Note (return) — Chapter III

The natural resistance offered to the new prophets with this extravagant message—especially by the leaders of communities, and the persecutions to which the Church was soon after subjected under Marcus Aurelius, led to an intensifying of the eschatological expectations that beyond doubt had been specially keen in Montanist circles from the beginning. For the New Jerusalem was soon to come down from heaven in visible form, and establish itself in the spot which, by direction of the Spirit, had been chosen for Christendom in Phrygia.195 Whatever amount of peculiarity the movement lost, in so far as the ideal of an assembly of all Christians proved incapable of being realised or at least only possible within narrow limits, was abundantly restored in the last decades of the second century by the strength and courage that the news of its spread in Christendom gave to the earnest minded to unite and offer resistance to the ever increasing tendency of the Church to assume a secular and political character. Many entire communities in Phrygia and Asia recognised the divine mission of the prophets. In the Churches of other provinces religious societies were formed in which the predictions of these prophets were circulated and viewed as a Gospel, though at the same time they lost their effect by being so treated. The confessors at Lyons openly expressed their full sympathy with the movement in Asia. The bishop of Rome was on the verge of acknowledging the Montanists to be in full communion with the Church. But among themselves there was no longer, as at the beginning, any question of a new organisation in the strict sense of the word, and of a radical remodelling of Christian society.196 Whenever Montanism comes before us in the clear light of history it rather appears as a religious movement already deadened, though still very powerful. Montanus and his prophetesses had set no limits to their enthusiasm; nor were there as yet any fixed barriers in Christendom that could have restrained them.197 The Spirit, the Son, nay, the Father himself had appeared in them and spoke through them.198 Imagination pictured Christ bodily in female form to the eyes of Prisca.199 The most extravagant promises were given.200 These prophets spoke in a loftier tone than any Apostle ever did, and they were even bold enough to overturn apostolic regulations.201 They set up new commandments for the Christian life, regardless of any tradition,202 and they inveighed against the main body of Christendom.203 They not only proclaimed themselves as prophets, but as the last prophets, as notable prophets in whom was first fulfilled the promise of the sending of the Paraclete.204 These Christians as yet knew nothing of the "absoluteness of a historically complete revelation of Christ as the fundamental condition of Christian consciousness;" they only felt a Spirit to which they yielded unconditionally and without reserve. But, after they had quitted the scene, their followers sought and found a kind of compromise. The Montanist congregations that sought for recognition in Rome, whose part was taken by the Gallic confessors, and whose principles gained a footing in North Africa, may have stood in the same relation to the original adherents of the new prophets and to these prophets themselves, as the Mennonite communities did to the primitive Anabaptists and their empire in Münster. The "Montanists" outside of Asia Minor acknowledged to the fullest extent the legal position of the great Church. They declared their adherence to the apostolic "regula" and the New Testament canon.205 The organisation of the Churches, and, above all, the position of the bishops as successors of the Apostles and guardians of doctrine were no longer disputed. The distinction between them and the main body of Christendom, from which they were unwilling to secede, was their belief in the new prophecy of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, which was contained, in its final form, in written records and in this shape may have produced the same impression as is excited by the fragments of an exploded bomb.206