PREFACE.

having put the question already quoted, he objects to himself: “‘In this way of arguing,’ you say, ‘anything, however novel and burdensome, may be ascribed to the Paraclete, although it be from the opposing spirit.’ Not so. For the opposing spirit would discover himself from the difference of teaching, first adulterating the rule of faith, and then adulterating the order of discipline, because that must first be corrupted which precedes in order, i.e., faith as going before discipline. A person must first be a heretic as to God, and then as to the institute of God.” There may be truth in this observation of Tertullian, so far that—could it be traced—practical heresy always implies doctrinal; but his theory implies yet further that, unless the doctrinal heresy can be shown, the received tradition as to Apostolic practice may not only be modified by the Church on grounds of expediency, but may, upon private revelation, be corrected as erroneous. Single-marriage was, according to the Montanists, not only an ordinance which might be imposed by the Church, restricting Christian liberty, but a point of faith; so that second-marriage was not only a less excellent way, but was adultery; a change analogous to that in the Council of Trent, which not only imposed the necessity of private confession, but declared it to be de fide of the faith that all mortal sins, even of thought, must be confessed.

y. See above, p. i.
z. “On no other ground are they compelled so much to deny the Paraclete.” On Monogamy, ch. 2. “Subsequently the recognition and maintaining of the Paraclete separated us from the Carnal.” Against Praxeas, ch. 1.

In this way, Tertullian facilitated his fall; but its primary source, from within as from without, appears to have been the failing over which he himself mourns: impatience. St. Jerome hints at this in the external circumstances when he saysy that he “was by the envy and insulting treatment of the Roman Clergy driven to embrace the opinions of Montanus.” Internally, he seems to have been irritated at the refusal of the Church to recognize the spiritual claims of the Montanists and what he deemed the manifestation of the Paraclete. He seems to have regarded it as a rejection of the Spiritz and to have thought himself compelled to remain outwardly separated from the body that so rejected it.