ho theos
pater elthon,] or [Greek: ego eimi ho pater kai ho uios kai ho
parakletos], though Old Testament prophecy takes an analogous form.
Maximilla says on one occasion (No. 11); [Greek: apesteile me kyrios
toutou tou ponou kai tes epangelias airetisten]; and a second time (No.
12): [Greek: diokomai hos lycos ek probaton ouk eimi lycos; rhema eimi
kai pneuma kai dynamis.] The two utterances do not exclude, but include,
one another (cf. also No. 10: [Greek: emou me akousete alla Christou
akousate]). From James IV. V. and Hermas, and from the Didache, on the
other hand, we can see how the prophets of Christian communities may
have usually spoken.]

[Footnote 199: L.c., no. 9: [Greek: Christos hen idea gynaikos
eschematismenos.] How variable must the misbirths of the Christian
imagination have been in this respect also! Unfortunately almost
everything of that kind has been lost to us because it has been
suppressed. The fragments of the once highly esteemed Apocalypse of
Peter are instructive, for they still attest that the existing remains
of early Christian literature are not able to give a correct picture of
the strength of religious imagination in the first and second centuries.
The passages where Christophanies are spoken of in the earliest
literature would require to be collected. It would be shown what naive
enthusiasm existed. Jesus appears to believers as a child, as a boy, as
a youth, as Paul etc. Conversely, glorified men appear in visions with
the features of Christ.]

[Footnote 200: See Euseb., H. E. V. 16. 9. In Oracle No. 2 an
evangelical promise is repeated in a heightened form; but see Papias in
Iren., V. 33. 3 f.]

[Footnote 201: We may unhesitatingly act on the principle that the
Montanist elements, as they appear in Tertullian, are, in all cases,
found not in a strengthened, but a weakened, form. So, when even
Tertullian still asserts that the Paraclete in the new prophets could
overturn or change, and actually did change, regulations of the
Apostles, there is no doubt that the new prophets themselves did not
adhere to apostolic dicta and had no hesitation in deviating from them.
Cf., moreover, the direct declarations on this point in Hippolytus
(Syntagma and Philos. VIII. 19) and in Didymus (de trin. III. 41. 2).]

[Footnote 202: The precepts for a Christian life, if we may so speak,
given by the new prophets, cannot be determined from the compromises on
which the discipline of the later Montanis