[Footnote A: Lardner's Works, vol. viii. p. 330.] Eusebius, quoting Hegesippus on the subject of false teachers and referring to the condition of the Church about the close of the first century, says: "The Church continued until then (close of the first century) as a pure and uncorrupted virgin, whilst if there were any at all at that attempted to pervert the sound doctrine of the saving Gospel, they were yet skulking in dark retreats; but when the sacred choir of Apostles became extinct, and the generation of those who had been privileged to hear their inspired wisdom had passed away, then also the combinations of impious errors arose by the fraud and delusions of false teachers. These also, as there were none of the Apostles left, henceforth attempted without shame to preach their false doctrine against the Gospel of truth."[A] [Footnote A: Eus. Ec. Hist., bk. iii. ch. 32.] Dr. Mosheim has the following on the same subject: "Not long after the Savior's ascension, various histories of His life and doctrines, full of impositions and fables, were composed by persons of no bad intentions, perhaps, but who were superstitious, simple and piously fraudulent; and afterwards various other spurious writings were palmed upon the world, falsely inscribed with the names of the holy Apostles."[A] [Footnote A: Institutes, bk. i, cent. 1, part ii, ch. ii.] This condition of things with reference to the writers in the centuries under consideration, naturally leads one to the reflection that if there was so much of fraud, and so many forged writings, what must have been the state of the Church at this time with reference to oral teaching? We are justified in believing, I think, that bad as was the state of things with reference to the writings of these early teachers of the Church, the discourses of such as preached may be depended upon as being much worse. In this view of the case, one can readily understand that the "authority of antiquity" so generally urged as a reason for accepting the testimonies of the Fathers, that "handmaid to Scripture," as "antiquity" is sometimes called, the whole body of it, written and oral, may indeed "be regarded," as Dr. Jortin remarks, "as Briarean, for she has a hundred hands, and these hands often clash and beat one another."[A] [Footnote A: Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 248.] Moreover, it often happens that those who are condemned by some of these Fathers as heretics were not only censured for their heresies, but sometimes for the truths which they held. For example: Papias, a Bishop and Christian Father in the second century, is condemned by Eusebius for saying that he received from Apostolic men--meaning thereby men who were associated with the Apostles--the fact that there would be a corporeal reign of Christ on earth with the saints, after the resurrection, which would continue through a thousand years.[A] [Footnote A: Eusebius, bk. iii, ch. 39.]