to other regions of Christendom, aimed at
preserving or restoring the old feelings and conditions, and preventing
Christendom from being secularised. This crisis (the so called Montanist
struggle) and the kindred one which succeeded produced the following
results: The Church merely regarded herself all the more strictly as a
legal community basing the truth of its title on its historic and
objective foundations, and gave a correspondingly new interpretation to
the attribute of holiness she claimed. She expressly recognised two
distinct classes in her midst, a spiritual and a secular, as well as a
double standard of morality. Moreover, she renounced her character as
the communion of those who were sure of salvation, and substituted the
claim to be an educational institution and a necessary condition of
redemption. After a keen struggle, in which the New Testament did
excellent service to the bishops, the Church expelled the Cataphrygian
fanatics and the adherents of the new prophecy (between 180 and 220);
and in the same way, during the course of the third century, she caused
the secession of all those Christians who made the truth of the Church
depend on a stricter administration of moral discipline. Hence, apart
from the heretic and Montanist sects, there existed in the Empire, after
the middle of the second century, two great but numerically unequal
Church confederations, both based on the same rule of faith and claiming
the title "ecclesia catholica," viz., the confederation which
Constantine afterwards chose for his support, and the Novatian Catharist
one. In Rome, however, the beginning of the great disruption goes back
to the time of Hippolytus and Calixtus; yet the schism of Novatian must
not be considered as an immediate continuation of that of Hippolytus.

2. The so-called Montanist reaction[193] was itself subjected to a
similar change, in accordance with the advancing ecclesiastical
development of Christendom. It was originally the violent undertaking of
a Christian prophet, Montanus, who, supported by prophetesses, felt
called upon to realise the promises held forth in the Fourth Gospel. He
explained these by the Apocalypse, and declared that he himself was the
Paraclete whom Christ had promised--that Paraclete in whom Jesus Christ
himself, nay, even God the Father Almighty, comes to his own to guide
them to all truth, to gather those that are dispersed, and to bring them
into one flock. His main effort there