There is good Dr.Sales, who was born in 1770.

Suppose that he should say that steamboats came from England at the time that the Hudson river was discovered, and that they had plied there ever since?
No man in his right mind (not to say a scholar like Origen), however singular his opinions, would assert, for veritable history, that which was as palpably false as such a fiction respecting steamboat navigation upon the Hudson would be.

Yet Origen asserts that the practice of infant baptism was received directly from the apostles.

Everybody could contradict him if he were in error.
_Mr.M._ But we know that he was in error in saying that forgiveness of sins was a consequence of baptism.
_Dr.D._ Very well.

The erroneous opinions, or practices, of men, with regard to the shape of the earth, did not prove that there was no earth in their day.