If at this period a German divinity professor had been lecturing at Oxford, or German books had been accessible to me, it might have saved me long peregrinations of body and mind.
About this time I had also begun to think that the old writers called _Fathers_ deserved but a small fraction of the reverence which is awarded to them.

I had been strongly urged to read Chrysostom's work on the Priesthood, by one who regarded it as a suitable preparation for Holy Orders; and I did read it.

But I not only thought it inflated, and without moral depth, but what was far worse, I encountered in it an elaborate defence of falsehood in the cause of the Church, and generally of deceit in any good cause.[4] I rose from the treatise in disgust, and for the first time sympathized with Gibbon; and augured that if he had spoken with moral indignation, instead of pompous sarcasm, against the frauds of the ancient "Fathers," his blows would have fallen far more heavily on Christianity itself.
I also, with much effort and no profit, read the Apostolic Fathers.
Of these, Clement alone seemed to me respectable, and even he to write only what I could myself have written, with Paul and Peter to serve as a model.

But for Barnabas and Hermas I felt a contempt so profound, that I could hardly believe them genuine.

On the whole, this reading greatly exalted my sense of the unapproachable greatness[5] of the New Testament.