Yet Montanism failed for want of a clear conception of the real character of primitive Christianity. Aiming at morals, Montanists conceived of life and the human mind and God in a way very far from that of Jesus. They laid a stress, which is not his, on asceticism and on penance, and they cultivated ecstasy—in both regions renouncing the essentially spiritual conception of religion, and turning to a non-Christian view of matter. They thus aimed at obtaining or keeping the indwelling spirit of Jesus, known so well in the early church, but by mechanical means; and this, though the later church in this particular followed them for generations, is not to be done. Still, whatever their methods and their expedients, they stood for righteousness, and here lay the fascination of Montanism for Tertullian.
Throughout his later life Tertullian, then, was a Montanist, though the change was not so great as might be expected. Some of his works, such as that On Monogamy, bear the stamp of Montanism, for re-marriage was condemned by the Montanists. Elsewhere his citation of the oracles of Prisca suggests that a book belongs to the Montanist period; or we deduce it from such a passage as that in the work On the Soul where he describes a vision. The passage is short and it is suggestive.
"We have to-day among us a sister who has received gifts (charismata) of the nature of revelations, which she undergoes (patitur) in spirit in the church amid the rites of the Lord's day falling into ecstasy (per ecstasin). She converses with angels, sometimes even with the Lord, and sees and hears mysteries, and reads the hearts of certain persons, and brings healings to those who ask. According to what Scriptures are read, or psalms sung, or addresses made, or prayers offered up, the matter of her visions is supplied. It happened that we had spoken something of the soul, when this sister was in the spirit. When all was over, and the people had gone, she—for it is her practice to report what she has seen, and it is most carefully examined that it may be proved—'amongst other things,' she said, 'a soul was shown to me in bodily form and it seemed to be a spirit, but not empty, nor a thing of vacuity; on the contrary, it seemed as if it might be touched, soft, lucid, of the colour of air, and of human form in every detail."[[167]]
Such a story explains itself. The corporeity of the soul was a tenet of Stoicism, essential to Tertullian, for without it he could not conceive of what was to follow the resurrection. He spoke of it and we can imagine how. It would hardly take a vision to see anything of which he spoke. The sister however was, what in modern phrase is called, psychopathic, and the vision occurred, controlled by the suggestion that preceded it.
Conclusion
It must be admitted that there is in some of his Montanist treatises, particularly where he is handling matters of less importance, such as re-marriage, fasting, and the like, a bitterness of tone which is not pleasant. As long as his humour and his strong sense control his irony, it is no bad adjunct of his style, it is a great resource. But it declines into sarcasm, and "sarcasm," as Teufelsdröckh put it, "is the language of the devil"; and we find Tertullian, pleading for God and righteousness, in a tone and a temper little likely to win men. But the main ideas that dominate him still prevail—conduct, obedience, God's law in Nature and in the book, the value of the martyr-death.
Little is to be got by dwelling on his outbursts of ill temper; they hardly do more than illustrate what we knew already, his intensity, his sensibility, his passion. They form the negative side of the great positive qualities. Let me gather up a few scattered thoughts which come from his heart and are better and truer illustrations of the man, and with them let chapter and book have an end.
Conduct is the test of creed (de Præscr. Hær. 43). To lie about God is in a sense idolatry (de Præscr. 40). Security in sin means love of it (de Pudic. 9). Whatever darkness you pile above your deeds, God is light (de Pænit. 6). What we are forbidden to do, the soul pictures to itself at its peril (de Pænit. 3). Truth persuades by teaching, it does not teach by making things plausible (adv. Valent. 1). Faith is patience with its lamp lit—illuminata (de Pat. 6). Patience is the very nature of God. The recognition of God understands well enough the duty laid upon it. Let wrong-doing be wearied by your patience (de Pat. 3, 4, 8). There is no greater incitement to despise money than that the Lord himself had no wealth (de Pat. 7). Love is 'the supreme mystery (sacramentum) of faith (de Pat. 12). Faith fears no famine (de Idol. 12). Prayer is the wall of faith (de Or. 29). Every day, every moment, prayer is necessary to men.... Prayer comes from conscience. If conscience blush, prayer blushes (de exh. cast. 10). Good things scandalize none but the bad mind (de virg. vel. 3). Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar's—his image on the coin; give to God what is God's—his image in man, yourself (de Idol. 15).
But to this there is no end, and an end there must be. By his expression of Christian ideas in the natural language of Roman thought, by his insistence on the reality of the historic Jesus and on the inevitable consequences of human conduct, by his reference of all matters of life and controversy to the will of God manifested in Nature, in inspiration and in experience, Tertullian laid Western Christendom under a great debt, never very generously acknowledged. For us it may be as profitable to go behind the writings till we find the man, and to think of the manhood, with every power and every endowment, sensibility, imagination, energy, flung with passionate enthusiasm on the side of purity and righteousness, of God and Truth; to think of the silent self-sacrifice freely and generously made for a despised cause, of a life-long readiness for martyrdom, of a spirit, unable to compromise, unable in its love of Christ to see His work undone by cowardice, indulgence and unfaith, and of a nature in all its fulness surrendered. That the Gospel could capture such a man as Tertullian, and, with all his faults of mind and temper, make of him what it did, was a measure of its power to transform the old world and a prophecy of its power to hold the modern world, too, and to make more of it as the ideas of Jesus find fuller realization and verification in every generation of Christian character and experience.
Chapter X Footnotes: