Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“The Comte de Champagny, who has written, though an ultramontane
Catholic, so eloquently and eruditely on the early history of Christianity and
the collision of it with Judaism on the one side and Paganism on the other
side, has said of the Montanists, that it was hard to find any doctrinal errors in
their views; that they were rather like Jansenists or Methodists in their high
views of religious emotion and experience. They were accused of claiming
inspiration, when they intended, probably only, like the early followers of
Cameron among the Covenanters, or Wesley among the English Methodists,
the true experience of God’s work in the individual soul.” f124
Again, says Dr. Williams, of the Montanists:
“They insisted much upon the power of the Spirit, as the great conservator and
guardian of the life of the Christian church. Now, as far back as the days of
Montanism, this was offensive to Christian churches, which became, under
the power of wealth and fashion, secularized and corrupted.” f125
Says Dr. Dorner:
“Montanism may be styled a democratic reaction on the part of the members
of the church, asserting their universal prophetic and priestly rank against the
concentration of ecclesiastical dignities and rights in the episcopate.”
“In this aspect, Montanism was a reaction of the substantial, real principle
against the formal unity of the episcopate, which entrusted to the unworthy,
and those who were destitute of the Spirit, power over those who were filled
with the Spirit.” f126
Again, says Dorner:
“If now Montanism implicitly reproached the church with hitherto possessing
too little of the Holy Ghost, it is evident that, dogmatically viewed, the charge
implies, that however much the church might have spoken concerning the
Son, or the Logos, and the Father, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit had been
hitherto kept in the back-ground.” f127
The central power of Montanism was “rh>ma eiJmi kai< pneuma kai
du>namiv” — I am word and spirit and power, which it represented as its
conception of the Holy Spirit in His relation to the church. The character of the
Montanists and their being the original church is thus clear.
Möller says:
“But Montanism was, nevertheless, not a new form of Christianity; nor were
the Montanists a new sect. On the contrary, Montanism was simply a reaction
of the old, the primitive church, against the obvious tendency of the day, to
strike a bargain with the world and arrange herself comfortably in it.” f128