Verse 10: 'Both the aged and the ancient are among us, much older than your fathers.' 33. They falsely flatter themselves with the teaching and consent of the ancient fathers. — Because all heretics have gone out from the holy universal Church, John bears witness, who says: 'They went out from us, but they were not of us' (1 John 2:19). But that they may be able to commend the things they assert to the foolish minds of men as though from antiquity, they profess to have ancient fathers, and they call the very doctors of the Church the masters of their own profession.
And while they despise present preachers, they glory with false presumption in the teaching of the ancient Fathers, so that the things which they themselves say they may claim the ancient fathers also held, in order that what they cannot establish by rectitude they may confirm as though from the authority of those men. But because it is written: 'Whom the Lord loves He chastens, and He scourges every son whom He receives' (Heb. 12:6), often holy Church labours under many adversities in this life, and the life of the reprobate is left so much the more without scourge, the less it is reserved for any rewards. But the heretics, seeing the afflictions of holy Church, despise her, and suspect that she is worn down by so many scourges through the merit of a wicked profession.