Dr. Cumming of London thus speaks of the authority of the fathers of the early church:— “Some of these were distinguished for their genius, some for their eloquence, a few for their piety, and too many for their fanaticism and superstition. It is recorded by Dr. Delahogue (who was Professor in the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth), on the authority of Eusebius, that the fathers who were really most fitted to be the luminaries of the age in which they lived, were too busy in preparing their flocks for martyrdom to commit anything to writing; and, therefore, by the admission of this Roman Catholic divine, we have not the full and fair exponent of the views of all the fathers of the earlier centuries, but only of those who were most ambitious of literary distinction, and least attentive to their charges.... The most devoted and pious of the fathers were busy teaching their flocks; the more vain and ambitious occupied their time in preparing treatises. If all the fathers who signalized the age had committed their sentiments to writing, we might have had a fair representation of the theology of the church of the fathers; but as only a few have done so (many even of their writings being mutilated or lost), and these not the most devoted and spiritually minded, I contend that it is as unjust to judge of the theology of the early centuries by the writings of the few fathers who are its only surviving representatives, as it would be to judge of the theology of the nineteenth century by the sermons of Mr. Newman, the speeches of Dr. Candlish, or the various productions of the late Edward Irving.”[428] Dr. Adam Clarke bears the following decisive testimony on the same subject:— “But of these we may safely state that there is not a _truth_ in the most orthodox creed that cannot be proved by their authority; nor a _heresy_ that has disgraced the Romish church, that may not challenge them as its abettors. In points of _doctrine_, their authority is, _with me_, nothing. The WORD of God alone contains my creed. On a number of points I can go to the Greek and Latin fathers of the church to know what _they believed_; and what the people of their respective communions believed: but after all this, I must return to God’s word to know what he would have _me_ to believe.”[429] In his life, he uses the following strong language:— “We should take heed how we quote the fathers in proof of the doctrines of the gospel; because he who knows them best, knows that on many of those subjects they blow hot and cold.”[430] The following testimonies will in part explain the unreliable nature of the fathers. Thus Ephraim Pagitt testifies:—