spin

One thing that's useful about the church fathers:

They let you know when people start quoting the new testament.

Texts such as Clement of Rome and Barnabas let you know when they are citing ("as Moses wrote" or "as the prophet said"), but they cite only from the old testament or pseudepigrapha, not a single announced new testament quote until we get to the church fathers, especially from the time of Justin Martyr.

Vorkosigan

I run a site devoted to Tertullian
<a href="http://www.tertullian.org" target="_blank">The Tertullian Project</a>, so anything I say is based on this.

What a helpful and thoughtful set of comments! I hope you stop in more often to contribute like this.

Vorkosigan

Roger Pearse

You're very kind. However I only joined the forum because someone -- some two people -- emailed me about another thread (about Eusebius). Nevertheless some of the queries are certainly interesting.

All the best,

Roger Pearse