Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

CHAPTER 8. — THE MONTANISTS.
In historic times Phrygia comprised the greater part of Asia Minor.
“Montanism” appeared there about the middle of the second century.
Montanism enrolled its hosts and was one of the greatest Christian influences
throughout the early Christian centuries. As there was at the time, when
Montanism arose, no essential departure from the faith in the action, the
subjects of Baptism, church government or doctrine, the Montanists, on these
points, were Baptists.
Of the Montanists, Armitage says:
“Tertullian and the Montanists denied that baptism was the channel of grace.”
f104
Kurtz says:
“Its leading characteristics were a new order of ecstatic prophets, with
somnambulistic visions and new relations; a grossly literal interpretation of
scriptural predictions; a fanatical millenarianism; a self-confident ascetecism;
an excessive rigor in ecclesiastical discipline. Thus, without dissenting from
the doctrinal statements of the church, Montanism sought to reform its
practice. In opposition to the false universalism of the Gnostics, the
Montanists insisted that Christianity alone, and not heathenism, contained the
truth.” f105
Schaff says:
“Montanism was not originally a doparture from the faith, but a morbid
overestimating of the practical morality of the early church.” f106
Kurtz further says:
“Still their moral earnestness and zeal against wordliness and heirarchism and
false spiritualism rendered important service to the church, both in the way of
admonition and warning.” f108
Wadington concedes:
“Another cause of the temporary fame of the Montanists was the severity of
the morality inculcated by them.” f109
Dorner says of the Montanists:
“This is a form of vigor and widely influential significance. In it the original
Christian feeling, the Christian people, the democratic basis of the church
predominated against the gnostic and against the hierarchal element.”