PREFACE.

been, since even a Bishop of Rome m. adv. Prax. ch. 1: "The Bishop of Rome, already acknowledging the prophecies of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, and from that acknowledgement bringing peace to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia—by asserting false things about those prophets and their Churches and defending the authorities of his predecessors—he compelled him to revoke the letters of peace already issued and to cease from the purpose of receiving those spiritual gifts." was on the point of acknowledging the prophecies of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, even when they had been condemned by his predecessors and by the Asiatic Churches, and actually restored communion with them. They seem also in a very short time to have found adherents in the most distant parts of the world n. They seem even to have displaced the Church in Phrygia (St. Hilary, ad Const. ii. §. 9) and in Thyatira (Epiphanius, Hær. 51, ch. 53). Their early extent may also perhaps be inferred from the notice of them in St. Clement of Alexandria (Strom. vii. ch. xvii, p. 900); from the frequent mention of them in Origen (see Tillemont, art. 13); from the letter written against them by Serapion, Bishop of Antioch (Eusebius, H. E. v. 19); and by the martyrs of Lyons (ibid. v. 3), as also from Tertullian. Their subsequent extent is indicated by the frequent notice of them in the decisions on heretical Baptism and the statement in Sozomen (ii. 32) that they suffered by Constantine’s laws against heretics, except in Phrygia and the neighboring provinces, where they had existed in great numbers since the time of Montanus., and some even among those ready to endure martyrdom o. ad Mart. ch. 1, p. 151.. It may be that at first they did not declare against the Church and seemed only reformers within her p. They were excommunicated in Asia but did not separate themselves from the Church and would gladly have been restored (see note m).. The very rule of Tertullian may also have been, in some degree, the means of ensnaring him, both by leading him to a false security and, in its application, fixing his mind exclusively on greater deviations from the Faith. For, if one may so judge of one so highly endowed, Tertullian’s mind seems remarkable rather for its great acuteness, power, condensed strength, and energy than for its comprehensiveness. His characteristic seems to be the vivid and strong perception and exhibition of single truths or principles. These he exhausts, strips of everything extrinsic to them, and then casts them forth the sharper and more penetrating. They seem to flash on his mind like lightning and to go forth with its rapidity and clearness. As in the well-known description, "he flashed, he thundered, he shook Greece." But single powers of mind, the more vividly they are possessed and developed, the more they generally impair the even