alism. He insisted upon long fasts; he condemned second marriages;
[437:2] he inveighed against all who endeavoured to save themselves by
flight in times of persecution; and he asserted that such as had once
been guilty of any heinous transgression should never again be admitted
to ecclesiastical fellowship. Whilst he promulgated this stern
discipline, he at the same time delivered the most dismal predictions,
announcing, among other things, the speedy catastrophe of the Roman
Empire. He also gave out that the Phrygian village where he ministered
was to become the New Jerusalem of renovated Christianity.

But the Church was still too strongly impregnated with the free spirit
of the gospel to submit to such a prophet as Montanus. He had, however,
powerful advocates, and even a Roman bishop at one time gave him
countenance. [437:3] Though his discipline commended itself to the
morose and pharisaical, it was rejected by those who rightly understood
the mystery of godliness. Several councils were held to discuss its
merits, and it was emphatically condemned. [438:1] The signal failure of
some of the Montanist predictions had greatly lowered the credit of the
party; Montanus was pronounced a false prophet; and though the sect was
supported by Tertullian, the most vigorous writer of the age, it
gradually ceased to attract notice. [438:2]

About a century after the appearance of Montanus, another individual, in
a more remote part of Asia, acquired great notoriety as a heresiarch.
The doctrine of two First Principles, a good deity and an evil deity,
had been long current in the East. Even in the days of Isaiah we may
trace its existence, for there is a most significant allusion to it in
one of his prophecies, in which Jehovah is represented as saying--"I am
the Lord, and there is _none else_, there is no God beside me.... _I
form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil:_ I
the Lord do all these things." [438:3] About the fifth century before
Christ, the Persian theology had been reformed by Zoroaster, and the
subordination of the two Principles to one God, the author of both, had
been acknowledged as an article of the established creed. In the early
part of the third century of the Christian era, there was a struggle
between the adherents of the old and the new faith of Parsism; and the
supporters of the views of Zoroaster had been again successful. But a
considerable party still refused to relinquish the