In Against Heresies 3.11.9, Irenaeus of Lyons wrote:
9. These things being so, all who destroy the form of the
gospel are vain, unlearned, and also audacious; those, [I mean,] who represent
the aspects of the gospel as being either more in number than as aforesaid, or,
on the other hand, fewer. The former class [do so], that they may seem to have
discovered more than is of the truth; the latter, that they may set the
dispensations of God aside. For Marcion, rejecting the entire gospel, yea
rather, cutting himself off from the gospel, boasts that he has part in the
[blessings of] the gospel. Others, again (the Montanists), that they may set at
nought the gift of the Spirit, which in the latter times has been, by the good
pleasure of the Father, poured out upon the human race, do not admit that aspect [of the evangelical dispensation]
presented by John’s Gospel, in which the Lord promised that He would send the
Paraclete; but set aside at once both the gospel and the prophetic Spirit.
Wretched men indeed! who wish to be pseudo-prophets, forsooth, but who set
aside the gift of prophecy from the church; acting like those (the Encratitæ)4
who, on account of such as come in hypocrisy, hold themselves aloof from the
communion of the brethren. We must conclude, moreover, that these men (the
Montanists) cannot admit the Apostle Paul either. For, in his Epistle to the
Corinthians, he speaks expressly of prophetical gifts, and recognises men and
women prophesying in the church. Sinning, therefore, in all these particulars,
against the Spirit of God, they fall into the irremissible sin. But those who
are from Valentinus, being, on the other hand, altogether reckless, while they
put forth their own compositions, boast that they possess more Gospels than
there really are. Indeed, they have arrived at such a pitch of audacity, as to
entitle their comparatively recent writing “the Gospel of Truth,” though it
agrees in nothing with the Gospels of the Apostles, so that they have really no
gospel which is not full of blasphemy. For if what they have published is the
Gospel of truth, and yet is totally unlike those which have been handed down to
us from the apostles, any who please may learn, as is shown from the Scriptures
themselves, that that which has been handed down from the apostles can no
longer be reckoned the Gospel of truth. But that these Gospels alone are true
and reliable, and admit neither an increase nor diminution of the aforesaid
number, I have proved by so many and such [arguments]. For, since God made all
things in due proportion and adaptation, it was fit also that the outward
aspect of the gospel should be well arranged and harmonized. The opinion of
those men, therefore, who handed the gospel down to us, having been
investigated, from their very fountainheads, let us proceed also to the
remaining apostles, and inquire into their doctrine with regard to God; then,
in due course we shall listen to the very words of the Lord.
As David Hill notes, in this passage,
The other main reason
for the decline of prophecy was that false prophets were present—from a quite
early state in the Church's life (cf. 1 John and the Pastoral epistles) and in
growing numbers in the second and third generations (cf. the Didache and
Hermas)—and these undermined the position and authority of genuine prophets.
Unfortunately the Church was not easily able to safeguard prophecy from the
excesses of charlatans, since it did not possess or (if it possessed it) did
not effectively use the charisma of discernment. As we have pointed out,
various criteria for the "'testing of spirits' were from time to time
enunciated and presumably employed in the unmasking of fraudulent prophets:
they certainly were in relation to Montantism. But ability to discern and
repudiate the false seems not to have been balanced by the ability to discern
and retain the true. The result was that the apparently large number of false
prophets abroad not only undermined the authority of the decreasing numbers of
true prophets, but also brought the whole phenomenon of prophetism under suspicion,
thus aiding its decline and eventual disappearance. Irenaeus did issue a
warning to his contemporaries that true prophecy was being driven out of the
Church as a consequence of the battle against false prophets (Adv. Haer.
3.[11].19): but his warning was in vain and the Church lost the immensely
valuable contribution to its life that comes from genuinely inspired prophetic
utterance. (David Hill, New Testament Prophecy [New Foundations Theological
Library Atlanta, Ga.: John Knox Press, 1979], 191-92)
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