Hermas, Mand. iii. 3, confesses to wholesale lying; he had never heard that it was wrong. But the writer of the Shepherd does not represent his mouthpiece as a model of virtue. It is more significant that Tertullian, Pud. 19, classes breach of trust and lying among slight sins which may happen to anyone any day. This was in his strictest and most censorious period. There are grave difficulties in reconciling some of Cyprian’s statements concerning his opponents with one another and with probability, but he has not ventured upon any general extenuation of the vice.