According to Apollinaris of Hierapolis (quoted by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical Ilistm-y, ch. xvi), the earliest Montanists were exclusively Phrj'gians; but this is not correct, though it is easy to see, from what we have said in the article Montasus, why his views should have laid strong hold on that race of excitable and superstitious Asiatics. Gieseler and !Mil- man remark that the national character of the I'lirygi- ans impressed itself on their Christianity, and led to a sensuous, enthusiastic worship of the Deity, and to a wild mysticism. But this cannot have been the cause of the Montanist movement; it can only have given a peculiar character to the heresy, and influenced its details. For '• Montanism is but one of a number of similar movements in the Church. At intervals through- out the ainials of Christianity, the Holy Ghost has been summoned by the hopes, felt as present by the enkindled imaginations, been proclaimed by the passionate enthu- siasm of a few as accomplishing in them the imperfect revelation — as the third revelation which is to supersede and to fulfil the law and the Gospel." This notion ap- pears not onl\' thus early, but again in the Jliddle Ages, as the doctrine of the abbot Joachim, of John Peter de Oliva, and the Fratricelli ; in a milder form it is that of George Fox and of Barclay (Milman, I.at, Clirislianittj, i, 1), and in the Irvingites of to-day. In all these cases there is a striving, but a misguided striving, after a higher standard. Certain it is that, whatever doubt may exist as to the historical existence and conseiiuent influence of Montanus. the heresy which bears his name spread not only in Phrygia, but throughout the l;ounds of the Catholic Church ; and that if he existed, and taught Montanism, he Avas rather, as Neander observes, '•the unconscious organ through which a peculiar men- tal tendency, which had devel(>i)ed itself in various parts of the Church, ex]iressc(l itself with clearer intelligence and greater strength" (.1 ntii/uost.'). Indeed, there was much in the system which their pretended revelations were employed to establish, not only well adapted to take root and flourish among such a people as the Plirj-g- ians, but also sure to find in everj' country persons pre- pared to receive it by previous habits of mind. "It was attractive to the more rigid feelings, by holding out the idea of a life stricter than that of ordinary Chris- tians ; to weakness, by offering the guidance of ])recise rules where the Gospel had only laid down general principles; to enthusiasm and the love of excitement, by its pretensions to prophetical gifts ; to pride, by pro- fessing to realize the jnire and sjiotlcss mystical Church in an exactly defined visible communion ; and by en- couraging the members of this body to regard them- selves as spiritual, and all other Christians as carnal" (Robertson, p. 71). It is said to have been chiefly among the lower orders that ^lontanism spread : but even in the powerfid mind of Tcrtullian it found conge- nial soil ; and his embracing their opinions is one of the most interesting events in the history of the sect, as it is also in the biography of TertuUian himself. It oc-
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curred about A.D. 200, and the treatises which he wrote after that important period in his life give us the clear- est insight into the essential character of Montanism ; for he carried the opinions of the sect to their utmost length of rigid and uncompromising severity, though at the same time on the great fundamental points in which the Montanists did not differ from the Church he con- tinued, as he had before been, one of the ablest cham- pions of scriptural truth, and one of the mightiest oppo- nents of every form of heresy.
Montanism, it is apparent, then, must be treated as a doctrinal development of the 3d rather than of the 2d century ; for though the history of the sect may be dated back to tlie middle of the 2d century, it remained for Tertullian to give definite shape to Montanism, and it is as a separate sect that we can first deal with the Montanists (or Tertullianists, as thej' were also called in Africa) in the 3d century, continuing to flourish as a sect until the close of the 6th century, and all this time being the subject of legal enactments under all the suc- cessors of Constantine down to Justinian (A.D. 530). As a doctrinal system, INIontanism in its original incep- tion agreed in all essential points with the most catholic teachings, and held very firmly to the traditional rule of faith. This was acknowledged even by those who were opposed to Montanism (compare Epiphanius, IIa;r. xxviii, 1). Nor is this to be wondered at. " For Mon- tanism," as Dr. Schaff has well said, " was not originally a departure from the faith, but a morbid overstraining of the practical morality of the early Church. It is the first example of an earnest and well-meaning, but gloomy and fanatical hyperchristianitj', which, like all hj^perspiritualism, ends again in the flesh. ... Its views were rooted neither (like Ebionism) in Judaism nor (like Gnosticism) in heathenism, but in Christianity, audits errors consist in a morbid exaggeration of Chris- tian ideas and demands." It is true also that the Mon- tanists combated the Gnostic heresy with all decision, and, through Tertullian, contributed to the development of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, in asserting against Patripassianism the personal distinctions in God, and the import of the Holy Ghost. Yet this orthodoxy in the substance of its doctrine did not give IMontanism the right to claim its place in evangelical Catholicity, for it was itself a principle of implacable and irreconcil- able exclusion. Though first seen and felt only in the field of practical life and discipline, this Montanistic movement, coming then into conflict with the reigning Catholicism, finallj' and consistently carried out, broke to some extent into the province of doctrine, and thus proved true the theory that " every schismatic tendency becomes in its progress more or less heretical" (SchafiF).