PREFACE.

✓ for a while only, and then rejected the authority of the founders of the sect g. "He discharged from him all the idle pretense of Phrygia and formed conventicles of Tertullianists. But in doctrine he changed nothing." (Prædestinatus), notwithstanding that he seems to have put forward, to himself, the external authority of the spiritual gifts claimed by the Montanists—not the substance of their doctrine—as the ground of his secession h. "Ourselves, after that time, the recognition and maintaining of the Paraclete separated from the Carnal." (adv. Prax. ch. 1), and for so long regarded the revelations they claimed as the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Yet, we know not on what ground, while retaining those points of discipline that had probably originally recommended themselves to him, he separated from the Montanists and formed a small local communion of his own i. St. Augustine, de Hæresibus.. If also, as seems probable, the Adversus omnes hæreses (Against all Heresies) be his, he had himself been alive to the blasphemies circulated among some sections of them; and we have external testimony that he at the first wrote against them k. St. Augustine, de Hæres.: "Passing over to the Cataphrygians whom he had before overthrown." This seems to be an allusion to the Adversus omnes Hæreses; possibly, however, (as Tillemont perhaps means to suggest, art. 9) it only signifies that he "overthrew" them by teaching the truths opposed to their errors: the lawfulness of second marriage (ad Ux. ii. 1. i. 3; de Pat. ch. 13), of flight in persecution (ad Ux. i. 3; de Pat. l. c.), and of the Church's right to remit all mortal sin (de Pœn. ch. 7).. His strong perception of the validity of the "rule of faith," or, as is now said, "Catholic truth," as a definite, substantial body of truth not to be departed from; his own well-recognized maxim that what was prior was Apostolic and that innovations branded themselves as such; and his strong recognition of the Church as the depository of Apostolic tradition—would have seemed strong safeguards against his falling into error and declaring against the Church l. See the de Præscriptione and notice below, p. 434, 5..

In the absence of fuller information, the source of that strange and lamentable fall can only be conjectured. Something there may have been in Montanism, at the outset, more attractive than it now seems when laid bare. Heresy, like all other sin, is attractive in the present, though revolting when past and the mask is turned. Something there must have