at nothing
hinders its effect more than family ties and home connections. But it is
just from the absence of similar undertakings in the earliest
Christianity that we are justified in concluding that the strength of
enthusiastic exaltation is no standard for the strength of _Christian_
faith. (Since these words were written, we have read in Hippolytus'
Commentary on Daniel [see Georgiades in the journal [Greek: Ekkl.
aletheia] 1885, p. 52 sq.] very interesting accounts of such
undertakings in the time of Septimius Severus. A Syrian bishop persuaded
many brethren with wives and children to go to meet Christ in the
wilderness; and another in Pontus induced his people to sell all their
possessions, to cease tilling their lands, to conclude no more marriages
etc., because the coming of the Lord was nigh at hand.)]

[Footnote 195: Oracle of Prisca in Epiph. H. 49. 1.]

[Footnote 196: Even in its original home Montanism must have
accommodated itself to circumstances at a comparatively early
date--which is not in the least extraordinary. No doubt the Montanist
Churches in Asia and Phrygia, to which the bishop of Rome had already
issued _literae pacis_, were now very different from the original
followers of the prophets (Tertull., adv. Prax. 1). When Tertullian
further reports that Praxeas at the last moment prevented them from
being recognised by the bishop of Rome, "falsa de ipsis prophetis et
ecclesiis eorum adseverando," the "falsehood about the Churches" may
simply have consisted in an account of the original tendencies of the
Montanist sect. The whole unique history which, in spite of this,
Montanism undoubtedly passed through in its original home is, however
explained by the circumstance that there were districts there, where all
Christians belonged to that sect (Epiph., H. 51. 33; cf. also the later
history of Novatianism). In their peculiar Church organisation
(patriarchs, stewards, bishops), these sects preserved a record of their
origin.]

[Footnote 197: Special weight must be laid on this. The fact that whole
communities became followers of the new prophets, who nevertheless
adhered to no old regulation, must above all be taken into account.]

[Footnote 198: See Oracles 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 17, 18, 21 in Bonwetsch,
l.c., p. 197 f. It can hardly have been customary for Christian prophets
to speak like Montanus (Nos. 3-5): [Greek: ego kyrios ho theos ho
pantokrator kataginomenos en anthropo], or [Greek: ego kyrios