Many offshoots of numerous heresies have already been formed from those heresies which we have described.… By way of example, let us say there are those springing from Saturninus and Marcion, who are called Encratites [i.e., self-controlled], who preached the unmarried state, thus setting aside the original creation of God, and indirectly condemning Him who made male and female for the propagation of the human race. Some of those reckoned as belonging to them have also introduced abstinence from animal food, being ungrateful to God who created all things. They deny, also, the salvation of him who was first created. It is but recently that this opinion has been discovered among them, since a certain man named Tatian first introduced the blasphemy. He had been a hearer of Justin's, and as long as he continued with him he expressed no such views; but after his martyrdom [circa A. D. 165] he separated from the Church, and having become excited and puffed up by the thought of being a teacher, as if he were superior to others, he composed his own peculiar type of doctrine. He invented a system of certain invisible Eons, like the followers of Valentinus; and like Marcion and Saturninus, he declared that marriage was nothing else than corruption and fornication. But this denial of Adam's salvation was an opinion due entirely to himself.
§ 25. Montanism
Montanism was, in part at least, an attempt to revive the enthusiastic prophetic element in the early Christian life. In its first manifestations, in Asia Minor, Montanism was wild [pg 107] and fanatical. It soon spread to the West, and in doing so it became, as did other Oriental religious movements (e.g., Gnosticism and Manichæanism, see [§ 54]), far more sober. It even seemed to many serious persons to be nothing more than a praiseworthy attempt to revive or retain certain primitive Christian conditions, both in respect to personal morals and ecclesiastical organization and life. In this way it came to be patronized by not a few (e.g., Tertullian) who, in other respects, deviated in few or no points from the prevailing thought and practice of Christians. See also [§ 26].
Additional source material: Eusebius, Hist. Ec., V, 16-19, cf. literature cited in McGiffert's notes. The sayings of Montanus, Maximilla, and Priscilla are collected in Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte, 591 ff. See also Hippolytus, Refut., X, 25f. [= X, 21, ANF.]
(a) Eusebius, Hist. Ec., V, 16:7. (MSG, 20:463.)
For Eusebius, see [§ 3].
There is said to be a certain village named Ardabau, in Mysia, on the borders of Phrygia. There, they say, when Gratus was proconsul of Asia, a recent convert, Montanus by name—who, in his boundless desire for leadership, gave the adversary opportunity against him—first became inspired; and falling into a sort of frenzy and ecstasy raved and began to babble and utter strange sounds, prophesying in a manner contrary to the traditional and constant custom of the Church from the beginning.… And he stirred up, besides, two women [Maximilla and Priscilla], and filled them with the false spirit, so that they talked frantically, at unseasonable times, and in a strange manner, like the person already mentioned.… And the arrogant spirit taught them to revile the universal and entire Church under heaven, because the spirit of false prophecy received from it neither honor nor entrance into it; for the faithful in Asia met often and in many places throughout Asia to consider this matter and to examine the recent utterances, and they pronounced them profane and rejected the heresy, and thus these persons [pg 108] were expelled from the Church and shut out from the communion.