Miscellanies 7.16.96

So we too, demonstrating fully from the Scriptures themselves about the Scriptures, are persuaded from faith by way of demonstration. And even if those who pursue the heresies dare to use the prophetic Scriptures, first, they do not use all of them; then, they do not use them whole, nor as the body and texture of the prophecy dictates, but, picking out what is said ambiguously, they turn it to their own opinions, plucking a few scattered sayings here and there, not considering what is meant by them but misusing the bare wording itself. For in nearly all the passages they bring forward you would find that they attend to the words alone, changing the meanings, neither knowing how they are meant nor using the very selections they bring as they naturally stand. But the truth is not found by changing the meanings (for in that way they will overturn all true teaching), but by considering what is perfectly proper and fitting to the Lord and the almighty God, and by confirming each thing demonstrated from the Scriptures by similar Scriptures in turn. So they neither wish to turn to the truth, ashamed to give up the advantage of self-love, nor have they any way to establish their own opinions, since they do violence to the Scriptures. Having gone ahead and put out false doctrines among people, plainly fighting against almost all the Scriptures and continually refuted by us who contradict them, they still hold out even now: they refuse to accept some of the prophetic writings, and they slander us as being of another nature and unable to understand what is theirs; and sometimes, when refuted, they even deny their own doctrines, ashamed to confess openly what they boast of teaching in private.