At another time he says, as translated by Vidal:
"At the time when he [Hermas] wrote, it was an established maxim with many Christians to avail themselves of fraud and deception, if it was likely they would conduce toward the attainment of any considerable good."
"It was considered that they who made it their business to deceive, with a view of promoting the cause of truth, were deserving rather of commendation than censure."
The French Protestant writer, Casaubon, talks in a similar way, thus:
"It mightily affects me to see how many there were in the earliest times of the church who considered it a capital exploit to lend to heavenly truth the help of their own inventions in order that the new doctrine might be received by the wise among the Gentiles. These officious lies, they said, were devised for a good end."
Le Clerc, corroborating these opinions, says:
"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."
"I forbear mentioning the Latin writers, as Tertullian, Cyprian, Minutius, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hiliary, lest I should rather seem to accuse others than defend myself."
"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:
"When we consider the number of gospels, acts, epistles, revelations, traditions, and constitutions which were put in circulation during the first three centuries, and which are unquestionably spurious, we find sufficient reason for examining with care and receiving with extreme caution productions attributed to eminent men in the primitive church. Some of the early Christians do not seem to have possessed in some points a nice sense of moral obligation. The writing of books under false names, and the circulating of fables, were not accounted violations of duty; or, if the impropriety of such conduct was felt, the end proposed--the promotion of the Christian cause--was thought to justify the means employed for the accomplishment. (From D. M. Bennett's "Answers to Christian Questions," p. 78-80.)