If ever we shall be allowed to turn to the Fathers, the battle is lost and won:  they are as thoroughly ours as is Gregory XIII. himself, the loving Father of the children of the Church.  To say nothing of isolated passages, which are gathered from the records of the ancients, apt and clear statements in defence of our faith, we hold entire volumes of these Fathers, which professedly illustrate in clear and abundant light the Gospel religion which we defend.  Take the twofold Hierarchy of the martyr Dionysius, what classes, what sacrifices, what rites does he teach?  This fact struck Luther so forcibly that he pronounced the works of this Father to be “such stuff as dreams are made of, and that of the most pernicious kind.”  In imitation of his parent, an obscure Frenchman, Caussee, has not hesitated to call this Dionysius, the Apostle of an illustrious nation, “an old dotard.”  Ignatius has given grievous offence to the Centuriators of Magdeburg, as also to Calvin, so that these men, the offscouring of mankind, have noted in his works “unsightly blemishes and tasteless prosings.”  In their judgment, Irenaeus has brought out “a fanatical production”:  Clement, the author of the Stromata, has produced “Tares and dregs”:  the other Fathers of this age, Apostolic men to be sure, “have left blasphemies and monstrosities to posterity.”  In Tertullian they eagerly seize upon what they have learned from us, in common with us, to detest; but they should remember that his book On Prescriptions, which has so signally smitten the heretics of our times, was never found fault with.  How finely, how, clearly, has Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto pointed out beforehand the power of Antichrist, the times of Luther!  They call him, therefore, “a most babyish writer, an owl.”  Cyprian, the delight and glory of Africa, that French critic Caussee, and the Centuriators of Magdeburg, have termed “stupid, God-forsaken corrupter of repentance.”  What harm has he done?  He has written On Virgins, On the Lapsed, On the Unity of the Church, such treatises as also such letters to Cornelius, the Roman Pontiff, that, unless credence be withdrawn from this Martyr, Peter Martyr Vermilius and all his associates must count for worse than adulterers and men guilty of sacrilege.  And, not to dwell longer on individuals, the Fathers of this age are all condemned “for wonderful corruption of the doctrine of repentance.”  How so?  Because the austerity of the Canons in vogue at that time is particularly obnoxious to this plausible sect which, better fitted for dining-rooms than for churches, is wont to tickle voluptuous ears and to sew cushions on every arm (Ezech. xiii. 18).  Take the next age, what offence has that committed?  Chrysostom and those Fathers, forsooth, have “foully obscured the justice of faith.”  Gregory Nazianzen whom the ancients called eminently “the Theologian,” is in the judgment of Caussee “a chatter-box, who did not know what he was saying.”  Ambrose was “under