“Dissemblers of truth are nowhere to be met with in such abundance as among the writers of church history.”
M. Daille, another learned and impartial French writer, in his celebrated work, the “Use of the Fathers,” says:
“We find them saying things which they did not themselves believe. They are mutually witnesses against each other, that they are not to be believed absolutely on their bare word.”
In book 1, chapter 6, he states upon the authority of St. Jerome, that:
“Origin, Methodius, Eusebius, Apollonaris, have written largely against Celsus and Porphyry. Do but observe their manner of arguing, and what slippery problems they used. They alleged against the Gentiles, not what they believed, but what they thought necessary.”
Jerome himself adds:
“I forbear mentioning the Latin writers, as Tertullian, Cyprian, Minutius, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hiliary, lest I should rather seem to accuse others than defend myself.”
Daille adds of the fathers:
“They made no scruple to forge whole books.”
An able writer in the Eclectic Review of 1814, page 179, speaks of the fathers in this way: