MONTANISTS
528
MOXTAXISTS
ception of inspiration, flexible natures, susceptible of I keen and rapid impressions, were the chosen organs of revelation. . . . Ambiguous and lying oracles could thus ! be substituted for the clear and exact prescriptions of j the sacred books. It is obvious that the whole of Chris- tianity was imperilled by this doctrine of the Paraclete (q. v.). This was the fundamental heresy of Montan- ism, and intinitely more serious than the particular er- rors into which it might be led" (^Ilei-esy avd Doctrine, p.lU-115).
The view which the Montanists took of divine inspi- ration led them to ignore the demands of the ecclesi- astical order, and to assert the universal prophetic and priestly office of Christians— even of females. They found the true qualification and appointment for the of- fice of teacher in direct endowment by the Spirit of God, in distinction from outward ordination and episcopal succession. They everywhere proposed the supernatu- ral element, and the free motion of the spirit, against the mechanism of a fixed ecclesiastical order. Now they were undoubtedly right in their resistance to the encroachments of the hierarchy, and to the relaxation of discipline ; but they went too far on this point, as on every other — insistuig upon a Church of saints and per- fect men, a standard applicable only to the invisible Church. " The Church," said Tertullian, " is not con- stituted by the number of bishops ; it is the Holy Spirit in the spiritual man" (/>e I'lulicil. p. 21)— a false and dangerous theory for practice in the visible Church, ■where the secrets of the heart can never be judged of — where, as Pressense has aptly said, " the tares grow with the good wheat, and their separation is impossible. For the evil is not excluded bj^ making a profession of the faith the personal condition of membership ; there is no guarantee that this profession will be in all cases sin- cere, and, e\-en were it so, there is no religious commu- nity in which it is not incomplete. It follows that no one such comrauuitj- can claim to be itself, to the exclu- sion of all others, the temple of the Holy (ihost; else it becomes an exclusive sect like the Montanists, who called themselves the perfect, the spiritual men, sjjcak- ing scornfully of all other Christians as carnal. Their conception of inspiration, as never final and complete, moreover rendered any fixed order impossible, and de- stroyed ecclesiastical authority. All the elements of the faith were daily liable to change. It was iini)ossible to divine what strange answers to spiritual questions might fall from heaven" (flerexi/, p. 116). Here, then, was the point >vhere they necessarily assumed a schismatic char- acter, and arrayed against themselves the episcopal hie- rarchy. They only brought another kind of aristocracy into the place of the condennied distinction of clergy and laity. They claimed for their prophets what they denied to the Catholic bishops. They put a great gulf between the true spiritual Christians and tlie merely psychical, and thus induced spiritual pride and false pi- etism. Their affinity with the Protestant idea of the universal priesthood is clearly more ap]iarent than real ; they go on altogether different principles. (Compare Schati; i, 307.)
As to its matter, the Montanistic prophecy related — (1) to the api)roaching heavy judffments of God, a sort of ^^sionary millenarianism ; (2) the persecutions; (3) fast- ing and other ascetic practices, which were to be en- forced as laws ; and (4) as to the distinction to be made between the various Icinds of sins.
One of the most essential and prominent traits of Montanism was its visionary niillenarianism, founded, indeed, on the Apocalypse and on the apostolic expecta- tion of the speedy return of Christ, but giving them ex- travagant weight and a materialistic coloring. The Montanists lived under a vivid inqiression of the great final catastrophe, and looked tlurefore with contempt upon the present world, and directed all their desires to the second advent of Christ, which they believeil to be near at hand. " After me," exclaimed one of its projih- etesses, " there is no more prophecy, but only the enil of
the world" (Epiphanius, //(er. xlviii, 2). The failure of these predictions weakened, of course, all the other pretensions of the system ; though, on the other hand, it must be confessed here that the abatement of faith in the near approach of the Lord was certainly accompanied with an increase of worldliness in the Catholic Church.
But besides the ])roininent traits of Montanism al- ready indicated, there remain those questions of disci- pline and 7norals, which were made tlie suliject of spe- cial revelation in order to impart to the system its legal character. The distinction between the two covenants was lost sight of. '"The Church," says Tertullian, "blends the law and the prophets with the Gospels and the writings of the apostles" (Be Prescript. § 6). The Gospel was a code, no less than ^losaism, especially with the am|)lifications given to it by the Paraclete. " The law of liberty," says Pressense, •' is replaced by precepts of the minutest detail. All that was not per- missible was laid under a stern interdict (Tertullian, De Coinna Miiit. p. 2), and thus vanished that noble Chris- tian liberty which enlarges the domain of the moral principle instead of narrowing it, and takes possession of the entire life, to bring it all under our direction, and to animate it with the inspiration of love as with the breath of life" {Heresy, p. 117). Jlontanism, indeed, tended to a system of growing severity ; and Tertullian, moreover, gloried in that the restoration of this rigorous discipline was made the chief office of the new prophecy {De Monog. c. 2 and 4). Now it must be confessed that the Montanists raised a zealous protest against the grow- ing looseness of the Catholic penitential discipline, which in Rome particularly, under Zephyrinus and Callistus, to the great grief of earnest minds, established a scheme of indulgence for the grossest sins, and began, long be- fore Constantine, to obscure the line between the Cimrch and the world ; but, on the other hand, it must be re- membered also that Montanism certainly went to the opposite extreme, and fell from evangelical freedom into Jewish legalism. It turned with horror from all the enjoyments of life, and held even art to be incompatible with Christian soberness and humility. Above all, it laid stress upon three points: first, it exalted martjT- dom with solemn fervor. It courted blood-baptism, and condemned concealment or flight in persecution as a de- nial of Christ : " For if persecution proceeds from God, it is in no way their duty to flee from what has God for its author ; it ought not to be avoided, and it cannot be evad- ed." The treatise of Tertullian, Flight and Persecution, clearly and perfectly expresses these ideas, and they were the ideas of the Jlontanists. The Church had given to martyrdom no niggardly honor, but in the spirit of its founder's teachings (Matt, x, 23) flight was considered jiroper. Montanism, however, severely con- demned every measure of prudence in times of proscrip- tion (comp. Euscbius, Hist. Eccles. v, 10 ; Tertullian, De Fticja, § iv, p. 091-0'J7).