What is Montanism?

When we come to the Christian era, there arose in the second century, one, Montanus, who claimed to be a divinely inspired prophet. When speaking under the power of a spirit, he would blasphemously assert, “I am the Lord God Omnipotent, who have descended into a man.” He and his followers SPOKE WITH TONGUES, and professed that the prophecy of Joel, quoted by the Apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost, was being fulfilled. The spread of Montanism in Asia Minor compelled the church to take action. The condemnation of the movement alas! only strengthened it. It gained adherents in Italy, France and North Africa, where Tertullian of Carthage was won over. A synod at Iconium in 235, and the council of Constantinople in 381 condemned it. By the beginning of the fifth century it began gradually to die out.

"In Phrygia Montanus began to teach (A.D. 156), he and those with him protesting against the prevailing laxity in the relations of the church and the world.

" … The persecution ordered by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 177) quickened the expectation of the Lord's coming and the spiritual aspirations of the believers. The Montanists hoped to raise up congregations that should return to primitive piety, live as those waiting for the Lord's return and, especially, give to the Holy Spirit His rightful place in the Church … The Catholic system obliged the bishops to take increasing control of the churches, while the Montanists resisted this, maintaining that the guidance of the churches was the prerogative of the Holy Spirit, and that room should be left for His workings.

"These differences soon led to the formation of separate churches in the East. But in the West the Montanists long remained as societies within the Catholic churches; and it was only after many years that they were excluded from, or left, them. In Carthage, Perpetua and Felicitas, the touching record of whose martyrdom has preserved their memory, were still, though Montanists, members of the Catholic church at the time of their martyrdom (A.D. 207), but early in the third century the great leader in the African churches, the eminent writer Tertullian, attaching himself to the Montanists, separated from the Catholic body."

There were regrettable excesses on the part of certain ones among the Montanists. In spite of this, it was evidently a genuine movement towards recovery of the truth of the Holy Spirit's presence. As such it serves as a sample of the many such movements that there have been, and that exists today.

But we have something more from the Fathers on quadragesima. We have seen Irenaeus telling us that some fasted one day, some two, some several, some forty hours continuously. Now, this last is the real secret of this number forty. Tertullian is a Father who lived in the end of the second century, an upright and able man; so that the famous Cyprian used to call him "the master," saying, Bring me the books of the master. This was the famous Cyprian who wrote a celebrated book about the unity of the church; though he would not yield to Rome on what both thought a vital point, namely, re-baptizing heretics. But this Cyprian tells us that the church in his day (Cyprian. de Lapsis) was corrupt to the last degree; that professing Christians were bent upon money-making, men luxurious in their habits, women painting their faces and adorning their hair, cheating going on in a shameful way, marriages with heathens taking place, bishops leaving their sees and flocks to carry on secular affairs, and making long journeys to gain money, not helping their hungry brethren, but seeking large fortunes, seizing on property by insidious frauds, and employing usury to enrich themselves. In other treatises he insists on the evil state of Christendom.

71 Such a state of things seemed to have moved Tertullian, who lived just before Cyprian, and driven him (Jerome says it was the envy the Roman clergy bore — to him) to believe in the rhapsodies of Montanus and his two prophetesses of Phrygia, who were much stricter in their lives and fastings. The pope was on the point of receiving them too (already acknowledging is the term used), when a certain Praxeas, afterwards a famous heretic, came to Rome, and put the pope off it, who then excommunicated and rejected them. Our famous Tertullian would not give them up, and said they were rejected, not because of the spirit they alleged they had, but because of the fasts they gave themselves up to. However, this led him to say something of these fasts; and from him we learn that the Catholic party had their quadragesimal fasts from this — the forty hours that Christ passed, as was alleged, in the grave; and that the scriptural authority (for none of them knew anything of apostolic tradition) they had for it was this: "When the Bridegroom shall be taken away, then shall they fast in those days"; and that as Christ was taken away till His resurrection, therefore they fasted these forty hours — a curious reason, by the bye, for doing so, when He was, according-to this theory, restored to them. But let that pass. Here we have, from the two earliest Fathers who speak of it (Irenaeus and Tertullian), the original of quadragesima, that is, forty.

There are two distinct characters of work which Satan does, which may nevertheless merge one in the other. Of these however one, if alone, will be ephemeral, the other lasting. First, where power is not the true power of the Spirit, so as to detect and judge Satan's imitation, there he can easily set up the imitation of power, and that even where there is a measure of true faith and owning of God, but subjection, intelligent subjection by the Spirit to the word as of the Spirit, is not found. Where this is connected with the establishment of arranged human authority, this latter may subsist, but the work itself is ephemeral. Such a work as this will probably be connected with some of the most right-feeling, if not right-judging, persons among Christians, who have the strongest feelings of the decay which occasions it, but there will be generally shipwreck of the faith in some point or other. Yet it will afford exceeding difficulty to those who cannot discern the work of the enemy in the midst of this right feeling. I would instance as examples of this kind of evil work of the enemy, the Montanists, the Irvingites, and, in some respects, the Quakers or Friends. As to these last it is well known that what I now refer to has passed away, and that they remain amongst men a most quiet and, in many respects, most estimable body of persons. I speak of their early history. What remains is the authority that was settled among them, though with the old Friends very much defect in doctrine.

81 Tertullian received Montanus and the Phrygian prophetesses as having or being the Paraclete, and treated the Catholics as carnal. The term by which Arius was finally condemned, and which had been condemned as heretical by the previous Council of Antioch, was withdrawn after the Council of Nice, and Arius was thereupon received into, and died in the communion of, what is called the Catholic church, this famous word being revoked; and Athanasius died in banishment, deposed from his see by the Council of Tyre. Now, I am satisfied that Arius's views are the most deadly error possible. But what, then, can I think of the Fathers, if compelled to think of them?

Mr. Wolff admits that the Montanists, who received a ministry, introduced clerical despotism and several errors of doctrine. The brethren of Rhynsburgh separated because of a point of doctrine.

As usual, the enemy comes along and what does he say? Well, if you turn over the pages of church history, you will find that oftentimes this subject has gone overboard. Nearly always it is the reaction to a rather dead and cold and lifeless profession. Other Christians have seized on upon this truth and the subject has got out of proportion. The Montanists in the second century, the enthusiastic anabaptists who caused trouble to Martin Luther, the "shakers" amongst the Quakers and the Irvingites who were speaking in tongues just when the brethren began to break bread in 1830.

When we come to the Christian era, there arose in the second century, one, Montanus, who claimed to be a divinely inspired prophet. When speaking under the power of a spirit, he would blasphemously assert, “I am the Lord God Omnipotent, who have descended into a man.” He and his followers SPOKE WITH TONGUES, and professed that the prophecy of Joel, quoted by the Apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost, was being fulfilled. The spread of Montanism in Asia Minor compelled the church to take action. The condemnation of the movement alas! only strengthened it. It gained adherents in Italy, France and North Africa, where Tertullian of Carthage was won over. A synod at Iconium in 235, and the council of Constantinople in 381 condemned it. By the beginning of the fifth century it began gradually to die out.

Irenaeus, for example, uses tradition as a security for truth, not as revealing other things besides what is in scripture. The quotation from Tertullian surprises me, because this same Tertullian, after saying the traditions of the different episcopal sees secured the faith, left what called itself the Catholic church, because its state was so bad. It did not secure his faith. Not only so, but the particular tract Dr. Milner quotes was assuredly written when he had left the universal church to become a Montanist, or, at any rate, accepted the Montanist rhapsodies as prophecy, for he says in the first chapter, No wonder they would not face martyrdom, when they reject the prophecies of the Spirit, that is, of the Paraclete, so called, of Montanus. Even here he only insists on rites and ceremonies, and on no doctrine of faith, saying, that if certain ceremonies have been always used they are to be observed, and it is to be assumed there was some tradition as their origin — just shewing that it was to justify superstitious practices they began to use tradition because there was no scripture for them

54 The other proofs of Dr. Milner are drawn from authors from the end of the fourth to the end of the fifth century after Christ, when every perplexity of doctrine, and the grossest relaxation of practice, had come into the church, so that they were glad to get anything to rest their foot upon. Popes had denied the divinity of Christ. The bishops had killed the poor old archbishop of Constantinople by blows in one of their councils, and the vices of the clergy were such that they surely did require something not in scripture to support them. What I have said I will justify when we speak of the marks of the true church. But it will be well to examine the point of tradition a little closer. We will take Tertullian, because he is the first that speaks largely of it in the tract Dr. M. refers to. Here are the points for which he refers to tradition as an authority: —

N*. We shall get on this point when we touch on the authority of the church and scripture. We will try and finish with purgatory. One of the books quoted is a treatise of Tertullian's, which he wrote when he had left the church, and refers in it to a fanatical teacher, whom he calls the Paraclete, or, as we should say, the Comforter; for Tertullian, the first and one of the most distinguished of the Latin Fathers, left what you call the Catholic church as insupportable.