Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/806

Rh 776 MONTANISM that Christians might prepare themselves by strict discipline for the day of the Lord. Meanwhile in Phrygia and its neighbourhood especially in Galatia, and also in Thrace a controversy was raging between the adherents and the opponents of the new prophecy. Between 150 and 176 the authority of the episcopate had been immensely strengthened, and along with it a settled order had been introduced into the churches. It need hardly be said that, as a rule, the bishops were the most resolute enemies of the Montanistic enthusiasm. It disturbed the peace and order of the con gregations, and threatened their safety. Moreover, it made demands on individual Christians such as very few could comply with. But the disputation which Bishops Zoticus of Cumana and Julian of Apamea arranged with Maximilla and her following turned out most disastrously for its promoters. The &quot; spirit &quot; of Maximilla gained a signal victory, a certain Themison in particular having reduced the bishops to silence. Sotas bishop of Anchialus attempted to refute Prisca, but with no better success ; he too had to retire from the field in disgrace. These proceedings were never forgotten in Asia Minor, and the report of them spread far and wide. In after times the only way in which the discomfiture of the bishops could be explained was by asserting that they had been silenced by fraud or violence. This was the commencement of the excommunication or secession, whichever it may have been, of the Montanists in Asia Minor. &quot; I am pursued like a wolf,&quot; exclaimed the spirit that spoke through Maximilla ; and her admonitions about the end became more emphatic than ever : &quot; After me there will come no other prophetess, but the end.&quot; Not only did an extreme party arise in Asia Minor rejecting all prophecy and the Apocalypse of John along with it, but the majority of the churches and bishops in that district appear (c. 178) to have broken off all fellowship with the new prophets, while books were written to show that the very form of the Montanistic prophecy was sufficient proof of its spuriousness. 1 In Gaul and Rome the prospects of Montanism seemed for a while more favourable. The confessors of the Gallican Church were of opinion that communion ought to be maintained with the zealots of Asia and Phrygia ; and they addressed a letter to this effect to the Roman bishop, Eleutherus. Whether this is the bishop of whom Ter- tullian (Adv. Prax., 1) relates that he was on the point of making peace with the churches of Asia and Phrygia i.e., the Montanistic communities is not certain ; it was either he or his successor Victor. It is certain, at any- rate, that there was a momentary vacillation, even in Rome. Nor is this to be wondered at. The events in Phrygia could not appear new and unprecedented to the Roman Church. If we may believe Tertullian, it was Praxeas of Asia Minor, the relentless foe of Montanism, who succeeded in persuading the Roman bishop to with hold his letters of conciliation. Early in the last decade of the 2d century two consider able works appeared in Asia Minor against the Kataphry- gians. The first, by a bishop or presbyter whose name is not known, is addressed to Abircius bishop of Hierapolis, and was written in the fourteenth year after the death of Maximilla, i.e., apparently about the year 193. The other was written by a certain Apollonius forty years after the appearance of Montanus, consequently about 196. From these treatises we learn that the adherents of the new prophecy were very numerous in Phrygia, Asia, and Galatia (Ancyra), that they had tried to defend them- 1 Miltiades, vtpl rou [J.TJ Sefv Trpo&amp;lt;j)r}T-riv v tKcmifffi a?v. At the same time as Miltiades, if not earlier, Apollinaris of Hierapolis also wrote against the Montanists. selves in writing from the charges brought against them (by Miltiades), that they possessed a fully -developed independent organization, that they could boast of many martyrs, and that they were still formidable to the church in Asia Minor. Many of the small congregations had gone completely over to Montanism, although in large towns, like Ephesus, the opposite party maintained the ascendency. Every bond of intercourse was broken, and in the Catholic churches the worst calumnies were retailed about the deceased prophets and the leaders of the societies they had founded. In many churches outside of Asia Minor a different state of matters prevailed. Those who accepted the message of the new prophecy did not at once leave the Catholic Church in a body. They simply formed small conventicles within the church ; in many instances, indeed, their belief in the new prophecy may have remained a private opinion which did not affect their position as members of the larger congregation. Such, for example, appears to have been the case in Carthage (if we may judge from the Acts of the martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas) at the commencement of the persecution of Septimius Severus about the year 202. But even here it was impossible that an open rupture should be indefinitely postponed. The bishops and their flocks gave offence to the spiritualists on so many points that at last it could be endured no longer. The latter wished for more fasting, the prohibition of second marriages, a frank, courageous profession of Christianity in daily life, and entire separa tion from the world ; the bishops, on the other hand, sought in every way to make it as easy as possible to be a Christian, lest they should lose the greater part of their congregations. The spiritualists would have excluded from the church every one who had been guilty of mortal sin ; the bishops were at that time specially anxious to relax the stringency of the old disciplinary laws. And lastly, the bishops were compelled more and more to take the control of discipline into their own hands, while the spiritualists, appealing to the old principle that God alone can remit or retain sins, insisted that God Himself i.e., the Spirit was the sole judge in the congregation, and that therefore all proceedings must be conducted according to the directions of the prophets. On this point especially a conflict was inevitable. It is true that there was no rivalry between the new organization and the old, as in Asia and Phrygia, for the Western Montanists recognized in its main features the Catholic organization as it had been developed in the contest with Gnosticism ; but the demand that the &quot; organs of the Spirit &quot; should direct the whole discipline of the congregation contained implicitly a protest against the actual constitution of the church. Even before this latent antagonism was made plain, there were many minor matters which were sufficient to precipitate a rupture in particular congregations. In Carthage, for example, it would appear that the breach between the Catholic Church and the Montanistic con venticle was caused by a disagreement on the question whether or not virgins ought to be veiled. For nearly five years (202-207) the Carthaginian Montanists strove to remain within the church, which was as dear to them as it was to their opponents. But at length they quitted it, and formed a congregation of their own, declaring that the Catholic Church was henceforth only a body of &quot;psychic&quot; Christians, because she would not acknowledge the Spirit whom God had at last poured out on His people. It was at this juncture that Tertullian, the most famous theologian of the West, left the church of which he had been the most loyal son and the most powerful supporter, and whose cause he had so manfully upheld against pagans and heretics. He too had come to the conviction that the