Sentence:  This conception was taken up by the early <WSD>Church</WSD> Fathers and by canon lawyers and theologians in the Middle Ages ; and More was far too well read not to have come across it in one or several of the forms thus given it . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  (Christianity) any of about 70 theologians in the period from the 2nd to the 7th century whose writing established and confirmed official church doctrine; in the Roman Catholic Church some were later declared saints and became Doctor of the Church; the best known Latin Church Fathers are Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Jerome; those who wrote in Greek include Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and John Chrysostom