"But if ye have not a prophet give to the poor; and so likewise with bread, oil and wine, with
money, clothes and all other things" (ch. xiii.).
Here we have, perhaps, the hint of a transitional stage between the early church of Corinth and the churches of Clement and Ignatius. The prophet [p.44] has the first place of honour and next to him the teacher but all churches have not their prophet, and in these bishops and deacons must act in the place of prophets and teachers, and be honoured as such, while in other churches the prophets and teachers were treated as a sort of Christian priest, and one may see how their work came to be regarded as a regular church office and gradually assimilated, in church after church to the offices customary in the larger congregations like Rome and Antioch. As time passes the place of the prophet is more and more taken by the bishop, and by the end of the second century it would seem, that, for such a bishop of the Church Catholic as Apollinaris of Hierapolis, the prophet was a memory of the distant past.
The Montanist movement in Phrygia had owed its strength to the appeal which it made to the prophetic tradition and the prophetic spirit. In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Phrygian convert Montanus had gone into prophetic ecstasies which shocked the more orderly members of the church, and a separation ensued, in which Montanus was joined by two prophetesses, Prisca and Maximilla; they continued for some time, it would seem, to appeal to those within the greater church to recognise them, for a fragment of Maximilla which is preserved to us, runs thus:
"I am chased like a wolf from the flock; I am wolf, I am utterance, spirit and power." (Eusebius v.§ 16). [p. 45]
Some, like Tertullian, listened; but the Church, as a whole, was frightened at the excesses of their enthusiasm and probably, as a result, prophecy became more than ever suspect. Irenaeus, it is true, mentions amongst the Divine gifts still given to Christians in his day, that some have the knowledge of things to come, as also visions and prophetic communications (Eus. v. § 7), but this certainly does not imply any frequent and general gift like that in the early church of Corinth.