[75] This is, I think, the first mention of the Quartodecimans as heretics. Eusebius, who thinks that the schism on the point began in the reign of Commodus, treats them with great tenderness, and says (Hist. Eccl., cc. xxiii. and xxiv.), that “the Churches of all Asia” held their opinions, and that Irenæus himself pleaded their cause before Pope Victor. Epiphanius (Haer., XXX) says that they derived their origin from a mixture of the Phrygian and Quintillian or Priscillianist sects, probably confusing them with the Montanists.
[76] Gal. v. 3.
[77] This heresy of the “Phrygians” is, of course, that generally called the Montanist, which seems to have broken out about the year 180. For some time it was not violently opposed by the orthodox, and Tertullian himself became a convert to it and probably died in its confession. Later it came to be looked upon as an enemy only one degree less prejudicial to the Catholic Church than Gnosticism, and therefore one to be stamped out by excommunication in pre-Constantinian times, and by persecution afterwards. Its tenets are sufficiently summarised in our text for a general understanding of them and their connection with later forms of Patripassianism; but any one wishing to go further into the subject is recommended to read Dr. Salmon’s able article on “Montanus” in D.C.B., which will give him all that is really known as to the sect and its tendencies. Its centre seems to have been always Asia Minor.
[78] ταῦτα τὰ γύναια. The phrase is Aristotelian. Cf. same word later on same page.
[79] χάρισμα.
[80] ξηροφαγίας καὶ ράφανοφαγίας. First phrase, “dry food.”
[81] There is no reason to believe that in what he says here Hippolytus is drawing from any written document. As the Montanists on being condemned by the rest of the Church appealed first to the Gallic Churches in which Hippolytus’ master Irenæus was a leading spirit, and later to the Church of Rome, all that he says about them must have been familiar to his hearers without referring to any earlier writers.
[82] Ἐγκρατῖται, from ἐγκρατεῖς, “the continent ones.” Many Gnostic sects, e. g. those of Saturninus and Marcion seem to have been called Encratites, the reason given by themselves for their abstinence being the malignity of matter. But it is plain from Hippolytus’ statement as to the orthodoxy in other matters of those he describes, that these were not Gnostics, but Catholics who practised asceticism inordinately. This is doubtless his reason for quoting St. Paul against them and for ignoring Irenæus’ statement that Tatian was their founder, that they taught a system of Aeons and denied the salvation of Adam. Bearing in mind that he thought the Docetae to be an independent sect, it seems probable that in this Book he intended to turn his back upon the Gnostics and to describe only the other sects with a closer resemblance to orthodox Judaism and Christianity. The whole work would thus form a roughly graduated scale extending from the undisguised heathenism of the Ophites to the purely theological errors of Callistus, the description of which seems designed to form the climax of the book. The fact that it was probably, as said in the Introduction, begun, laid aside, and then taken up again and finished, is sufficient to account for discrepancies like that involved in the concluding sentence of this Book.
[83] πεφυσιωμένοι. Cf. the Φυσιώσεις of 2 Cor. xii. 20.
[84] τῆς ὑγαινούσης διδασκαλίας. The N.T. substitutes πιστέως, “faith,” for “teaching,” and omits the adjective.