Very well summarized wagglebee, thanks!
The author is judging the Fathers by his own theological standards. That's a fair theological position. It's a horrible *historical* position though. If these beliefs were heresy, why were they never corrected by later Fathers, Fathers who were happy to correct people like Origen or Tertullian on other matters. If they were out of the mainstream of Christian thought, why didn't mainstream Christian thought repudiate them as it repudiated Cerinthus and Arius and everyone else?
The simpler historical explanation is that the Fathers weren't the heretics. Way of Life are the heretics. ;)
They weren't even "corrected" by any of the Protestant Reformers.
From a historical perspective, modern-day anti-Catholicism requires one to deliberately IGNORE verifiable facts. Here are a few FACTUAL instances:
1. If the Rapture and Dispensationalism is so obvious, why didn't ANYONE make mention of it prior to the 19th century?
2. The basis of sola scriptura is predicated on two fundamental necessities, FIRST that everyone actually has a Bible to read and SECOND that they can actually read it (I'm not talking about having the capacity to interpret it, I mean the simple ability to read it). And the FACT is that neither of these conditions existed for well over 90% of the population prior to the 15th century. Before Gutenberg Bibles simply were unaffordable to all but the wealthiest families, this was not because of some conspiracy by the Church it was simply because the cost of inscribing them by hand was incredible (a true handwritten Torah costs around $40,000 today, but keep in mind that this really only contains the first five Books of what would go into a Bible). Because books were basically unavailable prior to the 15th century, the average person had neither the opportunity nor the reason to learn to read, people learned math that was necessary to their commerce and that was about it. Now, God obviously would have known that Gutenberg would not invent the printing press for fourteen hundred years after the Resurrection; so one must wonder why, if sola scriptura was so vital, He would be so cruel as to wait so song before it became genuinely possible.