e most extravagant promises were given.[200] These
prophets spoke in a loftier tone than any Apostle ever did, and they
were even bold enough to overturn apostolic regulations.[201] They set
up new commandments for the Christian life, regardless of any
tradition,[202] and they inveighed against the main body of
Christendom.[203] They not only proclaimed themselves as prophets, but
as the last prophets, as notable prophets in whom was first fulfilled
the promise of the sending of the Paraclete.[204] These Christians as
yet knew nothing of the "absoluteness of a historically complete
revelation of Christ as the fundamental condition of Christian
consciousness;" they only felt a Spirit to which they yielded
unconditionally and without reserve. But, after they had quitted the
scene, their followers sought and found a kind of compromise. The
Montanist congregations that sought for recognition in Rome, whose part
was taken by the Gallic confessors, and whose principles gained a
footing in North Africa, may have stood in the same relation to the
original adherents of the new prophets and to these prophets themselves,
as the Mennonite communities did to the primitive Anabaptists and their
empire in Muenster. The "Montanists" outside of Asia Minor acknowledged
to the fullest extent the legal position of the great Church. They
declared their adherence to the apostolic "regula" and the New Testament
canon.[205] The organisation of the Churches, and, above all, the
position of the bishops as successors of the Apostles and guardians of
doctrine were no longer disputed. The distinction between them and the
main body of Christendom, from which they were unwilling to secede, was
their belief in the new prophecy of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla,
which was contained, in its final form, in written records and in this
shape may have produced the same impression as is excited by the
fragments of an exploded bomb.[206]

In this new prophecy they recognised a _subsequent revelation_ of God,
which for that very reason assumed the existence of a previous one. This
after-revelation professed to decide the practical questions which, at
the end of the second century, were burning topics throughout all
Christendom, and for which no direct divine law could hitherto be
adduced, in the form of a strict injunction. Herein lay the importance
of the new prophecy for its adherents in the Empire, and for this reason
they believed in it.[207] The belief i