n the efficacy of the Paraclete,
who, in order to establish a relatively stricter standard of conduct in
Christendom during the latter days, had, a few decades before, for
several years given his revelations in a remote corner of the Empire,
was the dregs of the original enthusiasm, the real aspect of which had
been known only to the fewest. But the diluted form in which this force
remained was still a mighty power, because it was just in the generation
between 190 and 220 that the secularising of the Church had made the
greatest strides. Though the followers of the new prophecy merely
insisted on abstinence from second marriage, on stricter regulations
with regard to fasts, on a stronger manifestation of the Christian
spirit in daily life, in morals and customs, and finally on the full
resolve not to avoid suffering and martyrdom for Christ's name's sake,
but to bear them willingly and joyfully,[208] yet, under the given
circumstances, these requirements, in spite of the express repudiation
of everything "Encratite,"[209] implied a demand that directly
endangered the conquests already made by the Church and impeded the
progress of the new propaganda.[210] The people who put forth these
demands, expressly based them on the injunctions of the Paraclete, and
really lived in accordance with them, were not permanently capable of
maintaining their position in the Church. In fact, the endeavour to
found these demands on the legislation of the Paraclete was an
undertaking quite as strange, in form and content, as the possible
attempt to represent the wild utterances of determined anarchists as the
programme of a constitutional government. It was of no avail that they
appealed to the confirmation of the rule of faith by the Paraclete; that
they demonstrated the harmlessness of the new prophecy, thereby
involving themselves in contradictions;[211] that they showed all honour
to the New Testament; and that they did not insist on the oracles of the
Paraclete being inserted in it.[212] As soon as they proved the
earnestness of their temperate but far-reaching demands, a deep gulf
that neither side could ignore opened up between them and their
opponents. Though here and there an earnest effort was made to avoid a
schism, yet in a short time this became unavoidable; for variations in
rules of conduct make fellowship impossible. The lax Christians, who, on
the strength of their objective possession, viz., the apostolic doctrine
and wri