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 their authors, and consequently there is a gap between them and Irenaeus.] [Footnote 463: See Eusebius, H. E. V. 13.] [Footnote 464: Tertullian does indeed say in de praescr. 14: "Ceterum manente forma regulae fidei in suo ordine quantumlibet quaeras, et trades, et omnem libidinem curiositatis effundas, si quid tibi videtur vel ambiguitate pendere vel obscuritate obumbrari"; but the preceding exposition of the _regula_ shows that scarcely any scope remained for the "curiositas," and the one that follows proves that Tertullian did not mean that freedom seriously.] [Footnote 465: The most important point was that the Pauline theology, towards which Gnostics, Marcionites, and Encratites had already taken up a definite attitude, could now no longer be ignored. See Overbeck's Basler Univ.--Programm, 1877. Irenaeus immediately shows the influence of Paulinism very clearly.]