Miscellaneous Notes and Queries Volume 13

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 Excerpt: ...word, by the light which lighteth every man. What is of abiding truth in the Montanist's highly spiritual but exaggerated conceptions, which were later promulgated by Tertullian, one of the most learned Fathers of the church, has received an adequate expression by Martineau: 'Were not our humanity itself an Emmanuel, there could be no Christ to bear the name.' It is possible that some regarded Paul as the Paraclete. For Paul, of whom it could be said that he convinced the world of sin, righteousness and judgment, was the first preacher of that Gospel which, as only he himself asserted, should be revealed afterwards. To this, his Gospel, Paul referred as a spiritual gift of grace, which he longed to bring to the Romans and which deeper knowledge, or secret tradition to which we later refer more fully, the twelve apostles could not understand, as Origen informs us. The reformation of the church, which Phrygian Christians attempted after the middle of the second century, was extremely dangerous to the organisation of the Christian church. If the radical principles of this revolutionary movement had been admitted by the church, the Pope would have become a spiritual and representative monarch with an authority constitutionally limited; he could only have promulgated the ' vox Dei' as determined by the 'vox populi.' Thus the door would have been open to the recognition of every man's individual authority, as an instrument of the all-pervading Spirit of holiness. This might have led to the exclusion of representative priests, even if elected by self responsible congregations. The axe had to be at the root of such dangerous innovations. To prevent the spreading of this antiecclesiastical doctrine of Phrygian Christians, no better antidote could have been administe...