MONTANUS. "In order to render it yet more subtle, I have instituted many mortifications, three Lents a year, and prayers to be uttered nightly by the mind only, keeping the mouth closed, lest breathing might tarnish thought. It is necessary to abstain from second marriages, or rather from all marriage! The Angels themselves have sinned with women!"
THE ARCHONTICS (_wearing cilices of hair_):
"The Saviour said: 'I come to destroy the work of the Woman!'"
THE TATIANITES (_wearing cilices of reed_):
"She is the tree of evil. Our bodies are but garments of skin."
(_And continuing to advance along the same side, Anthony meets_:--)
THE VALESIANS (_extended upon the ground, with red wounds below their bellies, and blood saturating their tunics. They offer him a knife._)
"Do as Origen did and as we have done! Is it the pain that thou fearest, coward? Is it the love of thy flesh that restrains thee, hypocrite?"
(_And while he watches them writhing upon their backs, in a pool of blood_--)
THE CAINITES (_wearing knotted vipers as fillets about their hair, pass by, vociferating in his ear_):--
"Glory to Cain! Glory to Sodom! Glory be to Judas!
"Cain made the race of the strong; Sodom terrified the earth by her punishment, and it was by Judas that God saved the world! Yes! by Judas: without him there would have been no death and no redemption!"
(_They disappear beneath the horde of the_--)
CIRCUMCELLIONES (_all clad in the skins of wolves, crowned with thorns, and armed with maces of iron_).
"Crush the fruit! befoul the spring! drown the child! Pillage the rich who are happy--who cat their fill! Beat the poor who envy the ass his saddle-cloth, the dog his meal, the bird his nest,--and who is wretched at knowing that others are not as miserable as himself.
"We, the Saints, poison, burn, massacre, that we may hasten the end of the world.
"Salvation may be obtained through martyrdom only. We give ourselves martyrdom. We tear the skin from our heads with pincers; we expose our members to the plough; we cast ourselves into the mouths of furnaces!
"Out upon baptism! out upon the Eucharist! out upon marriage! universal damnation!"
(_Then throughout all the basilica there is a redoubling of fury._
_The Audians shoot arrows against the Devil; the Collyridians throw blue cloths toward the roof; the Ascites prostrate themselves before a waterskin; the Marcionites baptise a dead man with oil. A woman, standing near Appelles, exhibits a round loaf within a bottle, in order the better to explain her idea. Another, standing in the midst of an assembly of Sampseans distributes, as a sacrament, the dust of her own sandals. Upon the rose-strewn bed of the Marcosians, two lovers embrace. The Circumcellionites slaughter one another; the Valesians utter the death-rattle; Bardesanes sings; Carpocras dances; Maximilla and Priscilla moan; and the false prophetess of Cappadocia, completely naked, leaning upon a lion, and brandishing three torches, shrieks the Terrible Invocation._