching on the sacraments. Indeed the sacramental side of Catholic theology did not take shape till through and after the Montanistic and Novatianist controversies. Whereas both these parties insisted on finding the church's sanctity in the spiritual endowments and personal holiness of individual members, "Catholics" sought for the note of holiness mainly in the church's sacramental ordinances, or in marvellous operations of the Holy Spirit in certain functions of her public life. The chief organ of these operations would be the episcopate, which thus came to be viewed as not merely the guardian of doctrinal purity, but also the bearer of supernatural grace and powers, and following the type of the O.T. priesthood as a kind of mediator between God and men. This