The precise date of the formal organization of the Montanists as a distinct sect is uncertain. The adherents of the new prophecy sought to remain members of the Catholic Church, and the Church hesitated long before she definitely decided against them. There was much in common in Catholic and
Montanist teaching-the ethical ideals of marital life, fasting, martyrdom, and the expectation of the last day-while a hasty rejection of prophecy was regarded as sin against the Holy Ghost (Di
dache, xi. 7). Nevertheless, sharp opposition to the new prophecy soon arse, first headed by Apollonius
(q.v., 2), and attempts were also made to exorcise both Prisca and Maximilla. Various synods of
Asia Minor discussed the problem, filled with a vague dread of the new movement. The ecstatic aspect of the sect seems first to have aroused sus picion, and was attacked in a special polemic by
Miltiades (q.v.), while the Alogi (q.v.) went to the extreme of denying the authenticity of all the Johan nine writings because of the Montanist appeal to the
Apocalypse and to the promise of the Paraclete in the Gospel of John. Yet even the antagonists of the Alogi assumed a position of hostility toward the new prophecy, and by the seventh decade of the second century the opposition to Montanism was evidently general. In the lifetime of Maximilla the antagonism had become intense, for she makes the
Spirit lament that he was driven away like a wolf.
For the ecstasy of the prophets the Montanists ap
pealed to
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