Irenaeus

With him nothing is incomplete or out of due season, just as with the Father there is nothing incongruous. For all these things were foreknown by the Father, but the Son works them out at the proper time in perfect order and sequence. This was the reason why, when Mary was urging on to perform the wonderful miracle of the wine and was desirous before the time to partake of the cup of emblematic significance, the Lord, checking her untimely haste, said, “Woman, what have I to do with you? My hour is not yet come”—waiting for that hour which was foreknown by the Father. This is also the reason why, when men were often desirous to take him, “for the hour of his being taken was not yet to come,” nor the time of his passion, which had been foreknown by the Father; as also says the prophet Habakkuk: “By this you shall be known when the years have drawn close; you shall be set forth when the time comes; because my soul is disturbed by anger, you shall remember your mercy.”

And there are also some of them who say, “the Lord has spoken in Zion, and uttered his voice from Jerusalem,” and “in Judah is God known”5—these indicated his advent, which took place in Judea. Those, again, who declare that “God comes from the south, and from a mountain thick with foliage,” announced his advent at Bethlehem, as I have pointed out in the preceding book. From that place, also, he who rules and who feeds the people of his Father, has come. Those, again, who declare that at his coming “the lame man shall leap as a deer, and the tongue of the dumb shall speak plainly, and the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear,” and that “the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, shall be strengthened,” and that “the dead which are in the grave shall arise,” and that he himself “shall take our weaknesses, and bear our sorrows”9—proclaimed those works of healing which were accomplished by him.