the desire of distinction, himself to pursue, and to recommend to others, an ascetic course of life. The austerity of his doctrine and practice naturally gained him admirers and followers, and he confirmed his empire over their minds by professing to see visions, and to receive revelations from heaven. Perhaps he had succeeded in persuading himself that he was divinely inspired. Fanaticism is for the most part combined with fraud in the character of the religious impostor; nor is it improbable that, in the state of exhaustion to which the body of Montanus was reduced by the length and frequency and severity of his fasts, his mind might occasionally become disordered, and he might mistake for realities the creations of a distempered fancy.

4

The notion that the doctrine of the Gospel was not publicly delivered by the Apostles in its full perfection, but that certain important truths were reserved which the minds of men were not yet able to bear, does not appear to have been peculiar to the school of Montanus. The 50 Valentinians held a similar language, and supposed these mysterious truths to relate to their extravagant and unintelligible fancies respecting the Pleroma and the successive gene

50 De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, c. 25.

rations of Æons. Even among the orthodox a notion not altogether dissimilar very generally prevailed. The principal object of the Stromata of Clemens Alexandrinus is to point out the distinction between the Christian who is perfected in knowledge (vwσTIKOs), and the great mass of believers; and to lay down rules for the formation of this perfect character. He does not indeed, like Montanus, profess to communicate truths which he had received by immediate revelation from above, and of which the Apostles were ignorant. He supposes them to have been revealed by Christ to Peter, James and John, at 51 the time of the Transfiguration, and to Paul at a subsequent period; and to have been by them orally transmitted to their successors in the superintendance of the Church. When, however, we come to enquire into the nature of this 5 sublime knowledge, we find that it

51 Eusebius says after the resurrection, Eccl. Hist. L. ii. c. 1. Compare Clem. Alex. Strom. L. i. p. 322. 1. 18. p. 323. 1. 23. p. 324. 1. 26. L. vi. p. 771. 1. 14. p. 774. 1. 27. p. 802. 1. 36. p. 806. 1. 25. Ed. Potter. Mr. Rennell in his Proofs of Inspiration has inadvertently referred to the first of these passages as bearing testimony to the inspiration of the New Testament, p. 46.

52 Clemens says that he is not at liberty to disclose fully and openly wherein this yvos consists, as it is of too pure and spiritual a nature to be comprehended by Christians

53

consisted of subtle explanations of the doctrine of the Trinity and of other Christian doctrines, of allegorical and mystical interpretations of Scripture, and of moral precepts. not widely differing from those, the observance of which was enjoined by Montanus, though carried to a less degree of extravagance. For instance, 55 Clemens does not pronounce second marriages positively unlawful, but says that a man who marries again after the decease of his wife falls short of Christian perfection. The notions of Clemens bear a close affinity to mysticism, and are calculated to form a sort of philosophic Christian, raised far above the sensible world, and absorbed in sublime contemplations; those of Montanus would lead men to place the whole of virtue in bodily austerities and acts of mortification: both may be justly charged with having assisted in paving the way for the introduction of the monastic mode of life.

There is nothing more flattering to the pride of man than the persuasion that he is

in general, L. i. p. 327. l. 41. The notion, if not originally suggested by certain passages in St. Paul's Epistles, was at least defended by a reference to them. Strom. L. v. p. 683. l. 18.

the favoured depositary of knowledge which is unattainable by the generality of his fellowcreatures,—that, while they are destined to pass their lives amidst thick clouds and darkness, he with a select few is permitted to bask in the meridian sunshine of divine truth. Both the philosophy and the religion of the Gentile world had their external and internal doctrines: and from them in an evil hour the distinction was introduced into the Church of Christ. Clemens Alexandrinus is the earliest Christian writer in whose works any allusion to it appears; and we say that he introduced the distinction in an evil hour, because on it and on the account which he gives of its origin, are founded the two principal arguments urged by Roman Catholics in defence of their doctrinal and other corruptions. When driven from every other point, they fly, as to a last refuge, to the disciplina arcani and to oral tradition; and though the writings of Clemens afford no countenance whatever to the particular errors which the Romish Church is anxious to maintain, yet it derives no small advantage to its cause from the statement of so early a writer, that Christ communicated important truths to the Apostles, which were neither intended for the ear, nor adapted to the comprehension of the great body of believers,

and which had come down to his own time through the medium of oral tradition.

But to return to Tertullian, his adoption of the opinions of Montanus has, without the slightest semblance of truth, been imputed by Pamelius and others to disappointed ambition. He was indignant, they say, because he was defeated in his pretensions to the See, either of Rome or Carthage. The true cause of his defection from the Church is to be sought in the constitution and temper of his mind, to which the austere doctrines and practice of the new Prophet were perfectly congenial, and of which the natural warmth and acerbity were, as 54 Jerome informs us, increased by the censures, perhaps by the misrepresentations of the Roman clergy.

Before we quit this part of the subject, it will be necessary to obviate an objection, which the foregoing statement may possibly suggest. “What reliance, it may be asked, can we place upon the judgement, or even upon the testimony of Tertullian, who could be de-: luded into a belief of the extravagant pretensions of Montanus? or what advantage can the

Catalogus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum.