Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Against “Gnostocism, Montanism was the shyest and most self-sufficient.” f110
Gnostocism was, at that time, the great and dangerous enemy of true
Christianity.
Another well-known historian says:
“Among those hostile to the Alexandrian school, is to be numbered Montanus.
His aim evidently was to maintain or to restore the scriptural simplicity,
nature and character of the religion of the New Testament with a constant
reliance on the promise of the Holy Spirit.”
Guericke’s crediting the statement, that the Montanists did not believe in any
visible church, is refuted by Tertullian’s statements on baptism and by their
well-known character. It is discredited by Schaff and other historians. f111 Thus
Schaff says of the Montanists: “Infant baptism only it seems to have rejected.”
f107
Guericke concedes that “they received the general truths of Christianity, as
understood by the universal church.” f112
Admit that the Montanists did have women teachers among them, and that
some of them practiced trine immersion, since the position of women in the
New Testament Church is a disputed point, and since both it and trine
immersion are only an irregularity, neither of which is as bad as open
communion, feet washing and non-cooperation in missions, they cannot
invalidate those churches as New Testament churches. [Here read in Chapter
IV of this book.] Their millenarian views, while they may have been
extravagant, could but class them with the church of Thessalonica. f113
Schaff charges the Montanists with believing in the celibacy of the clergy. But
he admits they had no law or rule that forbade the marriage of ministers; and
then concedes there are two sides to even the charge of discouraging their
marriage. The explanation probably is: as owing to the persecutions of the
Christians, Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, rather favored celibacy as a
temporary thing, so did the Montanists as to their ministers.
The charge of believing in the continuance of inspiration, of ecstacies, inward
experiences and that their leader claimed to be the Holy Spirit, are much what
Campbellites charge against the Baptists of our age.
Mosheim took up these charges and credited Montanus, their great leader, with
calling himself the Comforter. But his translator, in a foot note, corrects him
and says: “Those are undoubtedly mistaken who have asserted that Montanus
gave himself out that he was the Holy Ghost.” f114 Hase says of Tertullian, one
of the great Montanist leaders: