It reached its climax, as we should expect to find, in the heroic writers of the fourth century, the golden era of patrology.

The translations, with a few exceptions which are noted, are referred for the sake of convenience to the Patrology of Migne or Mansi's Concilia.

Their places were taken by Patrology, Church History, Pastoral Theology, and Biblical Exegesis of the kind then in vogue in Protestant schools.