Chapter I.--Connection of Gluttony and Lust. Grounds of Psychical Objections Against the Montanists.
I should wonder at the Psychics, if they were enthralled to voluptuousness alone, which leads them to repeated marriages, if they were not likewise bursting with gluttony, which leads them to hate fasts. Lust without voracity would certainly be considered a monstrous phenomenon; since these two are so united and concrete, that, had there been any possibility of disjoining them, the pudenda would not have been affixed to the belly itself rather than elsewhere. Look at the body: the region (of these members) is one and the same. In short, the order of the vices is proportionate to the arrangement of the members. First, the belly; and then immediately the materials of all other species of lasciviousness are laid subordinately to daintiness: through love of eating, love of impurity finds passage. I recognise, therefore, animal [1002] faith by its care of the flesh (of which it wholly consists)--as prone to manifold feeding as to manifold marrying--so that it deservedly accuses the spiritual discipline, which according to its ability opposes it, in this species of continence as well; imposing, as it does, reins upon the appetite, through taking, sometimes no meals, or late meals, or dry meals, just as upon lust, through allowing but one marriage.
It is really irksome to engage with such: one is really ashamed to wrangle about subjects the very defence of which is offensive to modesty. For how am I to protect chastity and sobriety without taxing their adversaries? What those adversaries are I will once for all mention: they are the exterior and interior botuli of the Psychics. It is these which raise controversy with the Paraclete; it is on this account that the New Prophecies are rejected: not that Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilla preach another God, nor that they disjoin Jesus Christ (from God), nor that they overturn any particular rule of faith or hope, but that they plainly teach more frequent fasting than marrying. Concerning the limit of marrying, we have already published a defence of monogamy. [1003] Now our battle is the battle of the secondary (or rather the primary) continence, in regard of the chastisement of diet. They charge us with keeping fasts of our own; with prolonging our Stations generally into the evening; with observing xerophagies likewise, keeping our food unmoistened by any flesh, and by any juiciness, and by any kind of specially succulent fruit; and with not eating or drinking anything with a winey flavour; also with abstinence from the bath, congruent with our dry diet. They are therefore constantly reproaching us with novelty; concerning the unlawfulness of which they lay down a prescriptive rule, that either it must be adjudged heresy, if (the point in dispute) is a human presumption; or else pronounced pseudo-prophecy, if it is a spiritual declaration; provided that, either way, we who reclaim hear (sentence of) anathema.
[1001] [Written, say, circa a.d. 208.]
[1002] i.e., Psychic.
[1003] [Which is a note of time, not unimportant.]
Chapter II.--Arguments of the Psychics, Drawn from the Law, the Gospel, the Acts, the Epistles, and Heathenish Practices.
For, so far as pertains to fasts, they oppose to us the definite days appointed by God: as when, in Leviticus, the Lord enjoins upon Moses the tenth day of the seventh month (as) a day of atonement, saying, "Holy shall be to you the day, and ye shall vex your souls; and every soul which shall not have been vexed in that day shall be exterminated from his people." [1004] At all events, in the Gospel they think that those days were definitely appointed for fasts in which "the Bridegroom was taken away;" [1005] and that these are now the only legitimate days for Christian fasts, the legal and prophetical antiquities having been abolished: for wherever it suits their wishes, they recognise what is the meaning of "the Law and the prophets until John." [1006] Accordingly, (they think) that, with regard to the future, fasting was to be indifferently observed, by the New Discipline, of choice, not of command, according to the times and needs of each individual: that this, withal, had been the observance of the apostles, imposing (as they did) no other yoke of definite fasts to be observed by all generally, nor similarly of Stations either, which (they think) have withal days of their own (the fourth and sixth days of the week), but yet take a wide range according to individual judgment, neither subject to the law of a given precept, nor (to be protracted) beyond the last hour of the day, since even prayers the ninth hour generally concludes, after Peter's example, which is recorded in the Acts. Xerophagies, however, (they consider) the novel name of a studied duty, and very much akin to heathenish superstition, like the abstemious rigours which purify an Apis, an Isis, and a Magna Mater, by a restriction laid upon certain kinds of food; whereas faith, free in Christ, [1007] owes no abstinence from particular meats to the Jewish Law even, admitted as it has been by the apostle once for all to the whole range of the meat-market [1008] --(the apostle, I say), that detester of such as, in like manner as they prohibit marrying, so bid us abstain from meats created by God. [1009] And accordingly (they think) us to have been even then prenoted as "in the latest times departing from the faith, giving heed to spirits which seduce the world, having a conscience inburnt with doctrines of liars." [1010] (Inburnt?) With what fires, prithee? The fires, I ween, which lead us to repeated contracting of nuptials and daily cooking of dinners! Thus, too, they affirm that we share with the Galatians the piercing rebuke (of the apostle), as "observers of days, and of months, and of years." [1011] Meantime they huff in our teeth the fact that Isaiah withal has authoritatively declared, "Not such a fast hath the Lord elected," that is, not abstinence from food, but the works of righteousness, which he there appends: [1012] and that the Lord Himself in the Gospel has given a compendious answer to every kind of scrupulousness in regard to food; "that not by such things as are introduced into the mouth is a man defiled, but by such as are produced out of the mouth;" [1013] while Himself withal was wont to eat and drink till He made Himself noted thus; "Behold, a gormandizer and a drinker:" [1014] (finally), that so, too, does the apostle teach that "food commendeth us not to God; since we neither abound if we eat, nor lack if we eat not." [1015]
By the instrumentalities of these and similar passages, they subtlely tend at last to such a point, that every one who is somewhat prone to appetite finds it possible to regard as superfluous, and not so very necessary, the duties of abstinence from, or diminution or delay of, food, since "God," forsooth, "prefers the works of justice and of innocence." And we know the quality of the hortatory addresses of carnal conveniences, how easy it is to say, "I must believe with my whole heart; [1016] I must love God, and my neighbour as myself: [1017] for on these two precepts the whole Law hangeth, and the prophets,' not on the emptiness of my lungs and intestines."
[1004] Lev. xvi. 29; xxiii. 26-29.
[1005] Matt. ix. 14, 15; Mark ii. 18-20; Luke v. 33-35.
[1006] Luke xvi. 16; Matt. xi. 13.
[1007] Comp. Gal. v. 1.
[1008] Comp. 1 Cor. x. 25.
[1009] Comp. 1 Tim. iv. 3.
[1010] So Oehler punctuates. The reference is to 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2.
[1011] See Gal. iv. 10; the words kai kairous Tertullian omits.
[1012] See Isa. lviii. 3-7.
[1013] See Matt. xv. 11; Mark vii. 15.
[1014] Matt. xi. 19; Luke vii. 34.
[1015] 1 Cor. viii. 8.
[1016] Rom. x. 10.
[1017] Comp. Matt. xxii. 37-40, and the parallel passages.