Antiochus or
Maximinus did, and are wont to name them heretics' books. And out of
doubt, to see too, they would fain do as Herod in old time did in Jewry,
that he might with more surety keep still his dominion: who being an
Idumaean born, and a stranger to the stock and kindred of the Jews, and
yet coveting much to be taken for a Jew, to the end he might establish to
him and his posterity the kingdom of that country, which he had gotten of
Augustus Caesar, he commanded all the genealogies and pedigrees to be
burnt, and made out of the way, so that there should remain no record
whereby he might be known to them that came after that he was an alien in
blood: whereas even from Abraham's time these monuments had been safely
kept amongst the Jews, and laid up in their treasury; because in them it
might easily and most assuredly be found of what lineage everyone did
descend. So (in good faith) do these men, when they would have all their
own doings in estimation, as though they had been delivered to us even
from the Apostles, or from Christ Himself: to the end there might be
found nowhere anything able to convince such their dreams and lies,
either they burn the Holy Scriptures, or else they craftily convey them
from the people surely.

Very rightly and aptly doth Chrysostom write against these men.
"Heretics," saith he, "shut up the doors against the truth: for they know
full well, if the door were open, the Church should be none of theirs."
Theophylact also: "God's Word," saith he, "is the candle whereby the
thief is espied." And Tertullian saith, "The Holy Scripture manifestly
findeth out the fraud and theft of heretics." For why do they hide, why
do they keep under the Gospel which Christ would have preached aloud from
the housetop? Why whelm they that light under a bushel which ought to
stand on a candlestick? Why trust they more to the blindness of the
unskilful multitude, and to ignorance, than to the goodness of their
cause? Think they their sleights are not already perceived, and that
they can walk now unespied, as though they had Gyges' ring, to go
invisibly by, upon their finger? No, no. All men see now well and well
again, what good stuff is in that chest of the "Bishop of Rome's bosom."
This thing alone of itself may be an argument sufficient that they work
not uprightly and truly. Worthily ought that matter seem suspicious
which flieth trial, and is afraid of the light. "For he that doeth
evil," as C