fore was to make Christians give up
the local and civil relations in which they lived, to collect them, and
create a new undivided Christian commonwealth, which, separated from the
world, should prepare itself for the descent of the Jerusalem from
above.[194]

The natural resistance offered to the new prophets with this extravagant
message--especially by the leaders of communities, and the persecutions
to which the Church was soon after subjected under Marcus Aurelius, led
to an intensifying of the eschatological expectations that beyond doubt
had been specially keen in Montanist circles from the beginning. For the
New Jerusalem was soon to come down from heaven in visible form, and
establish itself in the spot which, by direction of the Spirit, had been
chosen for Christendom in Phrygia.[195] Whatever amount of peculiarity
the movement lost, in so far as the ideal of an assembly of all
Christians proved incapable of being realised or at least only possible
within narrow limits, was abundantly restored in the last decades of the
second century by the strength and courage that the news of its spread
in Christendom gave to the earnest minded to unite and offer resistance
to the ever increasing tendency of the Church to assume a secular and
political character. Many entire communities in Phrygia and Asia
recognised the divine mission of the prophets. In the Churches of other
provinces religious societies were formed in which the predictions of
these prophets were circulated and viewed as a Gospel, though at the
same time they lost their effect by being so treated. The confessors at
Lyons openly expressed their full sympathy with the movement in Asia.
The bishop of Rome was on the verge of acknowledging the Montanists to
be in full communion with the Church. But among themselves there was no
longer, as at the beginning, any question of a new organisation in the
strict sense of the word, and of a radical remodelling of Christian
society.[196] Whenever Montanism comes before us in the clear light of
history it rather appears as a religious movement already deadened,
though still very powerful. Montanus and his prophetesses had set no
limits to their enthusiasm; nor were there as yet any fixed barriers in
Christendom that could have restrained them.[197] The Spirit, the Son,
nay, the Father himself had appeared in them and spoke through
them.[198] Imagination pictured Christ bodily in female form to the eyes
of Prisca.[199] Th