41-2, &c.
I cannot but think that Waterland's defence of the Fathers in these pages against Barbeyrac, is below his great powers and characteristic vigour of judgment.

It is enough that they, the Fathers of the first three centuries, were the lights of their age, and worthy of all reverence for their good gifts.

But it appears to me impossible to deny their credulity; their ignorance, with one or two exceptions, in the interpretation of the Old Testament; or their hardihood in asserting the truth of whatever they thought it for the interest of the Church, and for the good of souls, to have believed as true.

A whale swallowed Jonah; but a believer in all the assertions and narrations of Tertullian and Irenaeus would be more wonder-working than Jonah; for such a one must have swallowed whales.
[Footnote 1: The Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity asserted, in reply to some late pamphlets.

2nd edit.Lond.